Environmental Apocalypse Stock Photo Theater
“Thank you for supporting the degrowth movement. I didn’t think you had it in you, but your policies are really going to supercharge degrowth.”
“What is degrowth? Sound terrible.”
“An equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level, in the short and long term.”
“I don’t want that. That is not what my policies will do.”
“Your deportation policy, if implemented, is likely to shave about 4.2 percent off of GDP. And your tariff policies are likely to add about $3,000 in costs to the average American family. There is going to be some major degrowth coming. That’s not the way I would have gone about it, but the results will speak for themselves.”
“I’ll just tell my followers everything is going as planned and we have the most beautiful economy ever.”
“Exactly. You are going to be remembered as the President that ushered in the degrowth era.”
“So, people will love it?”
“Of course.”
This is cute and funny, but I just want to note that what T's administration may be ushering in is recession, not degrowth. I think it's important to make that distinction because one of the straw men raised against degrowth is that it favors austerity/scarcity/want/hardship. It doesn't; that's the growth/capitalist economy. (Just to clarify for readers who might not know this distinction.)
I want to discuss your concept… Degrowth
“An equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level, in the short and long term.”
As a marketing tool your word “Degrowth” sucks..
In principal…. I don’t disagree with the concept I would rather call it “Sustainability”… where we better meld Economic Social and Environmental together to reduce waste and enhance human flourishing into the future.
There is already plenty of implementation science about sustainability.
I can see this as a baby boomer growing up in post war England with rationing and not much choice of goods and plenty of pollution on land sea and air.
Since then we have increased the global population almost 5 fold using the power of fossil fuels and have globalized trade, cleaned up a lot of our environment, but added a considerable level of economic waste to get there. Its true that capitalism has been good, but has forced a condition of wants over needs where consumerism has become an economic tool that drives this distortion leading to product proliferation and a throw away society leading to waste that we have had to absorb into our economic engine.
The complication is that we are all not at the same point on the prosperity curve, and we have far too many constraints being placed on the natural evolution of human flourishing.
Although I see your issue I see a far different roadmap to get to the end goal… more on this if you want.