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By now, most environmentalists have come across the term circular economy. It’s sexy, it’s cool, and it makes us feel like we can have our cake and eat it too—as long as the cake is made of sustainably grown ingredients, cooked and transported with renewable energy, and any leftover cake is composted to enable the making of future cakes.

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.

But the global data reveal this isn’t enough. According to the ecological footprint, we’re using the resources of 1.6 planets. This is undermining Earth’s systems and the ability of humans (and countless other species) to survive and thrive. To get back within planetary limits, we will need to shrink the global economy by at least 37 percent–and realistically by more if we expect to start healing the decades’ worth of damage our overconsumption has wreaked on the planet.

Degrowth acknowledges this, but circular economy advocates and designers tend to ignore or deny this reality. But shrinking material and energy demand is a prerequisite for a circular economy that functions within Earth’s limits.

There are at least three reasons for this. First, if production levels rise as a result of circular innovations, environmental savings are negated by new production–a phenomenon called the rebound effect. Second, the circular economy’s increased reliance on bio-based materialswould utilize already overtaxed agricultural and ecological capacity. Third, energy is never free. Even renewable energy brings with it significant ecological impacts. Until we right-size the global economy, we’re going to need a prolonged period of degrowth.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Defending degrowth at ecomodernism’s home

August 19, 2018

Defending degrowth at ecomodernism’s home

In June, I was invited to speak at the eight annual Breakthrough Dialogue, an annual invite-only conference where accomplished thinkers debate how to achieve prosperity for humans and nature. The Breakthrough Institute, anecomodernist think-tank, welcomed my presence as a provocateur.

I was to participate in a panel called “Decoupling vs. Degrowth”. My role was the token “degrowther” making my case to a majority “decoupler” crowd. In this context, degrowth is the proposal to intentionally shrink the physical size of wealthy economies, whereas decoupling is the hope that growing economies will at last break free from growing resource use and environmental damage. The former renews environmentalism as a subversive political movement. The latter is firmly post-environmentalist, often associated with support for nuclear energy, industrial agriculture, and artificial technologies. With my mentorGiorgos Kallis, we’ve spent three years working together on a critical analysis of this post-environmentalism that emanates from the Breakthrough Institute and their self-styled ecomodernist friends.

risingtideloge — The logo of the 2018 Breakthrough Dialogue, titled “Rising Tides.” *Source: The Breakthrough Institute*

The panel and the whole event went well. I think I made a bulletproof case for degrowth. I learned lots about geoengineering, carbon capture, agricultural modernization, and other topics from brilliant thought leaders – whom Noam Chomsky might call the intelligentsia – both through their panel discussions and informal conversations. Talking with journalists and scientists who had never engaged with degrowth before made the Dialogues worthwhile. I expected to feel like a visiting team player in a hostile professional sports arena, but really it was more like being a foreigner who people are interested in but don’t always know how to interact with.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Magic economics

July 27, 2018

Magic economics

When your car is malfunctioning and you take it to a mechanic, you hope that they’ll diagnose the problem and give you some repair suggestions and costings. You don’t expect them to discourse lengthily on the wider transport system or on government priorities vis-à-vis roads and other infrastructure. It’s not their job.

I’d like to suggest that economists should likewise be seen as the mechanics of the political economy. I’m interested in their opinions on the pros and cons of different policy instruments for achieving desired political and social goals, using the technical skills developed in their discipline. I’m not interested in their opinions about what political and social goals are desirable – matters on which I don’t consider them to have more legitimate authority than anyone else.

I mention this in the context of a tweet from Branko Milanovic, an expert on the economics of global inequality (whose work was previously discussed on Small Farm Future here), in which he attempted to ridicule the ‘doughnut economics’ thinking of heterodox economist Kate Raworth, and by implication the wider tradition of alternative, degrowth-oriented economics.

Milanovic tweeted “Here is a list of some things that Doughnut economists could advocate if they seriously believed that the planet is in danger and that world GDP must not increase and yet abject global poverty must be reduced

Reduce work week to 2 days

Increase highest marginal tax rates to 80%

Double indirect taxes on all polluting goods

Triple the price of oil

Double subsidies to all renewable sources of energy

Sell (very expensive) meat only two days a week

Ban cheap airplane companies and double the price of air flights

Introduce a £1000 tax for all travel by car & airplanes outside the UK

Introduce UBI of say £200 per person per week

Define the goal of halving GDP and real incomes by 50% in 10 years

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

At the Intersection of Permaculture and Degrowth

June 14, 2018

At the Intersection of Permaculture and Degrowth

By hardworkinghippy

Permaculture and degrowth are both movements whose foundational ideas were developed the 70’s, just as the evidence was amassing in the science world to be able to explain the consequences of unchecked growth and human-induced environmental degradation. As such, both movements are reactionary and propose a radical, ethics-based paradigm shift away from the globally dominant culture of over-consumption, towards a systems-based approach to sustainability and regeneration of both the social and ecological spheres.

