Degrowth: Redesigning The Economy To Save The Planet
How our current dependence on economic growth is killing us.
Our planet isn’t sustaining our current level of consumption. Our growth economy operates under the logic of infinite growth on a planet with finite resources. We need a solution to this world ending problem.
I recently finished reading ‘No One Is Too Small To Make A Difference’, a collection of speeches from Greta Thunberg. I could hear the frustration in her words. Talking with politicians who continue to ignore this problem and anger at the media who refused to talk about it.
Climate change is the biggest problem we, as humans, have ever faced, and yet so little is being done to solve it. Our politicians and businesses know the problem and choose to ignore it, despite the numerous warnings from climate scientists and outcries from the public in the form of protests.
Greta Thunberg’s frustrations boiled over to where she had to do something about it. She states the same thing in every speech she has given; “Either we choose to go on as a civilisation or we don’t. That is as black and white as it gets.”
This fear of climate change has plagued me for decades, and the situation is getting worse. Our small changes aren’t solving the problem. Our consumption of fossil fuels is still increasing. An article from the BBC reports that sales of SUVs, some of the least economic vehicles around, increased in 2018, accounting for 21.2% of all new car sales. This is up from 13.5% three years earlier. While sales of new electric vehicles were less than 1%.
We hit a record number of daily oil and liquids consumed in October 2018 at over 100 million barrels a day. There’s a clear problem with our understanding and respect towards climate change.
Many believe the problem lies within the structure of our growth economy.
In order for real change to happen, our economy has to change first.
Things are only getting worse, and now it’s too late for small changes.
What’s The Problem?
A growth based economy is broken at the core. Pitting people against each other and measuring success and social wealth through business growth.
The logic of the current economy is you are successful if you are growing, with no limit to your growth. However, the fundamental flaw is our planet doesn’t have limitless resources to permit this infinite growth.
This level of consumption is killing our planet. Too much is being taken (and wasted) and not enough is being returned. For decades, we have been proposing small solutions to integrate into our society in order to tackle climate change, while trying to maintain our growth based economy. This economy lies in direct conflict with the sustainability of the planet.
We don’t have an infinite supply of resources available so why are we working with an economic structure that pretends we do?
We’re already experiencing the serious consequences of our current economy:
- Deforestation
- Increased CO2 levels
- Mass extinctions of animal species
- Climate change
Things are only getting worse, and now it’s too late for small changes. Major change must be implemented either by choice or by force from nature. I wanted to find an effective solution to this monumental problem, and that’s when I learnt about Degrowth.
If we continue on our current economic path, it will result in irreversible damage to the planet.
What Is Degrowth?
Degrowth at its core is a cultural shift from the current economy of ‘growth at all costs’, leading to wasteful individualistic consumption, and instead encourage a community effort; working together for better social wealth and planet sustainability.
Degrowth is an economic solution with a goal of reducing our total energy and material consumption of the current economy and instead realigning them to the limitations of the planet and distributing them fairly to all. The goal is to increase human well-being and happiness while reducing our economic footprint.
Instead of a capitalist economy focused on competitiveness and limitless growth, Degrowth focuses on sharing, cooperation and a symbiotic relationship with nature.
This would be a drastic change cultural shift, but we’re running out of options. We need to shift our society towards sufficiency instead of purely technological changes and improvements in efficiency in order to solve these ecological problems.
We don’t have to devise eco alternatives that accommodate growth. Instead we can focus on improving our quality of life. You can call this idea wishful thinking; change the way we’ve been doing business since the economy was conceptualised, but we’re reaching a pivotal moment. We don’t have the luxury of choice. If we continue on our current economic path, it will result in irreversible damage to the planet.
Pushing people to desperation allowed capitalism to work.
