The Dawning of Equitable Degrowth

29 min readFeb 13, 2024

Foreword

This story is my submission to Suzanne Taylor’s essay competition. In accordance with the rules of her competition the story extrapolates upon my real-life activism, and envisages my part in inspiring the establishment of a peaceful and globally cooperative society by 2050. The deadline is February 14th 2024, this is the final version, the first draft was also published on Medium.

The early section describes how humanity begins to embrace equitable Degrowth in Autumn 2024. It is written in flashback. The many hyperlinks drill into the contemporary 2024 perceptions of reality, in particular my own activities and plans. From my imaginary perspective in the future, I describe how my personal actions influenced and encouraged profound global socio-economic change.

Avalanche of Awareness Achieved in 2024

The ‘Open Mindset’ graphic shown above, depicting how the equitable Degrowth mindset can emerge, gained a lot of attention in 2024. I put it together after being inspired by an article that I had read about culture change in Microsoft in 2014. I recognised that the transition described from ‘Fixed Mindset’ to ‘Growth Mindset’ provided the missing link in the Degrowth mindset shift. I saw how affluent countries were unable to leave the comfort zone of permanently seeking GDP growth. At that time, all political leaders were still pursuing growth economics.

The USA had originally been admired for its Inflation Reduction Act. However, slowly people realised that every policy to accelerate the ‘green’ transition was simply escalating the ecological nosedive that we had triggered. A massive global greenwashing fest was underway; the final flourish of a pathetically unsustainable civilisation reliant on fossil fuels and advocating unrealistic desires to grow economy and population size. In reality, we were speeding up the rate of destruction of our ecosystems by investing in the ‘green’ transition without having any Degrowth aspirations.

Awareness had been steadily growing in Europe. In January 2024 the essay ‘Geopolitics of a Post-growth Europe’ recognised that ‘green growth’ was an illusion, and ‘in this context the Degrowth movement is gaining traction’. On the other-side of the Atlantic, the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome (CACOR) had delivered a series of helpful lectures in 2024. The talk on February 14 2024 suggested that GDP could usefully serve to measure the extent of ecological overshoot. This was a key proposal in my own science paper, which was still under peer-review at the time.

My Newsletter series of articles on LinkedIn raised awareness, by interpreting global issues holistically and highlighting the significance of human impact on ecosystems. Any significant research that was being published I would share widely. For example the excellent paper from Bill Rees et. al. about the behavioural crisis.

I would share the animation that introduced my paper on ecological justice with any new connections. I would explain that humanity was consuming 1.75 Earths, and the carrying capacity is only about 0.5 Earth. Therefore we needed to shrink the global economy by about 70% to get back within the carrying capacity of Earth. 70% ~ 100*(1.75–0.5)/1.75

My paper proposed a ‘UN Charter for Ecological Justice’ which offered a formal expression of a global aspiration to voluntarily return the global economy and population size back within the carrying capacity of Earth.

Rethinking Education

In the UK, Oxford University ran a series of lectures on Planetary Health in 2024. At one event where Kate Raworth explained the concept of doughnut economics I asked: “Why is our whole education system not focused on minimising consumption per capita and calling for a voluntary global birth strike? At the moment we are not in a position to offer a safe future to any new born.”

Kate and I subsequently worked together to inspire Oxford University to lead the way in a new style of education. The University became directly involved with local government. Both staff and students pushed their imaginations beyond the constraints of growth economics to identify ways to rapidly minimise consumption per capita and to encourage a global birth strike. The changes in the educational institutions were aided by the ideas emanating from the Royal Society of Arts Design For Life team. I had become a FRSA in 2022, after admiring a ten minute RSA animation in which Sir Ken Robinson explained the need for a paradigm shift in Education.

My paper: A Roadmap to Ecological Justice’, challenged the prevailing educational paradigm to embrace equitable Degrowth with regards to all the I=PAT drivers, namely population, affluence, and technology. In 2024, the ego-centric desires and ambitions of the people caught up in Capitalism, arose directly from the advertising used to drive GDP growth. The global subsistence farming community was about 2 billion, they lay outside this destructive loop, but everyone suffered from the damaging impact on Earth’s ecosystems that had resulted. The engine of coercive consumerism had promoted unsustainable global commerce for decades. It had led many people to genuinely believe that they could not be happy without the latest techno-gadget or fashion item; and many felt that they constantly needed to strive for a higher salary and more material possessions to be deemed ‘successful’.

