Lourenço Bustani & Marcelo Gleiser
In May 2023, at the European Parliament headquarters, a French economist by the name of Timothée Parrique delivered a short but poignant speech claiming that the aspiration to “produce more while polluting less” — the fundamental premise behind “green growth” — is nothing short of a fairy tale. In his ten minute speech, Parrique exposed the major blind spot contained in the paradigm espoused by a large part of the mainstream governmental and business elite, as well as Silicon Valley technocrats, all of whom ironically believe that the problems caused by too much growth can be solved with more growth.
The paradigm in question is called “decoupling”, which suggests that economic activity can be miraculously untethered from its ecological implications.
Critiquing this paradigm, Parrique pointed out that in order for green growth to be, in fact, sustainable, five preconditions need to be present concomitantly: (1) decoupling of production and consumption needs to occur in absolute, not relative terms (in other words, the economy grows while the amount of resource use and/or environmental impact decreases), otherwise the total footprint continues to rise; (2) decoupling must come from all environmental pressures (not just carbon), (3) decoupling must happen everywhere, whether on national territory or abroad, (4) decoupling must occur at a pace that is sufficiently fast to avoid ecological collapse and (5) decoupling must be maintained over time.
Parrique then does what green growth advocates often fail to do: he turns to science to point out that these five preconditions have never been achieved anywhere on Earth.
On this basis, if we accept that green growth, however well-intentioned, might be contributing to global warming rather than helping to mitigate it, we might then consider a more feasible theory of change, namely that the only way to stop ecological overshoot and avoid apocalyptic tipping points is to actually stop growing. The notion of “degrowth”, despite being among the most misunderstood win-win propositions of our generation, follows a simple, equity-based logic: downscale certain economies temporarily and free up biocapacity until decent living standards are ensured for everyone, everywhere. Precisely because the world’s biocapacity is accounted for globally, the rationale follows that the Global North ought to place constraints on its production and consumption in order to give lower income economies of the Global South a fair share of ecological margin to build their productive capacities in order to serve their people’s most basic unmet needs. A steady-state would eventually be reached, around which all countries could hover, in tandem with the natural fluctuations of the Earth’s biocapacity.
Parrique calls this a “macroeconomic diet for biophysically obese economies” whose ultimate goal is to decouple well-being from environmental pressures, not GDP from carbon.
In short, a good life for all within planetary boundaries is only attainable if rich countries abandon unconditional economic growth as a policy objective. As Indian author and activist Ashish Kothari reminds us, “abundance exists but it requires us to share in community.”
Contrary to what those who equate growth with human welfare think, degrowth does not represent a qualitative regression in welfare. In fact, the case for degrowth is strengthened by recent data that shows that GDP growth and human welfare don’t always correlate, and that by scaling back, our economies can actually improve overall quality of life. A study published by Nature in October 2023 shows that 21 of the 27 countries that outperform the United States in the non-income Human Development Index (HDI) do so despite having comparatively lower GDP per capita. This implies that there is a portion of the United States’ production and consumption that is “wasted”, stressing environmental systems without contributing to human development (or indeed undermining it). This outcome is consistent with Manfred Max-Neef’s “Threshold Hypothesis” which states that “for every society there seems to be a period in which economic growth (as conventionally measured) brings about an improvement in the quality of life, but only up to a point — the threshold point — beyond which, if there is more economic growth, quality of life may begin to deteriorate.” The Nature study further shows that countries can improve welfare from current levels even in steady-state/degrowth scenarios if economic downscaling is combined with “much more equal sharing, frugality, and efficiency”, what economist and author Tim Jackson refers to as “prosperity without growth”. In fact, decentering growth allows for a profound paradigm shift that accommodates shorter work weeks, a reduction in unemployment, fairer distribution of wealth and income, universal healthcare and education, as well as affordable housing — the basic elements of what anthropologist Jason Hickel describes as a “flourishing society.”
So why does the notion of “not growing” cause so much anxiety for so many people? If we look at the institutional frameworks that are supposedly transitioning us away from ecocide and social destitution, it is blatantly clear that continued growth remains a deeply ingrained, albeit misplaced, assumption.
