Degrowth

Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet, is either mad or an economist. Degrowth is an economic, academic, and social movement that argues that the objective of constant economic growth is environmentally destructive and  that societies should focus on limiting economic growth in favor of producing only what is necessary to fulfill human needs and promote well-being. The major stated aim of degrowth is in materializing a sustainable level of production in our ever-changing climate. It is commonly associated with anti-capitalism and the political left.

History of the concept
The modern concept of degrowth was founded on the book Limits to Growth, a report produced by the Club of Rome, which concluded that growth in a finite world was limited and that if society kept increasing production and population, it would face the limits of growth, which would lead to a sudden decline in both population and industrial capacity. Its core predictions seem to have held true. The report suggested that growth trends could be altered to achieve sustainable ecological and economic stability.

Proposed policies
Degrowth proponents tend to support renewable energies and recycling, but consider that it still consumes natural resources to build and maintain, and so, the limitation of the consumption of energy and production is also necessary. They believe in reducing conspicuous consumption and useless consumption in general. Many believers in degrowth oppose planned obsolescence and advertising, and they also believe in ending the over-reliance on cars. They do this by promoting biking and free public transportation. The degrowth movement is generally supporting of a reform of agriculture, for example in supporting permaculture. On the economy, the degrowth movement generally support cooperatives, local currencies (and generally relocalisation of the economy), alimentary sovereignty. Many Degrowth activists support public housing, education, and healthcare for all. Policies for universal basic income is also supported by some degrowth economists.

Hickel et al. (2022) writing an op-ed for Nature has made specific policy proposals in the aim of degrowth namely in...


 * Scaling down fossil fuel industries, factory farming, fast fashion, and luxury transportation - this can be achieved by ceasing subsidies to fossil fuels, increasing taxation on such industries and re-investing the money into public services.
 * Abolishing planned obsolescence by pushing legislation that requires the production of products that will last as long as they’re able.
 * Redirecting the focus from increasing GDP to other relevant factors such as the public’s access to health, nutrition, shelter, etc.
 * Reducing working hours so as to reduce production, energy usage, etc. Shorter working hours also means more shifts can be fit into the working day; expanding the number of jobs in a single firm. Couple this with a green job guarantee this prevents people losing their jobs and livelihoods in a transition to a degrowth economy.
 * Shifting to renewable energy sources, as well as implementing efforts to limit energy usage so as to limit the need to build more solar panels, wind mills, etc.
 * Expanding the use of social housing, universal healthcare, and worker co-operatives.

Overshoot Day
Earth Overshoot Day is the date on which humanity’s resource consumption for the year exceeds Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year. In 2016, Earth Overshoot Day was in August 03.

Peak minerals
The degrowth movement argues that resource depletion will end up in peak minerals. For example, nickel and zinc could face production peaks in a few decades.

Climate change
Another obvious argument is that increases in economic growth in part follows from increases in production and increases in energy consumption, which in turn then drives increases in the release of greenhouse gases. This is fundamentally at odds with the goals to reduce or outright eliminate the production of greenhouse gases as called for by organizations like the IPCC. A counter to this argument is typically that this is only the case if the means of production rely on the energy output of energy resources like coal, but it would not be the case if the energy was provided by renewable sources instead. A problem with this reply is that with increased energy demands this would require the production of more and more renewable machines such as solar panels, which would then require the extraction of rare metals and greater land usage. This gets back into the previous problem of peak minerals, and the production of greenhouse gases in the manufacturing process. Regardless if the manufacturing of a given good required the production of greenhouse gases on plant then it would not particularly matter if the power used to keep the lights on in factory was sourced from a wind turbine.

Another one of the challenges in regards to climate change is the rate of decarbonization required if GDP were to continuously grow at  a rate at say 3% per year; the required rate of decarbonization would have to be at 10.5% every year in order to meet below the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming target. Something openly acknowledged by the IPCC and the Paris climate agreement as unobtainable.

Feasability
The main argument against degrowth is that its proposals cannot be applied, that an economic model based on degrowth would be unable to supply enough food and other commodities, and that it would end with everyone being poor (or worse). Leisure time, long life, good health, literacy, education, female empowerment, and rights and protections for the vulnerable are all said to be central to having a happy and fair society and all of these features are made possible by economic growth.