The Capitalist Economy
Capitalism is thought to have come about from an enclosure movement in England. Wealthy elites forced peasants off land, typically with violence, abolishing the Right To Habitation, a guaranteed right for people to have access to survival resources. This enclosure of the resources caused the excluded to compete for access. The elite then determined who should have access by measuring productivity. The excluded would compete against each other; extracting more resources to outperform others. Scarcity was required to fuel capitalism. This snowballed into the competitive nature of the economy we see today; productive by highly wasteful.
Pushing people to desperation allowed capitalism to work. Today, scarcity is unemployment. If you’re not working, you’re not earning, if you’re not earning, you’re not granted access to survival resources.
In recent years, capitalism has flourished under a conservative government. The wealth gap is wider than ever and austerity is thriving.
Competition and individual success has molded our society ever since an economy was introduced. Businesses compete for our attention, more attention meant more sales, increasing their margins, which in turn means they’re becoming more successful.
That must be good, right?
GDP ignores environmental and social costs.
Economic Growth Is Killing Us
A growth based economy is all about consumption, without a thought toward the consequences. It promotes the idea of winners and losers. If you’re not winning, you’re not successful. Degrowth eliminates the individual winner concept and instead promotes the idea of working together for a collective win while working within our planets limitations.
GDP Cannot Measure Progress
When we strip our planet’s resources such as coal from mountains or trees from forests, GDP goes up. When natural disasters occur and hospital admissions increase, patented medicines are sold, GDP goes up. GDP measures success but ignores environmental and social costs. How can GDP be used as an accurate metric of societal wellbeing?
Some economists have suggested integrating a sensible metric, such as the Genuine Progress Indicator. It takes the GDP figure and subtracts these negative outcomes, accounting for the cost of growth.
We need an economic model that promotes human flourishing in harmony with the planet we live and depend on.
GDP measures costs, not benefits. Growth based economies tend to either grow or collapse. Half a year without growth is officially called a recession. Labelling that economic period a failure.
Some people have accepted the planet is doomed and now waiting for the end.
What Are We Doing?
This growth economy cannot continue, and people are starting to recognise that. Global Climate Strikes in 2019 showed how many businesses and individuals recognise the dangerous course we’re on.
We’ve met with businesses that are creating marketplaces where wasted materials from construction sites are being sold on to other projects for use, reducing the amount of perfectly usable building materials that would otherwise head to landfill.
The UK Green Party feature in their 2019 manifesto the importance of pursuing a structural transformation of the way the economy works. Meanwhile, the Conservative government is encouraging productivity within our economy to ‘make us more competitive’, actively ignoring the fundamental issue of a flawed system.
The current political landscape continues to ignore the obvious dangers of climate change, and this constant struggle with the politicians and the public is starting to impact our well-being.
The Problem Is Real
We’ve known about the dangers of climate change for decades and yet our politicians choose to ignore the problem. This attitude has started impacting many people’s mental health.
Oliver Thorn talks about the depression many people are suffering from as a result of refusal to act on climate change; feeling powerless and ignored. This results in a new state of thinking; Climate Grief, accepting the planet is doomed and now waiting for the end.
“The political system that you have created is all about competition. You cheat when you can, because all that matters is to win, to get power” — Greta Thunberg
Respect The Danger
The fundamental problem of our approach to climate change is we’re not acknowledging the danger it poses to our way of living. Sweeping the issue under the rug will only allow the problem to grow.
News media outlets aren’t reporting on the climate issue as often as they should. The public aren’t being made aware of who is truly responsible for this situation.
Enough is enough.
Degrowth may not be a perfect solution, but it’s a far better course of action than the one we’re currently taking.
As Greta Thunberg said in her speech to the European Economic and Social Committee; “We need a whole new way of thinking. The political system that you have created is all about competition. You cheat when you can, because all that matters is to win, to get power. That must come to an end, we must stop competing with each other, we need to cooperate and work together and to share the resources of the planet in a fair way.”
Learn more
Visit these links to learn more about Degrowth.
Degrowth, explained — video by Grist.
The Impossible Hamster — showing the absurdity of endless economic growth — video by onehundredmonths
What is degrowth — degrowth.info
