A Green New Deal beyond Growth
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.
degrowth
Degrowth vs. the Green New Deal
Unlike the Green New Deal, however, degrowth isn’t a policy platform – it’s more of a movement, or what participants call an “umbrella concept,” bringing together a wide diversity of ideas and social and environmental justice struggles.
Degrowth is Utopian, and that’s a Good Thing
Reality is complex, what is possible and what not is hard to know, and the roads to ecosocialism (or however else you might want to call an egalitarian and sustainable future) are many.
Introducing Degrowth into Economics
But by systematically presenting a degrowth theory from one particular perspective – an ecological economics perspective with anti-capitalist leanings – the book is a welcome addition to degrowth scholarship.
Climate Breakdown is Coming. The UK needs a Greener New Deal
Our obsession with economic growth is making our task much more difficult than it needs to be. It’s like we’ve chosen to fight this battle facing uphill, with one hand tied behind our back.
Inequality and the Ecological Transition
Post-growth policy begins with the very principle that – as the Yellow Vests themselves have pointed out – should inform all ecological policy: greater equality. Indeed, the post-growth movement has long argued that equality can be a substitute for growth.
How Do You Degrow?
Everything about the lifestyle we are accustomed to, as rich westerners, has to change. If we let that sink in for a little bit that is when the real disruption comes in, giving way to a radical shift in perspective. So, where do we go from here?
Gathering Degrowth in the American Pluriverse
It turns out, degrowth is a lot of things: a criticism, a proposal, a hypothesis, a provocation, a conversation, a deceleration, a downscaling, a reimagining, a project, a lens, a movement, a set of practices, an invitation to dream of worlds beyond growth.
The SDGs: Transforming our World or Business as Usual?
Considering the large ecological debts of the Global North and the related structural inequalities of power and wealth, it can be doubted that a one-fits-all solution such as the SDGs helps bridge the existing extreme inequalities between countries.
Here’s a Simple Solution to the Growth/De-Growth Debate
So here’s what we can do. Let’s not waste time speculating. Let’s impose a legal limit on annual resource use and waste – something that de-growthers have been demanding for a long time – and tighten that limit year-on-year until we are back down to planetary boundaries.
Degrowth: A Call for Radical Abundance
I reject the fetishization of GDP as an objective in the existing economy, so it would make little sense for me to focus on GDP as the objective of a degrowth economy. Wanting to cut GDP is as senseless as wanting to grow it.
‘Til Sustainability Do You Part: Arranging a Marriage Between Degrowth and the Circular Economy
But advocates of the circular economy rarely grapple with a central truth: the circular economy depends on a significant and sustained period of economic degrowth. Instead they tend to focus on innovations that deliver efficiencies and unlock new economic opportunities.