My work challenged many of the misconceptions that prevailed in 2024. I talked about maximising mitigation in a peaceful and voluntary manner. I was encouraging a voluntary global birth strike to minimise our parental responsibilities, and to exclude our unborn from the escalating Malthusian meltdown. This idea resonated for many young adults with their growing climate and eco-anxiety. They wanted a habitable planet; they could see the need for the global community to find a peaceful route to equitably minimise consumption per capita. My work played a major role in public acceptance that overpopulation was just as much a problem as overconsumption.

In time, Oxford became a world hub sharing inter-global ideas on resolving the challenges of water scarcity, and arable land scarcity. The students adapted so much more quickly to the open-mindset than the entrenched staff, that the staff often learned more from the students than vice versa.

The RSA staff collaborated with the RSA Fellows to run envisioning sessions, using their connections and experience. These involved other organisations and institutions inspiring a new educational environment. In this manner, momentum gathered around the key principles for an equitable IPAT Degrowth society to emerge. The new concept of education was able to embrace any outside interaction that inspired its participants to develop and use their physical being and emotional temperament to focus on the collective good. The roles of pupil and teacher became interchangeable; depending on the focus, the more skilled and enthusiastic would lead the shared exploration for possibilities going forward.

Many of those involved in the early envisioning sessions went on to play leading roles in the Degrowth Community Hubs that subsequently emerged throughout the UK.

Rethinking the Judiciary

Marc Willers KC had rapidly grasped that my legal case criticising the UK government for pursuing ecocidal economics had merit. Using the scientific insights from I=PAT and the Jevons paradox it was clear that growing Gross Domestic Product was damaging to the environment. Cultural challenges, coupled with ignorance of these insights and ecological overshoot had been preventing humanity from facing up to this uncomfortable reality.

However, the Human Rights resolution 48/13 which recognizes that a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a human right was not binding. Rather than pursue the legal case, Marc and I agreed to collaborate and raise awareness about the need for equitable economic Degrowth. At the time the UK judicial system was swamped with a record backlog of 65,000 cases. The ecological cost of the judiciary was significant, and the civilisation that the judiciary was designed to protect needed a profound rethink. Many of these cases related to finance, or civil rights protests.

In the USA Donald Trump was making a mockery of legal services by standing as a nominee for President despite a string of law-suits against him. In Pakistan both the judiciary and the religious sharia law were used as a political tool to remove Imran Khan from the ballot paper in the 2024 election. My article about the situation in Pakistan was translated into Urdu, and consequently my ideas become well known on that continent. Judiciary was becoming a joke in the affluent world, for it simply served as a means to legalise an ecocidal society.

Much of the legal system was designed to perpetuate the injustices of the pyramid scheme that drives growth economics. People began to realise that derivatives were being used to conceal insecurity. The innocent belief expressed by young Nicholas Wales in his TED talk stating that Africa would become a superpower, revealed widespread naivety about the injustice of the global financial system. The people of Democratic Republic of Congo had long been subjected to violence by those seeking to gain control over the rich mineral deposits in their country. Many Africans protesting against the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) were killed or imprisoned for their attempts to avert the inevitable rape of their countries natural resources by the developed world. Colonialism was alive and well in 2024, much of Africa was still suffering from ruthless exploitation.

My barrister friend Marc Willers led the reform in the UK judiciary, whereby the back log of cases was rapidly culled to reflect only cases relevant in the emerging Degrowth economy. In this regard other countries learned from the example set in the UK.

A New Truth Emerges

In 2024 people were rapidly realising that we were trapped in an ecocidal model of economics. As the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, observed ‘All new truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.’ In early 2024 the two final stages that heralded the dawn of the global equitable Degrowth mindset were very evident on social media.

Equitable Degrowth Economy Averts World War III

Awareness that growth economics was ecocidal meant that the tragedy that was unfolding in Israel at that time, began to be recognised as a Malthusian moment. There was suspicion that Israel was aware of the planned attack and had allowed it to happen; because the Gaza strip was preventing the possibility of building the proposed Ben Gurion Canal. At the time, Israel operated at 17 times her biocapacity. The state of Israel and its disputed areas with the Palestinians had a total population of over 9.8 million, of which over 7 million were Jews. Thus 2.3 million Palestinians were crammed into the tiny Gaza Strip, which had not got the resources to support them.

The global focus on growing Gross Domestic Product had allowed this type of extreme ecological injustice to fester globally for decades between the techno-industrial civilisations that had been built upon the overuse of natural resources, and the 2 billion subsistence farmers that had a minimal consumption per capita and almost no reliance on money or technology. Affluent countries and oil producing Nations had been able to subsist and grow populations way above carrying-capacity at huge ecological cost to every life form on Earth. This abnormal phenomenon had been recognised as The Great Acceleration, and had precipitated the Sixth Mass Extinction. The scientist Bill Rees had campaigned tirelessly to challenge the behavioural crisis that was driving humanity into self-extinction.

