Degrowth is a euphemism for recession. That's literally what it is: receding economic activity. Degrowth proponents are among the most counterproductive advocates of climate policy, and are a huge source of ammunition for a opponents that try to claim that climate action is just anti-capitalism in disguise. Increases energy usage is not necessarily necessary for increased economic growth. Higher efficiency and less energy intensive lines of business provide growth with the same or even less energy use. Furthermore, increased energy use is only a problem if that energy comes from environmentally damaging sources. Building energy sources other than fossil fuels allows for growing energy use with less environmental impact.
The Case for Degrowth
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Re: The Case for Degrowth
#22The problem with ideas like this is that it takes the ladder away from middle class and the poor. Both need growth in order to improve their conditions, and their place in society exists only because they can produce growth. Without it the power of the wealthy over them would become a weight pressing down with such force that it would intolerable.
The conditions of the middle-class are actually too luxurious. Everybody in the world can't have a suburban lawn. What the middle-class (and the poor) don't have is security . They live in a state of fear that the entire bottom will drop out of their lives if they get fired, or have a heart attack, or any of a million things. Supplying security to people is actually cheaper that what we do now, just as socialized hea…
> I'd trade most (though maybe not all) of the great meals I've ever had for the guarantee I'd never go hungry.
I wouldn’t — and there’s been times I was quite hungry while homeless.
Moreover, your fear doesn’t give you the right to impose that choice on me.
Re: The Case for Degrowth
#23It's certainly a thought provoking piece.
I'm wondering how stable the system is if all countries decide to degrowth, but one doesn't play ball. Naively you'd think that country would start to dominate economically/politically, so others may have to 'defect' as well... But maybe that's too simplistic.
Re: The Case for Degrowth
#24This is all very abstract, so you can't really see the stupidity behind it. You can say "economic growth is out of control, we need to reduce GDP by 50% and get comfortable with it" and many people will applaud. But if you say things like "We are growing too much food, we need to reduce the amount of food grown worldwide by 50%", people will realize the much more morbid consequences of your ignorant prescription - ma…
There also doesn't seem to be wide awareness that the degrowth people are currently intentionally sabotaging farming output. Sri Lankas food crisis is due to a forced stop in artificial fertilizer use and growth of only organic crops, and there are likewise farmer protests in the Netherlands (5th largest food producer), Belgium, Germany etc due to the governments pushing this.
Closer to home the "inflation reduction act" spends $20 billion to put farmland out of farm use, and also implement incentives to force farmers to significantly reduce production.
This will cause food shortages like it already has in Sri Lanka. Expect huge spikes in food prices like we've seen for gas.
Re: The Case for Degrowth
#25It's worth considering for the historical perspective as well. "Economic growth" is a mantra which emerged really only since the 1950s, and in the shadows respectively of the Great Depression, the collapse of Weimar Germany, the rise of Soviet Russia and Marxist/Leninist/Stalinist Communism, and of course World War II. It was not at all clear that a constantly growing capitalist market economy was possible.
(The article itself puts relatively little focus on this, but it's very much part of the Zeitgeist in which Solow's work emerged.)
The tune further changed in the 1960s and 70s with the emergence of the environmental movement and the first major oil shocks, after which conventional economics increasingly adopted the viewpoint not only that growth was good but that it was inevitable. I've examined the foundations of those premises for some years and consistently find that there's distressingly little there there.
How much any of this is discussed in the books reviewed I'm not sure.
Re: The Case for Degrowth
#26This is all very abstract, so you can't really see the stupidity behind it. You can say "economic growth is out of control, we need to reduce GDP by 50% and get comfortable with it" and many people will applaud. But if you say things like "We are growing too much food, we need to reduce the amount of food grown worldwide by 50%", people will realize the much more morbid consequences of your ignorant prescription - ma…
Well, we do need food. But do we need it so highly processed? Do we really need video game consoles or Netflix? Do we need to change phone or car quite so often? I'm sure we all can find a number of things that we own and shouldn't really have bought.
I'm not sure what it takes to degrow, but I'm pretty convinced that there's lots of fat in our consumerist lives that could be trimmed away even without changing our daily lives meaningfully.
Re: The Case for Degrowth
#27This is all very abstract, so you can't really see the stupidity behind it. You can say "economic growth is out of control, we need to reduce GDP by 50% and get comfortable with it" and many people will applaud. But if you say things like "We are growing too much food, we need to reduce the amount of food grown worldwide by 50%", people will realize the much more morbid consequences of your ignorant prescription - ma…
Well, we do need food. But do we need it so highly processed? Do we really need video game consoles or Netflix? Do we need to change phone or car quite so often? I'm sure we all can find a number of things that we own and shouldn't really have bought. I'm not sure what it takes to degrow, but I'm pretty convinced that there's lots of fat in our consumerist lives that could be trimmed away even without changing our da…
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Re: The Case for Degrowth
#28This is all very abstract, so you can't really see the stupidity behind it. You can say "economic growth is out of control, we need to reduce GDP by 50% and get comfortable with it" and many people will applaud. But if you say things like "We are growing too much food, we need to reduce the amount of food grown worldwide by 50%", people will realize the much more morbid consequences of your ignorant prescription - ma…
There also doesn't seem to be wide awareness that the degrowth people are currently intentionally sabotaging farming output. Sri Lankas food crisis is due to a forced stop in artificial fertilizer use and growth of only organic crops, and there are likewise farmer protests in the Netherlands (5th largest food producer), Belgium, Germany etc due to the governments pushing this. Closer to home the "inflation reduction…
Sometimes people just have to see the result of a policy to get it.
Re: The Case for Degrowth
#29This is all very abstract, so you can't really see the stupidity behind it. You can say "economic growth is out of control, we need to reduce GDP by 50% and get comfortable with it" and many people will applaud. But if you say things like "We are growing too much food, we need to reduce the amount of food grown worldwide by 50%", people will realize the much more morbid consequences of your ignorant prescription - ma…
Well, we do need food. But do we need it so highly processed? Do we really need video game consoles or Netflix? Do we need to change phone or car quite so often? I'm sure we all can find a number of things that we own and shouldn't really have bought. I'm not sure what it takes to degrow, but I'm pretty convinced that there's lots of fat in our consumerist lives that could be trimmed away even without changing our da…
Arguing for greater efficiency or arguing against luxury is so, so different from arguing for degrowth. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems that degrowth is fundamentally misanthropic. And the core of the misanthropic philosophy is the belief that mankind and nature are two different things.
We will likely die for the lack of philosophy.
Re: The Case for Degrowth
#30[deleted]