This sort of criticism is anticipated by the likes of economic anthropologists like Hickel, who argues that the major research tying GDP and economic growth to quality of life often ignore relevant confounding factors like public sanitation. Historically the narrative has been that even including for factors related to funding and efficacy of healthcare, GDP seems to be the primary predictor for quality of life measures and outcomes; and that countries with the highest GDP’s tend to have the highest quality of life regardless of the quality of their healthcare.

Another criticism towards this narrative is the claim that the rise of capitalism from the 16th century onwards came with the closure of common resources, expansive colonization with the extraction of foreign natural resources, indigenous genocides, the North Atlantic Slave Trade, and multiple famines in India. It’s difficult to argue that for the people victimized by such atrocities their quality of life has been “improved”. Of course, this does not account for the fact that most of the economic growth happened after these events, in the XXth century, especially. As economist Oded Galor puts:

A problem with many studies citing causal interaction between GDP and Quality of Life measurements is the fact they don’t account for the influence of public utilities like sanitation. Basic sanitation involving the simple separation of sewage from drinking water dramatically improved health outcomes and helped prevent the spread of infectious diseases. But due to the requirement to dig up privately owned land and the massive constructive projects to create the infrastructure, many private landowners initially opposed the early sanitation efforts.

While it's true that nations with higher incomes generally have better life expectancies than poorer nations, this isn't, as, at least according to Hickel, an automatic relationship:

This is backed up by statistics on water sanitation in the United States. The improvement in water sanitation alone between 1900 and 1935 is responsible for roughly 75% of the decrease in infant mortality rates, and half the total decline in mortality rates overall. Hickel points out that, excluding sanitation, the most significant impactor on life expectancy rates is "access to universal healthcare, including child vaccination." After that, it's access to education, especially women's education. "The more you learn, the longer you live."

All of this argued above by the likes of those like Hickel draws skepticism on the direct tie between societal happiness, health, and other measures as directly caused by and as solely a consequence of economic growth. This of course does not by any means directly suggest a degrowth economic model is therefore sustainable and would not itself lead to things like famine as proponents of economic growth maintain.

Hickel and others object of course to the growth-proponents objections on the grounds it confuses degrowth for an economic recession. There is an argument to made that the removal of systems of artificial scarcity would prevent the sort of economic consequences we would see during a recession due to the re-opening access to public resources, the dramatic reinvestment into public services, and the simply fact that an post-capitalist economic system of degrowth would not be reliant on growth to sustain itself as the current capitalist system is required to do.

Technological innovations
An argument used against degrowth is that technological innovation will lead to ways to produce more while using fewer resources. For example, Norman Borlaug's artificial selection and shuttle breeding research significantly increased wheat yields across Latin America, Africa, and Asia in the middle part of the 20th century.

Economic growth also makes available the resources and the new technologies needed to tackle important challenges. The United Kingdom saw its carbon emissions fall by 38% between 1990 and 2017, from 600 million tonnes to 367 million tonnes. However the country's GDP (adjusted for inflation) increased by over 60% in the same period. Additionally, economic growth also results in more resources to combat enviromental problems. For instance, a growing GDP means that the society will be able to combat deforestation better. Furthermore, there's evidence that poorer regions might pollute even more than rich regions. A region with 50 million people and an income of $10,000 per capita emits significantly more carbon than a region with 10 million people and an income of $50,000 per capita, despite the fact that the two regions have precisely the same aggregate income. In other words, we should strive for more, not less growth to tackle climate change.

Of course all this information presented does rub against the previously mentioned required rate of decarbonization, to which this example with the UK does not even remotely meet the targets for. There also ways to fib using the data by decreasing domestic carbon output via pushing production on another nation; e.g. Canada can sell its oil and other fossil fuel resources to another country so that Canada can still experience economic growth but maintain an overall decrease in carbon output. Overall, the total amount of greenhouse gases released in the atmosphere ends up remaining the same, but a country like Canada can look as if it’s achieving economic growth while decreasing their greenhouse gas emissions. It would be misleading and the planet overall would suffer for it.

Notable degrowth proponents

 * Murray Bookchin
 * Timothée Parrique
 * Timothée Parrique
 * Timothée Parrique
 * Timothée Parrique
 * Timothée Parrique
 * Timothée Parrique
 * Timothée Parrique