Why only Degrowth Will Save The World
And what we need to do it right
“What is the worldview of a people who mumble no thanks or prayers, who take what they want from the land, and pay it back with arsenic?” — Jo Sacco, in Paying the Land
We are on the brink of ecological collapse.
Scientists reckon that the earth can handle a total material footprint of around 50 billion tonnes per year, and today we have exceeded this twice over. At a 1-degree rise in global temperatures, we are already experiencing severe droughts, floods, fires, and extreme weather events all over the world. Not to mention we are in the midst of a biodiversity crisis and we have already crossed seven out of eight earth system boundaries.
To keep temperatures at 1.5 degrees or at most 2 degrees, we must cut global emissions in half by 2030 and get to 0 by 2050. But if we continue growing the economy at projected rates, it will more than double in size by 2050. It's already going to be difficult to decarbonise the existing global economy; continuing as business-as-usual would require we decarbonise at a rate of 7% per year to stay under 2 degrees (which is a dangerous threshold) or 14% per year to get to 1.5 degrees — two to three times faster than what scientists say is possible under best-case scenarios.