Though both movements were cultivated firstly within academic contexts, the body of knowledge around degrowth has generally prioritized the social sphere, including politics, economics, work-life balance and social structures, whereas permaculture has traditionally focused more on the ecological – specifically, on human habitats and food systems. In this article, I would like to propose some ways that an exchange of knowledge and knowledge-sharing strategies between permaculture and degrowth would be beneficial for both movements. This argument is based on the idea that the most interesting and diverse areas of any system are located at the edge, where one system, community, or way of thinking intersects with another.

As someone who has been educated, both academically and experientially in permaculture and in degrowth, I have found that these two movements, founded on opposite corners of the planet but now diffused somewhat globally, are very much complementary. Overall, I feel that there are undeniable benefits to be had when these movements interact, share knowledge and resources.

Below, I give a brief overview of the development of each movement in its respective context and then move on to discuss how degrowth can help permaculture and vice versa, finishing with a brief discussion on what such collaborations might look like.

A Short Background on Both Movements

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Transition Towns Movement … going where?

June 7, 2018

The Transition Towns Movement … going where?

The global predicament cannot be solved other than through a Transition Towns movement, and the emergence of such a movement has been of immense importance. But I fear that the present movement is not going to do what’s needed. Four years ago I circulated reasons for this view. I recently made an effort to get current information from various people in the movement and I fear the case for doubt is even stronger today. Here is a brief indication of my main concerns.

I take it for granted we agree that the global situation requires massive system changes, including scrapping the growth economy, de-growth down to far lower per capita levels of production and consumption than rich countries have today, and the market must be prevented from determining our fate. These things cannot be done unless there is transition to a basic social pattern involving mostly small, highly self sufficient and self governing and collectivist communities that maximise use of local resources to meet local needs … and which are content with very frugal material lifestyles. Only settlements of this general kind can get the per capital resource rates down sufficiently while ensuring ecological sustainability and a high quality of life for all. (Those rates will probably have to go down to 10% of their present levels: For the reasoning see TSW: 2017a.) This does not mean deprivation or hardship or abandoning high tech, universities, sophisticated medical facilities etc. (For the detail TSW 2018a.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Three Crises That Will Synchronize a Global Meltdown by 2025

June 6, 2018

The Three Crises That Will Synchronize a Global Meltdown by 2025

We’re going to get a synchronized global dynamic, but it won’t be “growth” and stability, it will be DeGrowth and instability.

To understand the synchronized global meltdown that is on tap for the 2021-2025 period, we must first stipulate the relationship of “money” to energy:“money” is nothing more than a claim on future energy. If there’s no energy available to fuel the global economy, “money” will have little value.

The conventional economists assure us that energy is now a small part of the overall economy, so fluctuations in energy prices will have a limited effect on global prosperity. But what’s left of global prosperity when energy is unable to meet current demand at any price that consumers can afford?

The current “economic understanding” of energy and “money” is an artifact of a unique period of cheap, abundant fossil fuels. It is an article of faith in economics that energy will always become cheaper and more abundant as the pixie-dust of technology is irreversible. By the time fossil fuels become scarce many decades hence, we’ll all have cold-fusion generators, or micro-nuclear power plants or nearly free electricity from solar panels, and so on.

This is of course complete rubbish. To scale up any energy source to replace fossil fuels will require decades and tens of trillions of dollars in capital investment. In other words, energy development is a financial dynamic. Technology is only the first small piece of a much larger puzzle.

This becomes clear when we ponder the unwelcome reality that the fracking miracle has resulted in $250 billion in losses. You mean all those companies lost money exploiting the miracle technologies of fracking?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Breaking the chains of delusion -Technological progress mythologies and the pitfalls of digitalization

May 29, 2018

Breaking the chains of delusion -Technological progress mythologies and the pitfalls of digitalization

When it comes to technological development, I often hear the words: What can be done will be done – sooner or later. Many people think that technological development follows a path directed by quasi-natural laws that head into one and only one direction – called “progress” – which is: to use more technology, more complex technology, more expensive technology, more powerful technology. Now, if this were true, if everything that is technologically feasible will be done one day, humankind and the planet are finished. The detonation of thousands of nuclear warheads and the unleashing of artificial killer creatures manufactured by synthetic biology would wipe out life on earth. Sooner or later.