In the same way that the United Nations had not challenged Israel’s decades of heavy-handed dominion over the Palestinian people, neither had they challenged the long-term global ecological overshoot arising from growth economics. The parallel between the Israeli conflict and long-term ecological injustice inflicted on the majority world by the affluent minority was stark. Jack Alpert was a Stanford scientist who had been trying to raise awareness to this reality for decades. His educational material began to be welcome, helping very entrenched minds to cut through the long-term denial and the myth that money could solve the problems that it had created.

Zionists were spread out within the Christian community as well as the Jewish community; so the vested interest in the Israeli conflict held a high profile in the media in the affluent global North. As part of the re-education exercise people learned that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict was just one in a long list of conflicts driven by the race for resources and power that were escalating rapidly throughout the world in 2023/4:

Russia versus Ukraine, may have been avoided if NATO had kept its promise to exclude Eastern Europe from its reach.
Within the Sahel countries Jihadis and other indigenous groups were fighting for power and control over shrinking resources; these conflicts were aggravated by Russian money laundering operations
Violent mercenaries in the Democratic Republic Of Congo fought for power over the rich mineral deposits, with no respect for the indigenous people’s lives.
Yemen was embroiled in civil war since 2023, and the Houthi were disrupting the trade routes in the Red Sea; this had triggered violent interventions from the USA and UK
Nigeria was succumbing to the climate crisis leaving the Boko Haram liable to resort to violence in resource disputes
Afghanistan was set to see more violence as they were at the front-line of climate change; their pronatalist culture meant that 840,000 pregnant women faced resource deprivations.
The May 2023 insurgency in Paraguay was still festering
War ravaged Syria was being further challenged by climate change.
Nagorno Karabakh in Azerbaijan was being starved of supplies by Armenia in 2023. This genocidal operation was happening under the radar of the mainstream media.
Ethiopia’s challenging droughts were channelling this area towards violent conflict over resources.
Many African countries were suffering from a combination of climate change and corrupt leadership, aggravated by a strongly pronatalist culture.

The equitable Degrowth mindset involved relinquishing the unhelpful desire to fight to control resources. It involved accepting that NATO was actually nurturing war rather than suppressing the likelihood of violence. There is no such thing as a ‘defence army’ to protect against climate breakdown and ecosystems collapse. Donald Trump’s rhetoric helped to open eyes, when he suggested that he would encourage Russia to invade NATO allies if they failed to pay their dues. The reality that all military operations are injurious to ecosystems was dawning in many minds. Nature could not afford the injuries of war whilst Earth was already in such severe overshoot from the activities of its human population.

Thus in 2024, World War III was looming large, with diminishing natural resources and unwise desire for power and domination. The United Nations demographic predictions team adopted the principles underlying the World 4.5 demographic model, and the UN published forecasts of imminent global population collapse through increased mortality rates in September 2024.

In October 2024 the UK election resulted in a hung parliament. After this, the government declared an emergency cross-party government. The UK Parliament voted on this approach almost unanimously. Although the UK were no longer in Europe, they were aware of the post-growth movement that had been building in the European continent.

Soon after the UK government announcement in October 2024, volunteers from the RSA, the BBC, various NGOs and UK Universities were involved in developing and piloting an adult re-education exercise to assist the general public in the mindset transition from growth economics to global equitable Degrowth. Key features of the new economy that they were preparing, involved the introduction of a new global currency, and the delivery of Universal Basic Provision.

The UK government teamed up with the Portuguese government and German government to submit the UN Charter for Ecological Justice to the UN General Assembly for ratification. The discussions that this fuelled, were key to altering perspectives globally. The ‘Roadmap to Ecological Justice’ had finally been published in August 2024, the concept and the wording for the Charter originated from that paper.

Global Currency and Universal Basic Provision

Leading financiers in the UK advised the government how to introduce a global currency to serve the equitable Degrowth economy and the Universal Basic Provision program that had been proposed. The GBP pound was not abandoned; the transition to the global currency was gradual. The new currency was named Amata and its symbol was a heart-shape with a line crossed through. It symbolised the many heart-breaking realisations that necessarily accompanied the painful mindset shift from growth economics to equitable Degrowth. Affluent people worldwide grew ashamed of the way that they had wantonly wasted ecological resources during the Great Acceleration.

