Economy

A ‘Real’ Green New Deal? Policies for a Post-Growth Economy (Part III of Ecological Civilisation)

By Samuel Alexander, originally published by The Simplicity Institute

March 11, 2022

What would a ‘real’ Green New Deal involve? In this presentation Samuel Alexander argues that it would require policies to create a post-growth economy. This is Part III of the Ecological Civilisation series.

SECTIONS

00:00 – Intro and review

03:00 – Overview

05:40 – Limits to Growth

08:47 – Defining Growth

10:57 – Arguments for and against growth

21:40 – Policies for a post-growth economy

46:44 – Transitional challenges

The introduction to this series is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxC-r…

The series is grappling with the problems of consumerism and the growth economy; envisioning alternative, post-carbon ways of life; and considering what action can be taken, both personally and politically, to help build an ecological civilisation.

New presentations will be added to this playlist over time:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

You can support this channel by purchasing an e-book from the Simplicity Institute, available on a ‘pay what you can’ basis (edit the price as you choose for a donation): https://249897.e-junkie.com

Paperbacks are available here: https://au.permacultureprinciples.com…

Samuel Alexander’s work is available here: http://samuelalexander.info

The Simplicity Institute website is here: https://simplicityinstitute.org

FURTHER READING ON DECOUPLING:

http://www.sustainable.soltechdesigns…

https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-de…

https://www.pnas.org/content/112/20/6271

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10…

https://www.resilience.org/stories/20…

FURTHER READING ON LIMITS TO GROWTH:

https://royalsoc.org.au/images/pdf/jo…

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science…

https://www.nature.com/articles/s4146…

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/ha…

ARTICLE ON TRADABLE ENERGY QUOTAS:

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/17/…

ARTICLE ON MODERN MONETARY THEORY:

http://samuelalexander.info/wp-conten…

FURTHER READING:

https://johnmenadue.com/it-will-take-…

https://www.realgnd.org

Thanks to Andrew Doodson, Jordan Osmond, and Antoinette Wilson for offering invaluable production advice. The opening image is kindly provided by Melissa Davis.

Other image references are available here: http://samuelalexander.info/image-ref…

The music is provided by Mortimer’s Method: https://mortimersmethod.bandcamp.com

Teaser photo credit: Thoreau’s Cove, Concord, Massachusetts. By Detroit Publishing Co. copyright claimant, publisher. – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID det.4a22665.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16429985

Samuel Alexander

Dr. Samuel Alexander, co-director of the Simplicity Institute, is a lecturer at the Office for Environmental Programs, University of Melbourne, Australia, teaching a course called ‘Consumerism and the Growth Economy: Critical Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ into the Master of Environment. He is also a Research Fellow with the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute. He is author of eighteen books, including Degrowth in the Suburbs: A Radical Urban Imaginary (2018), Art Against Empire: Toward an Aesthetics of Degrowth (2017), Just Enough is Plenty: Thoreau’s Alternative Economics (2016), Prosperous Descent: Crisis as Opportunity in an Age of Limits (2015), Sufficiency Economy: Enough, for Everyone, Forever (2015), and Entropia: Life Beyond Industrial Civilisation (2013), and he is editor of Voluntary Simplicity: The Poetic Alternative to Consumer Culture (2009) and co-editor of Simple Living in History: Pioneers of the Deep Future (2014). A full publication list is available here.

As well as his academic work, in recent years Sam has been working on a ‘simpler way’ demonstration project which became the subject of a documentary, ‘A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity‘. He is also founder of the Simplicity Collective, a website and social network dedicated to exploring the relationships between voluntary simplicity, energy descent, and post-growth / degrowth economics. Dr. Alexander’s PhD thesis, conducted through Melbourne Law School, is entitled “Property beyond Growth: Toward a Politics of Voluntary Simplicity”.

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