Technology as mythology

However, this narrative of quasi-automatic, unstoppable, mono-directional development of technology belongs to the realm of mythology. Which technology is developed and which is not, which is used and which is not, all of this is based on decisions made by people, decisions that could look quite different. Let’s take the automobile system as an example. It is perfectly feasible to organize efficient mobility in cities without cars. The technologies for this have existed for more than a hundred years. But it is not done. And there are reasons for this. It is also perfectly doable, to feed the whole world with organic peasant agriculture, and much better than today, to save 30 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions by that and dramatically reduce fresh water use. The technologies for this have existed for a long time as well. But it is not done. And there are also reasons for it. It is also easily doable to communicate over large distances without buying every year or every second year a new pocket computer that is consuming huge amounts of resources. The reasons why this is not done are the same as in the other two examples.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Decolonisation and Degrowth

February 7, 2018

Decolonisation and Degrowth

Why do degrowth scholars use the word “decolonise” to discuss the process of changing the growth imaginary? Isn’t decolonisation about undoing the historical colonisation of land, languages and minds? How do these two uses of the word relate?

This blog post is the result from a discussion held between some participants at a Degrowth Summer School in August 2017. While some parts of this blog post are written to confront degrowth theory, we took the time to write up the discussions around the word “decolonise” because we think of degrowth as a project worth supporting and a community who is open to reflection. We recognise degrowth is an important academic and activist movement, which correctly diagnoses economic growth as a root cause of social and ecological crisis. We would like to see degrowth concepts spread. However, we have a problem with the use of the term decolonisation within degrowth literature.

Among the many ways to explain the degrowth key concepts, one common phrase is the ‘decolonisation of the social imaginary from economic growth’, first proposed by French economist and degrowth philosopher Serge Latouche. Here, the idea of decolonisation is co-opted to convey an idea of degrowth-based liberation.

In this blog post we want to question, whether decolonisation is the right and appropriate word to use. Placing decolonisation into a degrowth definition denies what decolonisation means. It turns it into degrowth jargon. This also doesn’t help alliances between degrowth and decolonisation movements, which we believe are necessary for degrowth to address growth as a global phenomena.

Exploring Decolonisation from Post-Colonial Studies

Let’s start by asking what colonisation and decolonisation mean to us. There are no (and shouldn’t be) universally accepted definitions. It’s not our place here to suggest what decolonisation is and isn’t. But examining a few examples shows that decolonisation doesn’t fit with what the degrowth usage suggests.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The real lesson of the Energiewende is that the German economy uses too much energy to be sustainable and needs to degrow…

February 1, 2018

The real lesson of the Energiewende is that the German economy uses too much energy to be sustainable and needs to degrow…

Implications of a study by Hans Werner Sinn, ifo Institute Munich

For a long time Germany’s attempt to grapple with atomic power, climate change and energy issues through its so called “Energiewende” (Energy Transformation) has been inspirational to many green activists and seen as a process to learn from. The priority given to “clean energy”, to wind and solar in its electrical grid, incentivised by feed in tariffs and favourable prices has taken wind and solar added together to 3.5 % of its energy supply and 16 % of its electrical power generation.

However, there is a long way to go to 100% green energy. 58% of power generation is still by fossil fuels and fossil fuels are still predominant in 78% of energy consumption that is not electrical, for example for transport fuels and non electrical space heating.

No problem, just a matter of time? A lot of activists probably think this but sadly it is not likely to be true. Yes, there are things to learn from Germany’s attempt to make an Energy Transformation. Unfortunately these things are that it will not be easy and it will probably not be possible at all without a considerable reduction in overall energy consumption and/or major new technological breakthroughs in energy storage. Such breakthroughs currently do not look very likely and/or would involve very high costs. Such costs would cripple the German economy in its current form.

This anyway is the conclusion that I draw from a study by one of Germany’s leading economists, Hans Werner Sinn, that appeared in the European Economics Journal, in the summer of 2017.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

From Degrowth to De-Globalization

January 25, 2018

From Degrowth to De-Globalization

By Jim Carter/Pixabay

The rise of far-right globalization criticism requires a new role for the Degrowth movement. ‘Progressive De-Globalization‘ could be the counter-project that is urgently needed.

