Growth 

We are taught that growth is a natural process. Even the word itself, growth, implies beneficial, natural development. However, a child does not grow forever. They grow only to the point of maturity, then remain at a steady state. Jason Hickel, author of Less is More: How degrowth will save the world, explains why the perpetual growth narrative is illogical: 

All living organisms grow. But in nature there is a self-limiting logic to growth: organisms grow to a point of maturity, and then maintain a state of healthy equilibrium. When growth fails to stop– when cells keep replicating just for the sake of it– it’s because of a coding error, like what happens with cancer. This kind of growth quickly becomes deadly (Hickel, 19)

Based on Hickel’s analogy, our economy has cancer. That cancer is growthism– the over dependence on growth as the only measure of success, and as its only means of survival. 

Our current economy is dependent on continuous growth. Without growth, the economy will collapse on itself. Profit that is reinvested becomes capital. And, according to Jason Hickel, “the whole point of capital is that it must be invested to produce more capital” (Hickel 86). The system of building capital is a self-reinforcing cycle with no identifiable end point to the process of accumulating exchange-value. If companies do not grow, they will fail. Their investors will no longer invest because they will not be profiting, and they will be destroyed by competitors. Growth is imperative in our current economy, but growth, of all things anti-life or anti-equity, cannot continue indefinitely. Growth of things that improve well-being and equality may continue, such as healthcare and education. However, when growth requires extraction from nature, it is strictly limited by the planetary boundaries and is thus unable to continue beyond a certain point. 

In political debates, when clean energy comes up, the idea of growth remains central. We cannot sacrifice growth in order to transition to clean energy. The term “green growth” has been coined in order to satisfy both those who desire a green transition, and those who want continual growth. The issue with “green growth” is that even if overnight all of our energy was produced through carbon free renewable energy, there would still be other factors of ecological breakdown that would continue. Deforestation, pollution, biodiversity loss, and nutrient overflow would all continue, even with a quick transition to full renewable energy. Additionally, the infrastructure for renewable energy (solar panels, wind turbines, etc…) requires continued extraction from nature. It is important to consider where resources come from as we approach alternatives to our current energy sources. 

Ultimately, GDP growth and resource use cannot be decoupled. The Jevons paradox reveals to us why efficiency increases do not actually reduce resource use. In fact, an increase in efficiency of resource use will generate an increase in resource consumption so efficiency increases enable continual growth. For example, in England in 1769, a more efficient coal-fired steam engine was invented; and coal consumption soared. More recently, in Los Angeles, Interstate 710 has become an example of the Jevons paradox. The often clogged highway causes poor air quality in surrounding communities, so policy makers proposed to widen the highway, thereby reducing congestion. However, the opposite happened. Just a few years after the highway was widened, emissions actually increased– if there is more room to drive, more people will drive (Weingart and Schukar 2023). In the same way, increased resource use efficiency will not reduce resource consumption, but continually enable growth of the economy and environmental degradation. 

What is degrowth?

The term degrowth was initially proposed by political ecologist Andre Gorz in 1972. Degrowth was launched by French environmental activists as a provocative slogan to repoliticize environmentalism. It is not equivalent to economic recession or negative growth, but rather degrowth aims to escape from a society that is absorbed by the fetishism of growth. Degrowth politics aim for the construction of a post-growth society, one with frugal abundance and prosperity without growth. It implies the implementation of other possible worlds, where progress and prosperity are not defined by growth. Degrowth challenges market-based relations, calling for a deeper democracy where power is not held by solely the elite. It implies equitable distribution of wealth within societies and across the global north and south, as well as between present and future generations.

 

In a growth-oriented system, the objective is not to satisfy human needs, but to keep creating needs that must be met. Things can always be created when there is a need to be fulfilled, and thus we cannot satisfy all needs if we hope to continue growing. However, this is no way to live sustainably and equitably in our world. In our current society, conditions of artificial scarcity have been produced and continually strengthened by inequalities. Degrowth aims for the reverse of artificial scarcity to liberate us from the tyranny of growth. It calls for an abundance that would render growth unnecessary. If all human needs are met with no fear of getting/losing access to resources, the pursuit of growth would be reduced because there would be no unmet need or fear to be filled. This would lead to a more equal and prosperous society, where everyone would have access to the resources they need to live well. 

What are the principles that will lead us to degrowth?

1. End planned obsolescence → Planned obsolescence is the tendency for items to be produced with purposefully short life spans so that there will be a need for new or improved products. This is an extremely wasteful practice, and makes maintaining the services that products are designed to meet a financial burden for many people.

2. Cut advertising → Planned obsolescence is the tendency for items to be produced with purposefully short life spans so that there will be a need for new or improved products. This is an extremely wasteful practice, and makes maintaining the services that products are designed to meet a financial burden for many people.

3. Shift from ownership to usership → Ownership is an inherently exclusionary principle. It enables gate-keeping and makes many amenities and resources unavailable for the lower-class. It also encourages the consumption of more resources when each person believes that they need to own everything they need. Usership would enable spaces and resources to be shared, and thus be available for all to benefit from.

4. End food waste → Simply, food waste results from overproduction and represents systems of inequality. Access to food throughout the world is extremely unequal, with some people experiencing abundance and some struggling to stay alive. Food should be better distributed and shared, so that no one is left without access. This would also enable food to be grown locally and on a smaller scale, which would make more sustainable growing practices easier to accomplish.

5. Scale down ecologically destructive industries → This is a simple concept that causes a lot of fear within the current economy. The fear of job loss and money loss maintains the current industries in a way that they continue causing destruction. Scaling down these industries could open up more jobs in other industries as they become more productive, such as renewable energy and health for example.

Clear steps toward accomplishing these principles:

• Reduce working hours
  • Shed unnecessary jobs (created by obsolescence and excess production) so we can shorten the working week, sharing necessary labor more evenly among the working population and maintaining full employment
  • Reducing working hours has a substantial positive impact on people’s well-being, even when controlling for income
  • Longer working hours directly associated with higher consumption of environmentally intensive goods
  • If the U.S. were to reduce it’s working hours to the levels of Western Europe, it’s energy consumption would decline by a staggering 20%
• Reduce inequality
  • Wealth tax (tax excessive wealth) 
  • Reduce luxury consumption by the rich, reduce competitive consumption across the rest of society, remove pressure for unnecessary growth
  • Disaccumulation of capital. This means that the replacement and maintenance of existing capital stock should be sufficient to fuel economic growth. This means that capital stock does not actually increase. 
  • Shift the economy more toward use-values rather than exchange-values
• Make public goods available to all and expand the commons
  • Improve access and availability of public goods by creating spaces that everyone can utilize. 
• The Law of Jubilee
  • Cancel or reduce compound interest on debt.  Compound interest has a direct ecological impact, because countries deregulate extractive industries to meet their debt obligations 
  • David Graeber: “the financial imperatives of debt reduce us all, despite ourselves, to the equivalent of pillagers, eyeing the world simply for what can be turned into money,” (Hickel, Jason). 
• New money for a new economy
  • Switch debt to linear interest or get rid of debt-based currency all together. Banks currently lend out money that they do not actually have, which means money is entering the market that doesn’t actually exist. This furthers debt, and places banks in a powerful position for controlling the economy. 
  • Spend money into local economies.

Weingart, Eden, and Alyssa Schukar. “Widening Highways Doesn’t Fix Traffic. so Why Do We Keep Doing It?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 6 Jan. 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/us/widen-highways-traffic.html#:~:text=But%20while%20adding%20lanes%20can,along%20with%20it%20%E2%80%94%20often%20returns.