Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The need for economic growth is a social construct, not a law of nature, but this construct is the tablecloth on which our current society has been arranged. The question we face, as the 2020s come around, is whether we can pull the tablecloth out fast enough without smashing all the plates and glasses?
Ultimately what we see is the base conflict between what is scientifically necessary and what is politically realistic. Part of the danger of the Green New Deal is that it is seen as the solution, rather than a partial attempt to remake an entire national political economy.
So, why should we give up all this and leave in a world full of boring, grimy and sad clothes (even if it is a degrowth world). On the contrary, what I envision is a degrowth world based on simple aesthetics wehre people find a way of expression and creativity through their clothes and they are not judged for it.
In this post, I reflect on the vocabulary we need to be familiar with if we are to raise awareness and develop widespread literacy and skills for responding to all our interrelated problems, from climate breakdown to soil erosion, species extinction, human suffering and inequality. The issue of language and vocabulary has arisen in a number of conversations I’ve had with friends and acquaintances in recent weeks, as we approached the School Climate Strikes on Sept 20 2019.
In 1972 economists became embroiled in a controversy with a group of systems scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and declared themselves the winners. It became the conventional wisdom that the economists won the argument. This complacent judgement now turns out to be premature.
The left urgently needs to get over its long-term fascination with “productivism”, to realise that the best line of attack against capitalism is to focus on limits and sustainability, and to plunge into Transition Towns and related initiatives.
Degrowth’ is a good bet. There is sound empirical and theoretical evidence that our economies are dependent on material and energy resources and embedded in the delicate balance of the Earth’s life systems. And if we pull it off, the payout is huge.
Raising the spectre of sacrifice is the all the vogue in current climate denier and delayer circles: it is representative of our current moment in time. Having comprehensively been routed on the denial of science, the minions of fossil fuel lobbies have moved on to delay the onset and diminish the scope of action.
The validity of the green growth discourse relies on the assumption of an absolute, permanent, global, large and fast enough decoupling of Gross Domestic Product from all critical environmental pressures. Problem is: there is no empirical evidence for such a decoupling having ever happened.
It will not help you make friends among politicians if you make an argument about the inevitability of degrowth because politicians and senior civil servants and journalists are almost without exception true believers in the faith of growth.
I will therefore take up Kallis’ (2019) conclusion and ask: ‘What about degrowth and a Green New Deal? The opponent is formidable and what we need are alliances, not divisions’.
The main issue with the current Green New Deal narrative is that it banks on the feasibility of decoupling economic growth from carbon emissions and material throughput.
