The Media Don't Get Degrowth

Yet.

Photo by Matthew Guay on Unsplash

Sure, there have been some nice wins for degrowth in that past month:

·        Regenerative principles to unlock a sustainable future | EY - Global.

·       Opinion | Do We Need to Shrink the Economy to Stop Climate Change? - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

·        In Defense of Degrowth (hbr.org)

These were great to see. I wrote about them, and I’ve seen many others write about them. Not surprisingly, a story critical of degrowth came soon after this degrowth media “winning streak.” A few weeks ago, the Washington Post rained on the degrowth parade:

Opinion | Degrowth will not save the planet - The Washington Post

First of all, the editorial writer(s) equate degrowth with Malthusianism (I didn’t know that was a noun).

“Degrowth” — the brand name for neo-Malthusianism — ignores how ingenuity and innovation have repeatedly empowered humanity to overcome ecological constraints identified by Malthus, Ehrlich, et al.

For those unfamiliar with Thomas Malthus, he was an economist in the 18^th century. The “Malthusian Trap” is a theory he developed that assumes that improvements in technology would ultimately lead to collapse through an increased population that would overwhelm the resources that any nation.

Fun guy.

Malthus often focused on the population as the problem, noting that if the population grew too much, inevitably it would lead to a shortage of resources and food, and famine and catastrophe would result.

Not to be too critical, but this shows that the authors don’t know what they are discussing. Yes, resources and population play a role in our environmental problems. But the preponderance of degrowth literature doesn’t laud Malthus, or even discuss him much. Degrowth talks about living within planetary boundaries, using policy, cultural changes, and green energy to get there. Population control isn’t part of the equation.

Later in the article, the author(s) cite a graphic from the EIA International Energy Outlook as a “gotcha” for degrowthers. The graphic shows that if rich countries don’t grow at all until 2050 and all other countries of the world grow as they have been, the problem won’t be solved. A footnote to the graphic shows that “rich countries” include the US, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. This hypothetical future assumes that there will be no climate change progress in China and India or the rest of the “not rich” world. India and China make up more than 1/3 of all people on Earth. Both countries are making progress on green energy, so it is very disingenuous to assume they will continue on the same fossil fuel trajectory as they have been. The impacts of climate change are forecast to hit their populations quite hard, so their leaders will increasingly be incentivized to move away from coal, towards solar and other green energy technologies, or perhaps even degrowth.

I’m not going to spend any more time refuting the article. Read it and see for yourself. I don’t think the author(s) understand degrowth very well, but they are pushing the conversation along – which is a good thing. I’ll bet they will understand degrowth a bit better in the future, so let’s help them get there.  

Below is a primer for media on degrowth. I hope that it proves useful. It isn’t exhaustive but is meant to be a starting point so that we see more informed discussions of degrowth in the future.

A primer for the media on degrowth.

Let’s start with a definition of degrowth from people who have been working on this much longer than me. Degrowth is:

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.[1]

Degrowth can also be seen as a de-emphasis on growth. Our global economy is set up to be a perpetual growth machine. But we are running into a problem. We can’t keep growing forever on a planet with finite resources.

If you are wondering why degrowth is necessary, you can start with the planetary boundaries framework. This framework describes the “safe” limits of Earth’s natural systems. Beyond these limits, these systems may not be able to self-regulate or repair themselves. In addition to climate change, these boundaries include things like ocean acidification, biosphere integrity, land-system change, and freshwater change. You can see from the below graphic from the Stockholm Resilience Center that we have already breached 6 of 9 planetary boundaries.

Graphic from Stockholm Resilience Center: 2023

Where this degrowth conversation started.

In the 1972 report, The Limits to Growth, scientists took a serious look at where our society was headed with an eye on the resources available to humanity. They concluded that by about the mid-21^st century, our society would risk collapse under a business-as-usual scenario. 

