By Sam Bliss Growth means a process of increasing in physical size. When we think of economic growth, it is difficult to fathom what exactly grows, since ‘the economy’ is an invented concept that describes billions of human interactions as if they were one giant entity.
But gross domestic product is a rate — the total money value of economic activity per year — and thus growth really means acceleration. Degrowth, according to this understanding, is slowing down.
In 2015, I slowed down a lot. I moved from Seattle to London to Barcelona predominantly by bicycle and entirely upon the surface of the earth. This physical journey was the culmination of an intellectual journey from my undergraduate education in market-focused environmental economics to a newfound passion for what my supervisor Giorgos Kallis calls political ecological economics.
Setting aside some of my big ambitions — studying, writing, trying to amass twitter followers — to simply move slowly evolved my understanding of how to degrow. Maybe degrowth doesn’t mean constantly, insistently pressing to spread and advance our small movement. And maybe that’s okay.
The bicycle is a tool for degrowth
Critical philosopher Ivan Illich writes that bicycles enable people to “become masters of their own movements without blocking those of their fellows.” Of all modes of transport, the bicycle consumes the least energy carrying humans a given distance.
Choosing to travel by bicycle disobeys the growth economy’s unwritten mandate to continually speed up the pace of life. Political scientist-anthropologist James C. Scott might call it an act of everyday resistance — especially if we ride bikes every day.
Cycling to our jobs, schools, errands, and gatherings demands that we reorganize our lives to accommodate longer travel times and the occasional soaking rain, while cycling to destinations on the other side of the world requires letting go of other aspirations for months at a time.
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