By the time the emergency UK government was declared in October 2024, the UK local government authorities had been forewarned. Educational programs had been prepared to explain to the public how the voluntary transition to the new Degrowth economy would be achieved. Much of the media had also been laying the groundwork, and a great deal of public consultation and discussion was well underway.

The program for Universal Basic Provision defused many anxieties. When the time came, it was this program that enabled the Degrowth economy to usurp the growth economy. Universal Basic Provision was available to any Community Hub that applied to participate in the emerging equitable Degrowth economy. A Community Degrowth Hub usually had a population size between 100–5000, and could operate in any country that agreed to facilitate the emerging Degrowth economy and the UBP program. Dismantling, disarming, and reallocating military operations and resources was a pre-requisite for participant countries. The acute awareness of the threat of climate breakdown and ecosystems collapse to all of life on Earth served to defuse the desire to fight over resources and power. There was clearly no hope to pull out of the ecological nosedive that was accelerating so rapidly, unless everyone collaborated peacefully,.

Degrowth Communal Hubs were self-organised groups that had chosen to commit to the emerging Degrowth economy. Any individual that joined a Hub would agree to make their resources and skills available to the Hub. If a person had a job within the growth economy that did not align with Degrowth objectives they could claim UBP from the global pool to enable them to cease that work. During the early stages of the transition, many chose to participate in a Degrowth Hub, whilst continuing in their old jobs until they understood more clearly, and had seen friends enjoying the exciting jobs that involved rethinking priorities so profoundly in every aspects of our lives. When this happened, their income was in the new Amata currency, which meant that finance was gradually funnelled out of the growth economy into the new Degrowth economy. In this way the old growth economy financed the Degrowth economy during its early stages.

Retail organisations often established themselves as a Degrowth hub, and the staff worked together with their customers to imagine a retail model that minimised consumption and ecological impact. Ecological footprint calculations are notoriously complex; people with suitable aptitude were very highly valued for their ability to analyse supply chains comprehensively and accurately; Artificial Intelligence offered a rapid way forward in this field of science. Very often it was not clear which behaviour would minimise impact. This did not apply to the encouragement to minimise family size and keep birth rates well below replacement level. For obvious reasons, a smaller population would require a smaller quota of UBP.

Financial profit was no longer an objective. Organisations that aligned themselves with the Degrowth objectives evolved in consultation with their customers as they all asked themselves ‘What is essential for collective wellbeing?’. Lifestyles became far more sociable, carefree, and relaxed. Others, still trapped in growth economics, saw that the pioneers were enjoying the novelty of communal spirit and purpose, and soon opted to leave their eco-costly jobs to claim UBP and then took some time to assess their personal skills and temperament to identify a full-time purpose that they would enjoy that helped the operations within their Degrowth hub.

The USA lagged behind, they were more entrenched, and their mindset was orientated towards using force to assert power over others. The 2024 USA election atmosphere was increasingly ugly. They endured a year of civil unrest as people demanded to join the Degrowth movement that was happening in Europe. Eventually they disarmed and repurposed their enormous military investments in 2025. The Russians came on board with the Degrowth objectives in late 2024. China welcomed an opportunity to take a dignified route out of their worries about a falling population. They soon became a helpful example of local cooperation and initiative. The Degrowth movement in the West learned a great deal from the collective methods of working in China.

Where appropriate, Degrowth Hubs would endeavour to ease work away from the government funded institutions. Law, health, education, and social care were all decentralised and scaled down significantly. Military resources were repurposed onto peaceful objectives. With regards to law, the Hub participants were allowed to determine how they wished to deal with anti-social behaviour in non-violent ways; usually the threat of expulsion from the Hub was adequate to see changed behaviour. Expulsion simply meant that a person was no longer entitled to UBP from that Hub, nor were they involved in that communities Degrowth efforts any more. Software applications were available for voting purposes, and many Hubs employed these to use a fully democratic approach when choosing their path. Some larger communities explored the ideas in the book Rescuing Democracy.

Old laws relating to protection of property and employment rights were simply not relevant in the Degrowth context, because UPB was available to anyone who was not employed, and property was shared and deployed according to the decisions in the collective. As populations shrank voluntarily, properties became increasingly readily available. House swapping mechanisms replaced house purchasing. There was no new build, only repurposing existing properties. In the UK, some opportunities arose to reinstate the railway branch-lines that had been axed by Beeching.

The Hubs endeavoured to become self-sufficient and to shrink their population size through a voluntary birth strike. The maximum amount of UBP to which a Hub was collectively entitled was fixed according to their population size at the outset. It would not go up if their population increased. The UBP entitlement was renegotiated annually, with global awards for communities that had achieved significant reduction in their footprint per capita and population size. As Degrowth communities shrank below a viable size they would sometimes relocate and take their experience and wisdom into another Degrowth Hub.