After the German and Austrian elections, it becomes clear once more that the rise of the new far-right is not a temporary phenomenon. Neither the difficult Brexit negotiations nor the missteps of Donald Trump are stopping new nationalism’s upward trend, as one could have hoped. Consequently, Yannis Varoufakis [1] diagnosed the long-term emergence of a nationalist international: nationalist and far-right authoritarian leaders, parties, movements, NGOs and media that are gaining ground and interconnect on a global scale. They bring about what left-wing mass movements and parties were not able or willing to do in the ten years since the financial crisis: they formulate an alternative to the discredited ideology of neo-liberalism. A strong narrative of national empowerment, paired with religious, racist, anti-feminist and anti-ecological resentments is becoming a serious challenger of neoliberalism’s TINA principle (“There Is No Alternative”). Although the new far-right questions only some aspects of neoliberal economic policy and radicalizes it in other aspects, it nevertheless acts as an ideological countermovement to the neoliberal and post-democratic political model.

The far-right as a Degrowth-phenomenon

The nationalist international has more to do with Degrowth – understood as an empirical state, not as a political demand – than it first seems. Decelerating growth or even stagnation have become the new normal in in the countries of the global North. While neoliberal globalization has created new centers of growth in the global south since the 1980s, growth slowed down in the north. Stagnating wages, precarious jobs, growing inequality – the subjective relationship between economic growth and quality of life eroded. It seems natural to make sense of the new right as a countermovement to the rise of new economic powers. In the western “relegation societies” [2], those forces are gaining in strength that can credibly promise to secure the relative prosperity that is left or even a return to past golden ages.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

De-Growth is Feasible: People Want a New Economy

January 3, 2018

DE-GROWTH IS FEASIBLE: PEOPLE WANT A NEW ECONOMY

Branko Milanovic has written a response to my argument. As I read it, I was struck by two things – both quite significant.

First, Branko now seems to accept the science on how “green growth” is not a thing, and has backed off his assumption that endless growth is (a) possible, and (b) something we should promote. Or at least he has chosen not to defend his earlier claims on this matter. This is quite a shift.

Second, Branko does not insist that growth is necessary in rich nations. In fact, he seems to agree that we can maintain well-being in rich nations while reducing material consumption. And he accepts the notion that we can accomplish this by shifting to a different kind of economy, along the lines of my suggestions. “I do not think that this program is illogical,” he says.

So far, then, we’re on the same page.

But Branko doubles down on one bit of his earlier argument: that degrowth is not politically feasible. “It is just so enormous, outside of anything that we normally can expect to implement, that it verges, I am afraid, on absurdity,” he writes. He claims that people are so penetrated by the ideology of competitive consumerism that they would never voluntarily walk away from the system. So it will be impossible to put degrowth into practice in a democracy.

I do not disagree with Branko that the task is enormous; I have complete empathy with this perspective. Indeed, it is the single greatest problem of our century – how to enable human flourishing while reducing emissions and material throughput – and it demands our total focus. But let me offer three thoughts that give me hope.

1. People are not just consumption bots.

Branko advances a dystopic vision of people who identify totally with the extrinsic values of competitive consumerism and growth.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What happened when Degrowth was discussed in the Catalan Parliament?

October 10, 2017

What happened when Degrowth was discussed in the Catalan Parliament?

The “estelada decrecentista”, or the Catalan flag with the degrowth symbol instead of the usual star, from “Casdeiro” – click for original context.

Introduction from SSM.

We recently carried a translation of an interview with Sergi Saladié who introduced a debate on degrowth into the Catalan parliament. Catalonia is very much in the news at the moment with the referendum held by the governing coalition and the violent repression by the Spanish State. We do not have a view on this matter, noting that independence has not had a majority following in Catalonia but that the disproportionate actions of the Spanish government could well change this. We believe in the principle of subsidiarity, that decisions should be taken as locally as is feasible – some very local, some on a supra-national level. The question of separation is one for all the population of Catalonia. But whatever the degree of autonomy that eventually emerges, the question of the limits to growth, together with that of material resource flows in and out of the territory, cannot be escaped. The initiative of Sergi Saladié is therefore relevant to our own situation in a city (or better, bio-) region, and so is the reception that it received. In the following piece, Antonio Tureil analyses the debate, with particular focus on the arguments put forward by the more conventional socialist from the ERC, Oriol Junqueras. In our own parliament we have an initiative in the form of the All Party Group on Limits to Growth, but to my knowledge the MPs listed as members have not themselves adopted an explicit degrowth stance. More widely, gross misconceptions are routinely voiced, not dissimilar from those that Antionio Turiel takes apart.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Puerto Rico: A Potential Experiment in Degrowth?

September 26, 2017

Puerto Rico: A Potential Experiment in Degrowth?

