Degrowth is not Austerity

Having enough is not deprivation.

When I first came across degrowth, I thought it was a terrible idea. With no other data to go on than that one word, I automatically associated degrowth with austerity. The word degrowth, at first blush, appears to promise a world of less. I thought less growth meant less stuff, which means austerity.

But I soon learned that wasn’t the case.

Broadly, austerity is someone else telling you that you will have less. The result is a feeling of deprivation, as things you had before are taken away. You still want these things, but you can’t have them. You hope you can have them again when austerity is over.

Degrowth is a society deciding it can make do with less because it realizes that always needing more will destroy it. The result is living in a different type of world, a steady state economy, in which needs are met. Once in a steady state economy, the aim is to stay there. There is no plan to go back to the way things used to be because society realizes that such a way of living is destructive and unsustainable.

It’s just physics and chemistry.

I realize how that paragraph on degrowth reads to people who are not familiar with degrowth, which is most people.

In the end, it is just physics and chemistry. The physics of climate change, forest loss, freshwater loss, plankton loss, and biodiversity loss can’t be changed. The chemistry of phosphorus and nitrogen creating dead zones in our ocean, and acidifying our oceans can’t be wished or spun away.

Green growth is an illusion. Greening our energy supply will help, but that alone will not solve climate change and the environmental overshoot.

Our overproduction, overconsumption, pollution of and degradation of the natural world is going to destroy our civilization if we continue down our current path. We have crossed six planetary boundaries, with ocean acidification on the way. Business as usual is going to destroy us. That is just the reality we arrive at by analyzing the chemistry and physics of our natural world. People may choose to ignore that or not believe it because it does not fit their worldview. But physics and chemistry have no regard for your worldview. They do not change. Your worldview can change. You should change it to save yourself.

Austerity takes away some things people need.

Degrowth takes away some things that people want, that they think they need, but don’t.

Austerity often is prescribed to balance budget deficits. Balancing the budget often results in less government spending, higher taxes, or both. Austerity disproportionately impacts those at the bottom of the economic ladder, who spend a greater amount of their income on essentials.

Those in the bottom 10% of the income scale feel austerity. Those in the top 10% don’t.

Those in the bottom 10% benefit from degrowth. Those in the top 10% don’t, as much. (One of my subscribers rightfully chastised me for this last line. All people benefit from degrowth, so I added “as much” and put this mea culpa in parenthesis).

You can see why the word degrowth and the ideas behind it face an uphill battle.

I get it. A change that results in less will feel like austerity.

What I write about here is advocating for change, and change is disruptive, change is hard, and change can be scary.

But the preponderance of the evidence leads to a fairly obvious choice. If we continue on the path we are on, things will get a little worse each year, until our way of life and our civilization collapses. The other path we can take, the degrowth path, calls for a period in which we change the way our societies operate. On the degrowth path we survive, and after a period of adjustment, thrive. On the business-as-usual path, fewer of us will survive, and only a small percentage will thrive.

Business as usual categorizes everything we want as a need and leads to ruin.

Degrowth recognizes the difference between wants and needs and prioritizes needs over wants.  

That way of looking at the world is understandable. It is also rather new.

For most of human history, dangers over the horizon had to be planned for, because crops would fail, the bison would move on, or invaders would come. We were forced to plan for the long term and lean on the community to protect us.

Today, especially in the Global North, we live very individualistic lives. We depend on thousands of other people to feed us, clothe us, house us. But we don’t know these people. We don’t think about them. The sustenance, shelter, and protection they provide us is an afterthought, if it is a thought at all.

This individualism isn’t evil, but it is a weakness. Depending on others, and having others depend on you is essential to see the threat over the horizon, even if that threat is our actions, or lack of actions today.

Depending on others and having others depend on you is called community. But if the people that feed you, house you, cloth you are faceless, and thousands of miles away, you don’t value them. They don’t value you.

In a community where needs are taken care of, austerity rarely exists. In a society where community is rare, austerity is always around the corner.

For the most part, we don’t need to worry about the crops failing, the bison moving on or some tribe coming over the horizon to get us. If we continue to confuse our wants and our needs, if we continue to do far too little to change things, we will need to worry about those things again. The bison is long gone, most of us can’t farm, and most of us can’t protect ourselves.

If we continue on the path we are on, when things get really bad, there will be no community there to help us.

So, build that community. We can live here and be happy with less. Not because we are deprived of our wants, but because our needs are met, and we realize our needs are met. And that is enough.