In 2020, a researcher from KPMG, Gaya Herrington, decided to revisit the findings of the original Limits to Growth report. Herrington found that even in the most positive scenario where technological advancements helped mitigate climate change pollution and increase food supplies, many natural resources would still run out. A collapse of society is still very much a possibility, if not the most likely scenario in the coming decades.

Let’s not use GDP to tell us if we are happy.

In the 1930s, the economist Simon Kuznets was commissioned by the US Department of Commerce to come up with better economic metrics for measuring the economy. Kuznets came up with gross domestic product (GDP). Gross domestic product simply measures everything produced in an economy. More formally, GDP is defined as:

The total monetary or market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific period.

Mr. Kuznets warned that GDP should not be used to judge the total welfare of the country because it only measured economic output, ignoring all the factors that went into that economic output.

GDP is a horrible measure of human well-being. It is a great measure of whether our capital (money) is producing more goods and services than we consume. But well-being and economic growth are not the same thing.

That’s okay, well just switch to green growth. Right?

This is where a rational person who has been paying attention to what is happening in the world will say, “Let’s just green our growth”. As of 2020, about 84 percent of global energy use came from fossil fuels.  We should switch that energy mix over to “green” sources as soon as possible.

But that won’t be enough. Things like solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, hydroelectric, hydrogen, wave power, and fanciful notions like energy beamed from space and nuclear fusion may play an increasing role in our energy mix in the coming decades. But none of them alone can replace fossil fuels. Even when we add them all together, these “green” fuels can’t help us avoid catastrophic climate change and other planetary boundary-based tragedies. Historically, any new fuel source only adds to the total amount of energy used. “Green” energy sources have their own material and carbon footprints, and as Jevon’s Paradox shows us, any increase in energy efficiency always leads to an increase in energy use.

In addition to green power not being able to supply all we need, there will be more people in need of power and energy each coming year. The global population will continue growing to about 10.4 billion people (there are about 8 billion now) near the end of the century before peaking and slowly declining.

Green growth deals with the “supply” side of the energy equation. We should green that supply as quickly as possible. But we need to tackle the demand side of things as well. That is where degrowth comes in.

Degrowth is a path, not an economic system.

Degrowth focuses on human outcomes rather than economic outcomes. Degrowth asks “what is necessary” for a society rather than “what is profitable” or “what brings growth” to an economy. Degrowth emphasizes scaling back or shutting down those industries that harm us (fossil fuel production, plastics) and growing those sectors that help human well-being (green energy, elder care, education). This won’t happen overnight, but an orderly wind-down of some industries over time makes sense.

Degrowth is a path to a “steady state” economy in which we would live within our means as a global civilization. According to the report, The Economics of Biodiversity, published in 2021, we are using Earth's resources as though we had 1.6 earths to use. Degrowth is the path we need to take so that we only use the resources of 1.0 earths per year.

Degrowth is about slowing down and living our lives in a way that does not overconsume our resources. Degrowth values human outcomes over economic outcomes so that we can eventually settle on an economic model that allows us to live meaningful lives without destroying our planet and ourselves.

Degrowth is not austerity or forcing the global economy into a depression. We need to throttle back on the things that are harming us and invest more in the things that will help us. Human outcomes like well-being, life expectancy, literacy, infant mortality, and yes, happiness should be used to judge our success as a civilization, not GDP.

If you are a journalist, or just an average person looking to learn more about degrowth, some of the topics below are a good place to start.

-        A four-day workweek

-        Income inequality

-        A just transition

-        Getting rid of planned obsolescence

-        Scaling down marketing

-        Universal public services

-        Universal basic income

-        What to measure if not GDP

-        Modern monetary theory

-        Public job guarantees

-        Redesigning our cities

-        Rethinking how we travel

-        Rethinking what we eat

-        Change in our culture is needed

-        Change in our politics is needed

-        Change in our leadership is needed

You can read this blog, or other degrowth resources that are popping up every day, like the degrowth database.

Feel free to reach out to me, or others that know more than me, (there are many of those).

Hopefully, with a simple degrowth primer like this, we will see fewer uninformed articles on the topic.