Goods and services that were made available under UBP covered food, water, shelter, public transport, energy for heating, air-conditioning, and cooking. The UBP health care provisions focused on quality of life rather than length of life and the family planning services included abortion and sterilisations on request. Help-to-die became available gradually on request from different countries. Fossil-fuelled private transport was not available under UBP. Cars running on renewable energy played a role within the public transport that served remote communities, but they were shared within communities.

Some technologies were included under UBP. These varied depending on the type of community and whether they had a particular Hub purpose in the global context, rather than simply Degrowth, subsistence, and wellbeing. Commercial enterprises like Tesla, Google, and Zoom were examples of Communal Hubs that adopted a specific role in the global Degrowth economy, facilitating the logistics of UBP throughout the world in remote places by providing helpful technologies and software. Hubs like these were granted an extra ecological resource allowance because of the global service that they provided.

The objective of most Degrowth Hubs was to try and subsist and maintain good physical and mental health solely within their UBP allowance. If there were agricultural and renewable energy sources within their Hub’s collective resources they would try to avoid the need for the food and water from the UBP, and instead try to supply food for urban communities that did not have the means to grow food. This objective was usually fully achieved when all their community had successfully migrated away from work that was ecologically damaging or dependant on fossil fuels.

The need for global online communication to coordinate global efforts remained. This meant that there would always be a significant ecological overhead to facilitate the global interaction and consultation. The benefits of international collaboration were considered adequate justification for this overhead.

The UK government invited all other countries to consider migrating into the new equitable Degrowth economy. It did not take long before many African countries saw the benefits of UPB. They managed to rise above their very entrenched pronatalist cultures, a combination of climate change and overpopulation was hitting them harshly by this time.

Technology Tamed

Human reliance on technology diminished as the global priority for eco-restoration was embraced. Minimal technology solutions like the Pakistan Water for All (PKSL) project, were shared and copied. Manual processes replaced the many eco-costly automations that had been introduced by 2024. Technology and Artificial Intelligence did play a key role in enabling peaceful collaboration and reparations to span the world; but the belief that we would achieve a post-labour world through AI had simply not factored in the ecological implications about which I=PAT had warned us.

Global Community Twinning

Communities that were thousands of miles apart, bonded. They shared their anxieties, experiences and resources. This included human resources, for many of the younger adults travelled between the bonded communities to establish and facilitate the logistics in these symbiotic arrangements.

Minimal Travel and Internal Migration Patterns

By 2030 global travel was limited to that which was collectively agreed to be essential for the Degrowth objectives to minimise global consumption per capita equitably. As the global birth strike eased the pressure on accommodation, the colder countries adopted a winter migration pattern. Big hotels in cities and the unused areas in the airports were repurposed as winter-fun locations. The airport hotels were packed at these times. Communal heating and cooking massively reduced the collective energy needs, and the insulation requirements for the population’s summer residences. The migration to communal accommodation in the winter-time opened the door to communal entertainment. The huge areas in hotel atriums, and airport waiting and transfer areas, provided space for dancing and singing with a phenomenal level of participation and fun.

The more adventurous often chose to embrace a nomadic lifestyle after the introduction of Universal Basic Provision. It was easy to transfer a personal UBP quota from one Hub to another; this was how a nomadic, or adventurous lifestyle was readily accommodated within the emerging equitable Degrowth economy.

Emergence of Interconnectedness

As a worldview emerged that favoured equitable Degrowth economics, people began to realise that they were not a separate person piece in the jigsaw puzzle of Life. They saw how they were connected to the whole Universe. They grasped that they had a responsibility to help to sustain the whole web of life. Jat Sahi was another FRSA who had invested his spare time and money to produce the Know What You Really Are video series. Jat’s work helped many people to relearn the worldview that they had lost through the pedagogy that Sir Ken Robinson had criticised so insightfully.

To become a FRSA you need someone to vouch for your value as an impact maker. My mysterious friend James C Morrow had written the reference in order for me to become a Fellow. I never met James in person; we only communicated by email. James was my muse, like an eminence grise. I would not be writing this story today without the strength of his emotional support in the challenging early years of my activism from 2019–24.

Another FRSA who played a significant role in challenging financial injustice. This was Andy Agathangelou; Andy had founded the Transparency Task Force, and anyone who has met Andy knows how genuinely and deeply motivated he was by the many injustices that he was revealing within the UK financial system up until 2024. Andy played a key role with his emotional and engaging style of presenting powerful new perspectives.