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, for example, which form the basis of our global policy agenda, paradoxically call for continued economic growth and ecological sustainability (SDG 8). The Paris Agreement, heralded for its unprecedented response to climate change via the 1.5℃ degree limit to global warming, simultaneously promotes economic growth. In Silicon Valley, the tireless pursuit of scale by the kings of tech constitutes the very core of their techno-triumphalist playbooks. And growth has always been music to the ears of capital markets. One will never hear a CEO not promise growth to shareholders — without losing his/her seat soon thereafter.
But in reality, endless growth is a systemic delusion at the core of our ecological illiteracy. It turns a blind eye to science in service of a false narrative of self-preservation and progress.
This is despite the fact that evidence of the limits to growth has been publicly available for close to fifty years, ever since Donella Meadows and her husband published seminal research on the topic at MIT in 1972, based on a computer-simulated world model that predicted ecological overshoot and collapse based on resource use and population growth trends. More recently, in 2009, the work of Johan Rockström at the Stockholm Resilience Centre introduced a framework for understanding the nine planetary systems that sustain Life on Earth, their boundaries and tipping points, beyond which collapse becomes inevitable, irreversible and unpredictable. British economist and Oxford Professor Kate Raworth has since been using this framework to propose alternative development models that meet the needs of all people within the means of the living planet, through her work at the Doughnut Economics Action Lab.
Still, our addiction to growth persists and, as a result, we have fallen seriously ill as a society. There is no possible existential sense of fulfillment when one is always pursuing and expecting more and more. The natural world does not grow infinitely — all living systems self-regulate to ensure their sustainability and respect the interdependence of the wider ecosystem. The oak tree will not grow more than its roots can support, and will not grow so much that the species below its canopy are compromised by its shade. It is time we followed this example, failing which “pathology cannot but ensue”, as noted by the Hungarian-Canadian author and trauma specialist, Gabor Maté.
While we support the logic of degrowth, we are realistic and do not necessarily believe that there is enough societal willpower to rally behind it. Degrowth is what we ought to strive for, but as a species we are probably incapable of achieving it at scale, unless we undergo a profound shift in our moral choices, a point explored in a recent book by one of us. Degrowth is incompatible with capitalism as we know it and requires a degree of social transformation and radical reorientation of the economy that is extraordinarily difficult to achieve, particularly over the fast elapsing time left to avoid further collapse of the multiple systems that keep us alive and well.
In fact, for many if not most, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of the capitalist system in which we operate.
Recognizing that modern society’s love affair with growth is here to stay, we have no choice but to realize that overshoot is inevitably moving us closer to some degree of irreversible collapse, as exemplified by Nature’s recent cover story forecasting the very real potential of partial or total collapse of the Amazon Rainforest starting as early as 2050. If one believes the science that tells us that we must degrow to survive, one must also believe the science that tells us what might happen if we don’t. For this reason, collapse awareness is now becoming the fundamental basis for what British researcher and academic Jem Bendell refers to as the “deep adaptation” necessary to navigate whatever way of life emerges after this one expires.
Challenging the notion of endless growth might be the most subversive act. It provides a counterpoint to the dopamine-filled hits of growth projections that country Presidents and business CEOs periodically offer their constituents and stakeholders in order to legitimize — and consolidate — power. Degrowth at once addresses the oversized elephant in the room and debunks the primordial assumption driving modern society. Embracing degrowth is a daunting task but an urgent one. But whether or not one does, the growing onslaught of climate-related disasters is already proving E.F Schumacher’s 1973 prophecy that small(er) can indeed be beautiful.
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Lourenço Bustani is co-founder of global consultancy Mandalah, which has been infusing purpose into business since 2006, Board member at Sistema B Brasil, President of the Board of Instituto Phaneros and Global Ambassador of Island of Knowledge.
Marcelo Gleiser is a physics, philosophy and astronomy professor at Dartmouth College, co-founder of Island of Knowledge and the 2019 Templeton Prize laureate, an honor he shares with the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the scientist Freeman Dyson.
