Ecological Overshoot
As a recent paper in Nature Sustainability stressed:
“a growing consensus within some scientific communities that the Earth is rapidly destabilizing through ‘cascades of collapse’. Some even speculate on ‘end-of-world’ scenarios involving transgressing planetary boundaries (climate, freshwater and ocean acidification), accelerating reinforcing (positive) feedback mechanisms and multiplicative stresses.”
A “polycrisis” indeed, brought about to a large degree by human economic activity overshooting Earth System Boundaries (ESB). Its is estimated that “seven of eight” global ESBs have already been exceeded.
One response to this ecological overshoot has been proposed by the Degrowth Movement. In this rest of this article I will critically examine its core tenets.
“Time to De-Develop the West”
The Degrowth Movement is a “marginal left-wing” movement consisting of a few scholars in high-income countries who want economies to stop growing and reduce economic output and throughput, incomes, and consumption.
It demands an end to economic growth and what they claim is the West’s “obsession” with growth; and moreover, a reduction in overall GDP — in Jason Hickel, a champion of the Degrowth Movement’s words, it is time to “de-develop” the West.
De-developing the West is considered essential to stop the ecological overshoot. The material footprint of our economic activity cannot, in their narrative, be supported by the limited resources available. If we do not stop this excessive demand for materials and the accompanying carbon emissions, the outcomes will be an ecological disaster, posing an existential risk. A “Ghastly Future” awaits us.
Bloodletting
The Degrowth Movement’s identification of the problem is largely accurate, being based on the scientific literature. While it diagnoses a relevant illness, it is however the medicine that it prescribes that causes concern. Its “medicine” for the “disease” of ecological overshoot is akin to the old practice of bloodletting. For centuries, the world’s doctors and religious leaders believed fervently in, and advocated that the ill be bled. It was a medical practice that tended to make the patient worse off, rather than being a cure. George Washington’s death in 1799 was apparently hastened by having had five pints of his blood drained. There is a term for well-intentioned medicine causing more harm than good: Iatrogenics.
Degrowth as Iatrogenics
Why would de-developing the West and stopping its economic growth worsen the ecological crisis?
Degrowth may turn out to be dirty
Degrowth as proposed would be wholly ineffective to prevent an ecological disaster. This is because most of the growth in carbon emissions, and most of the future growth in material use, comes from developing countries. Even some of the largest fossil fuel companies are in countries in the Global South — such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia and of course China — countries to whom the degrowth prescription does not apply. The only way to address the climate crisis is through global cooperation. China is building the equivalent of two new coal-fired power plant every week: even if the West degrows its economy by a massive 20%, it will not make a significant reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions to achieve the world’s climate goals.
The response to this conundrum from local supporters of Degrowth is that the West should still do it because it is the right thing to do. And, moreover, the West is rich enough to be able to do it — its citizens can do in fact with less material goods, it is argued. And even furthermore, it is claimed that the West can be a role model, a leader, for the rest in the world on how to move “beyond” growth to a degrowth and post-growth future.
A problem with this kind of reasoning is, apart from the fact that the rest of the world are not taking well any more to being prescribed by the West, is that it may not be the right thing to do. It may make the ecological crisis worse. Intentions are not the only way in which actions should ethically be evaluated. Consequences are also important.
The consequence of a degrowing West could be less resources for investment in clean technology, for making the energy transition, for making the demographic transition (including absorbing migrants) and for contributing to the West’s military security in a geo-politically hostile world.
Furthermore, low income households in rich countries will revert to deforestation and environmental destruction as they did during the past winter in Europe when faced with rising energy prices. Degrowth in Global North will also severely curtail development in the Global South because of the intertwined nature of the global economy.
Ultimately, low-income households will pay the price — not the rich. According to the director of the Center for Green Growth at the BI Norwegian Business School, “The degrowth people are living a fantasy where they assume that if you bake a smaller cake, then for some reason, the poorest will get a bigger share of it [….] that has never happened in history.”
Indeed, it has been suggested that herein lies a paradox of degrowth in that “its proponents may want to overthrow capitalism, but their ideology is actually empowering the globalist capitalist elites they claim to be fighting.”
Indeed, as economist Jeroen van den Bergh concluded, “Degrowth might turn out to be dirty.”
Degrowth raises the spectre of zero-sum conflicts
In a degrowth-situation society would become a zero-sum society. We know how zero-sum societies play out: greater inequality, greater political and other forms of conflict, adverse coping behaviors, and greater polarization. The Degrowth Movement itself is a reaction against degrowing, stagnating, western economies.
Features of sero-sum conflicts are already visible in the UK following the de factor implementation of degrowth proposals. A recent commentary of the outcome of more than a decade of degrowth in the UK concluded that
“The economy seems to be doing an even less satisfactory job at meeting people’s needs, with stagnant wage growth and housing dramatically less affordable. And the cultural climate of the UK has developed in ways that degrowth advocates generally dislike, from a rise in anti-immigration politics to the virulence of the so-called culture Wars.”
Degrowth has no realistic chance of being remotely acceptable politically. The Netherlands just experienced the consequences of attempting to degrow even a single sector (agriculture). Trying to reduce the output of agriculture to limits its footprint and emissions has resulted in a right-wing backlash, that are likely to make ecological matters even much worse.
One may conclude that “Degrowth is, in essence, a form of ecological austerity for working-class people” that may, according to Ted Nordhaus “do more harm to the planet than good.”
Snake-oil Salesmen?
The Degrowth movement plays in on fears that the planet is about to go up in flames, and typically, gains support in times of economic crisis. The Degrowth Movement was born in Paris in 2008 during the Global Financial Crisis. Jason Hickel’s much degrowth manifesto “Less is More” was published in 2021, amidst the global COVID-pandemic downturn.
When people are afraid, whether of a climate armageddon or economic meltdown, they tend to be susceptible to confident tricksters — to people who show no doubt that they have the solution and “peddle prosperity.” Jason Hickel is one of these, hence his appeal: the subtitle of his book is “How Degrowth will save the world.” Not a touch of doubt. Plenty of Evangelical self-confidence. We know how it ends when ideologues start to write policy.