Andy Haldane, the CEO of the RSA, enabled the entrenched senior management within the RSA to extricate themselves from the mindset of growth economics. The role played by the RSA Design for Life project paved the way to inspire a metamorphosis in numerous other organisations.

Jeremy Corbyn’s criticisms of Israel were fully vindicated. People rapidly began to recognise that criticising the actions of the Israeli military was not the same as antisemitism. Corbyn was a powerful influencer in the early days of the transition to the Degrowth economy.

A similar transition of mindset occurred with regards to the overpopulation issue. People began to realise that admitting that Earth was overpopulated was not the same as suggesting that we should indulge in eugenics. As the transition to the Degrowth mindset progressed, people rapidly recognised the appalling process of eugenics that humanity had tragically been inflicting on other life forms.

Momentum Building During Early 2024

It was a breath of fresh air when I met Rachel Melinek, the founder of the Broadchurch podcast. Rachel was thoughtful and open-minded; she introduced me to the asexual spectrum and categorised herself as most likely demisexual. Part of my own work was intended to challenge the constraints that society applied to to sexual experimentation; my early ideas were elaborated in my Shades of Grey article. Although not many people listened to the interview that Rachel and I recorded in December 2023, it served as a useful learning curve for us both from our different perspectives. Rachel went on to play an important role in the re-education exercise that was essential for the shift to Degrowth economics.

Within the RSA during that period, the young staff steering the RSA ‘Design for Life’ project were gradually persuaded that humanity was indeed behaving in a very unwise manner by pursuing growth economics. There patient perseverance resulted in many different educational techniques that helped to break through the denial and delusion that still prevailed in 2024.

To go global, the RSA had to recognise the need for reparation to countries whose ecosystems had been injured through global commerce. In many African countries the detrimental changes to their climate had turned gentle seasonal rains into ferociously destructive storms. Populations were being displaced after their mud-built houses were washed away. The fertile topsoil from farms frequently got washed away in these deluges, making agriculture increasingly challenging. The delineation between the habitat for hippo became blurred after these floods. Increasingly, human injuries and fatalities arose from hippo as these admirable animals tried to assert themselves in areas where they would never have ventured before.

Global commerce had resulted in growing luxury goods like coffee and chocolate, this had diminished local biodiversity. Consistent with the ‘A’ in I=PAT, the income achieved by the more business orientated indigenous population resulted in further ecosystems damage. Business acumen without any understanding of ecological overshoot and overpopulation had combined dangerously with pronatalism for decades.

In many countries in 2024 family size was seen as an indication of achievement, status and wealth. This resulted in huge families, especially in polygamous societies where commerce and subsistence farming combined to some extent. There were also some extreme examples of the pronatalist mindset within the developed world. The overturning of the abortion laws in the USA arose from business acumen combined with decades of denial regarding the IPAT insights and the data about ecological overshoot.

Elon Musk was an influential example of a successful businessman who had been ecologically ignorant. He was one of the first billionaires to concede that he had been offering unwise advice in this regard. His concern for his own children, and the humility that he showed with this admission, finally triggered the landslide of altered attitudes in the USA.

The 2024 RSA Design for Life awards program stressed the need to reduce our impact on our environment; with the aim to eliminate ecological overshoot. That opened up the important debate about ‘What is essential for a fulfilled human life?’. This debate initiated an emotionally mature and global discussion about child-rearing and help-to-die. Parental responsibilities made huge demands on time and energy. People soon recognised that a voluntary global birth strike would free up a great deal of human resources, and relieve environmental pressure. Once this manpower was combined with the equitable Degrowth mindset, it enabled humanity to seriously address the societal restructuring needed to reduce our global ecological impact.

The health and social care services in developed countries were accruing huge ecological and emotional costs in 2024. Chapters 7, 8, and 10, in the book that I published in 2021, challenged three different aspects of health and social care at that time. At that time, in financial terms, the USA was seen as the ‘richest’ country, but in terms of mental health, it was one of the most impoverished. Money was certainly not buying them happiness. I had written an article explaining how monetary value was an illusion that could disappear overnight in a financial crash.

The Role of the RSA Design for Life Project

At my suggestion, the RSA engaged Oumar Zombre to represent the voice of the global South within the Design for Life project. Oumar Zombre was a journalist from Burkina Faso in West Africa. He had seen first-hand and reported on the violence in that part of the world. He had ideas about how to address climate change in Burkina Faso by drilling wells to tap into the underground aquifers. He had won a competition for a fellowship at the Reuters Institute, so in early 2024 he was in England in Oxford. Oumar’s student visa was due to expire at the end of March 2024; he knew that his life would be in danger if he returned home at that time. The Russian influence in West Africa meant that Oumar had taken a big risk by accepting the fellowship at the Reuters Institute in Oxford University.