I’m sure that some will criticize the insensitivity of the timing of this essay. How can you talk about Puerto Rico, climate change, and degrowth at this tragic time? But what time is better than now? There are only going to be more disasters and more tragic times ahead. And if after each one we spend billions on rebuilding costly infrastructure, the resulting carbon emissions are going to contribute to disasters elsewhere in the future. So when better than now to raise this—before billions of dollars are spent rebuilding Puerto Rico (and Houston and Florida too) in the same unsustainable, unresilient way that consumer economies have pursued thus far?

Perhaps the island’s debt crisis combined with this hurricane offers the perfect opportunity for Puerto Rico to develop in a different direction. Perhaps Maria can serve as the start of Puerto Rico’s “special period” where a simpler, more equitable, more sustainable pathway—and yes, poorer in consumer terms—is chosen.

In other words, could this disaster serve as the trigger of an intentional redirection of the island’s development? Could Puerto Rico degrow, and in the process bring about a more sustainable society?

The Benefits of Degrowth

First of all: why should Puerto Rico degrow?

The social and ecological costs of our fossil-fueled consumer culture are apparent—in disease burdens, in obesity rates, in CO2 emissions, and in other ecological costs. Choosing to move away from the consumer economic model could reduce obesity and connected disease burdens, reduce ecological impacts, reduce the stresses of modern day busy-ness, and help rebuild community as people once again work together in community and create webs of interdependence.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

From Growth to Degrowth: a Brief History

July 10, 2017

From Growth to Degrowth: a Brief History

The notion of economic growth as a regular, ongoing, self-sustained process no longer holds up to critical analysis. Even during what’s been called “The Glorious Thirty” – the years between the end of World War II and the 1974 oil crisis – growth occurred almost solely in industrialized countries and involved a minority of the world population; it was built on the senseless waste and pillaging of limited natural resources, access to cheap fossil fuels, dependency on killer technologies and the creation of global inequalities and imbalances that would prove to be unbearable and unsustainable.

When it became evident that geophysical limits could bring growth to a halt, the concepts of durable or sustainable development were proposed. The 1987 Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, advocated for “clean” growth that guarantees ecological sustainability, development and social justice all at the same time. This proposal became the backbone of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. However, the explosion of inequalities and the fact that we have gone beyond the ecological limits of the planet have rendered hopes for sustainable development obsolete.

With economic and financial globalization, the integration of the world markets is said to be what will achieve development, which often involves countries assuming massive debts and making huge payments to service them. These, in turn, drive forced growth to guarantee repayment. It is thus no longer about balancing the three pillars of sustainable development – growth, social justice and the sustainability of the planet – but rather entrusting the task of caring for society and the Earth to the economy and the market.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Do We Design a DeGrowth Economy?

February 24, 2017

How Do We Design a DeGrowth Economy?

The conventional objections to DeGrowth boil down to: it isn’t the status quo, so it can’t work. Actually, it’s the status quo that isn’t working.

I’ve written about DeGrowth for many years, including Degrowth, Anti-Consumerism and Peak Consumption (May 9, 2013), Degrowth Solutions: Half-Farmer, Half-X (July 19, 2014) and And the Next Big Thing Is … Degrowth? (April 7, 2014)

These are the basic concepts of Degrowth:

1. Consumerism is psychological/ spiritual junk food (French: malbouffe) that actively reduces well-being (bien-etre) rather than increases it.

2. Better rather than more: well-being is increased by everything that cannot be commoditized by a market economy or financialized by a cartel-state financial machine– friendship, family, community, self-cultivation. The goal of economic and social growth should be better, not more. On a national scale, the cancerous-growth measured by gross domestic product (GDP) should be replaced with gross domestic happiness/ gross national happiness (GNH).

3. A recognition that resources are not infinite, despite claims to the contrary. For one example of many: China Is Plundering the Planet’s Seas (The Atlantic). Indeed, all the evidence suggests that access to cheap energy only speeds up the depletion and despoliation of every other resource.

4. The unsustainability of consumerist “growth” that’s dependent on resource depletion funded by financialization (i.e. the endless expansion of credit and phantom collateral). (This is covered in greater depth in my short book Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform.)

5. The diminishing returns on private consumption and “bridges to nowhere” (crony-capitalist public consumption).

6. The failure of neoliberal capitalism and communism alike in their pursuit of growth at any cost.

Degrowth is heresy in what John Michael Greer calls the religion of progress (i.e. growth). The faith that growth equals progress is akin to the Cargo Cult of Keynesianism, the notion that expanding debt exponentially to drive diminishing returns of growth is not only necessary but a moral imperative.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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