Oumar and I had met when watching an interview with the climatologist Friederike Otto. Oumar had asked an excellent question at 46:23: “How can I persuade my African audience that climate change is real, when the developed world continues with lifestyles dependant on overconsumption?”. Coincidently, I was invited to put my own question immediately after Oumar. I complemented Oumar on his question, and asked my own: “Why does our media not challenge the ecocidal model of economics that is pursued?”.

Frederike Otto did not really answer either of our two questions; however towards the end at 1:05:50 she made the very helpful remark “But I think there’s also, when we talk about mitigation, in the media and the public, politicians, it’s usually some dreams about future technologies and CCS and I think journalists really need to challenge that and say the science is very clear, this is ridiculously expensive, it will never be available at the scales we need”. It was good to hear a scientist confirm truth presented in the hilarious spoof from Australia: ‘Honest Government Ad’ about carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Oumar’s appointment at the RSA played a key role. He remained in Oxford as my lodger. Together we started a series of RSA Climate Conversation in the outlying villages and in Oxford itself. This exercise served as a model for the RSA Design for Life program. I had moved house in 2024 to raise money for my work and to be closer to my photographer friend David Edwardson. David had recorded much of my activism on camera ever since I had started campaigning and writing about economic Degrowth. It was he that kept me abreast of mainstream news. I had become so busy writing that I had very little time to read. He also critically assessed the appeal of my envisioning and writing; he was very hot on punctuation, which made my work much more readable!

The other young man that was engaged by the RSA during 2024 was Jack Mazingira/Omullu. ‘Mazingira’ is a nickname, it means ‘environment’ in Swahili, his real surname is Omullu. In early 2024 Jack was in his final term of a Master’s at Kenyatta University. He was researching the impact of climate change on local communities. We had worked together for about three years by then. Jack was entirely reliant on me both to subsist and to pay his University fees, and to fund most of his teaching activities. You can learn about the nature of our relationship from this zoom chat after Jack attended the Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi 2023.

After his appointment, Jack led an RSA ‘Design for Life’ pilot scheme in Kenya connecting Kenyan communities with British communities in a mutual learning curve where both sides considered how best to achieve Degrowth objectives. His public decision to have a vasectomy despite being childless was hugely influential in Kenya. By then he was very well-known and admired for his work.

After the foundations of the equitable Degrowth economy had been laid by Rishi Sunak with his announcement of a cross-party emergency government in October 2024, both Jack’s work in Kenya and the work that Oumar and I achieved in the UK were rapidly copied elsewhere. Oumar finally got the opportunity to return to his country of origin after Putin was overthrown. At that point both Russia and Burkina Faso embraced the burgeoning Degrowth economy. Oumar then got the chance to lead the well-drilling projects that he had first mentioned to me in 2024.

Help-to-die and the Right to Commit Suicide

I always regarded to the mindset shift to equitable Degrowth an ‘emotional evolution’. Frequently, during the five years that I focused on paradigm shifting, 2019–2024 I would antagonise my audience by demanding the ‘right to die’. I would frequently claim that I would be willing to die if I felt it would improve the chances of survival for humanity. At other times I would say that I wanted to die to escape from the horror of watching humanity destroy all of life on Earth. In my book I refer to an army of ‘senior soldiers’ when I discuss the contentious topic of ‘help-to-die’ and a person’s ‘right to take their own life’.

2030

Attitudes to death became philosophical and accepting. Death was recognised as an essential part of Earth’s life cycle. Many voluntarily shortened their lives as senior soldiers, and their children were immensely grateful and honoured their memory. Suicide pills were readily available, and they allowed people to peacefully take their own lives without the involvement of anyone else. I departed together with a friend in 2030, a lady who had told me at the start of my Degrowth journey ‘insanity is a minority of one’. By 2030 I had seen enough to feel fully confident that humanity was on track in the direction of equitable Degrowth, but I could see the huge challenges that the youngsters faced to keep the local Hub supplied with Universal Basic Provision. I was 74 years old.

2050

By 2050 humanity had already returned within the carrying-capacity of Earth a decade previously. Despite the introduction of the equitable Degrowth economy in early 2025, the casualties between 2025–2050 were huge. Average human life-expectancy had shrunk to 40 years. There were massive losses in human populations; and many magnificent animals like the African elephant, the pangolin, and the giraffe became extinct. With keystone species like the African elephant gone, diverse ecosystems rapidly collapsed. Throughout this ecological carnage, somehow the global human community persisted with its new peaceful resolve. Guided by a collective focus on global collaboration to achieve equitable economic Degrowth, with the collective aim to return within the carrying capacity of Earth.

In 2050 the global temperatures were stabilising, new climate patterns were emerging at 2.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Many major cities had been abandoned due to sea-level rise. The polar ice-caps were ice-free all year. The voluntary birth strike and the high mortality rate had reduced the global population size to 2 billion by that time. There was surplus built accommodation for the survivors in the Northern hemisphere.

Humanity had been truly humbled, but not entirely crushed. The symbol for the Amata currency was altered to reflect the much broader concept of love that had emerged through the Degrowth economy. A love that embraced all unselfish and symbiotic life forms. The new symbol looked like a three petal flower. The change was intended to demark that the damaging lesson from the past addiction to growth economics had been learned. It signified the culmination of humanity’s most painful evolutionary phase, from irresponsible adolescence into maturity.

Afterword

In some ways I have never felt more alive than during my career as a paradigm shifter. Although I had enjoyed a very rewarding and empowering marriage, my career, although challenging and enjoyable to a large extent, did not fit the concept of Ikigai.

My husband had accepted my decision not to have children before we married. He taught me many skills that I did not have before I met him. With many of these I never became as skilled as he was, but he showed me a glimpse of a way forward for me to develop, for example a) how to love unselfishly, b) how to listen to others, c) common sense, d) how to mix concrete and do joinery, e) how to maintain a home, f) how to build emotional resilience in yourself and others, g) how to cook, h) diplomacy.

My earlier life with my husband contributed enormously to my ability to be a powerful paradigm shifter in the years through 2019–2024. The fact that I benefited financially from my husband’s hard-work throughout his life served to empower my Degrowth work with Jack Mazingira and other friends in Malawi.

My husband’s death was a journey that we travelled together. His courage facing his own death, and his concern for whether I would cope after losing him, took a powerful hold in me. After he died, I no longer had any fear of my own death. In fact, I had very few fears at all until in 2019 I learned about I=PAT and ecological overshoot.

I had not come across either of these scientific concepts before in my life. These insights triggered an instant realisation that humanity were in trouble. Many of my friends did not share my anxiety, or my understanding, or my interest in finding a wiser way forward, so at that point my eco-anxiety spiralled rapidly upwards. Since then, my journey has been a steep learning curve. I have learned to channel my fears into writing that steers others towards greater awareness and open-mindedness. I am constantly evolving my communication skills in a bid to raise awareness that might prove adequate to steer humanity into a wiser direction.

I had always wanted to be a writer. Fiction sustained me throughout my younger life, anaesthetising my adolescent concerns for the environment. Nowadays, I sense that my wordsmith skills are powerful. However, I do not have the skills that fictional writers possess. Therefore, I am only able to look at our possible future through my scientific insights. In this story I have described what my scientific understanding considers to be the most peaceful possible outcome that my work could achieve. My thinking is grounded firmly in humanity’s collective reality. At least, as far as my grasp of the relevant science in 2024 extends. Taking this pragmatic perspective, then if humanity are to survive as a species, we urgently need the equitable IPAT Degrowth concept which lies at the heart of this story to be pursued in earnest.

Everyone who has interacted with me during my four year journey as a writer-activist has contributed to honing my skills as a paradigm shifter and a writer. I learned as much from those who did not wish to listen, as I did from those precious few in the early years who listened and assisted in countless different ways. A special thank you goes to my friend Mary from Abingdon, for all the hours of interaction when she helped me to hone my ideas. At the outset she teased me thus: ‘Madness is a minority of one’.

The term Ikigai seems to satisfactorily describe the level of pleasure that my work affords me at this stage. Although I am only recently past the point of raging and gnashing my teeth. Writing this story has been both therapeutic and helpful. It has helped to me to see more clearly how humanity might avoid extinction this century. I believe that many will find their own Ikigai if they get involved within the emergent Degrowth mindset. It will enable them to feel the same level of essential completeness and interconnectedness with the rest of the Universe.

Ikigai: a Japanese concept that means “a reason for being”. It is the intersection of what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.

My friend from Pakistan tells me that the word Junoon describes my level of passion for my work.

I hope that you enjoyed the story, and can see the possibilities going forward. I hope that you will begin to identify your own role emerging as part of humanity’s collective purpose to perpetuate and support Nature’s ecosystems on Earth. I hope that you will soon experience an Ikigai moment, and the power that it offers going forwards.