{"id":16370,"date":"2016-01-12T13:17:11","date_gmt":"2016-01-12T18:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16370"},"modified":"2016-01-12T13:17:11","modified_gmt":"2016-01-12T18:17:11","slug":"my-journey-toward-degrowth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16370","title":{"rendered":"My Journey toward degrowth"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n

My Journey toward degrowth<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>By Sam Bliss\u00a0<\/cite><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Growth means a process of increasing in physical size. When we think of economic growth, it is difficult to fathom what exactly grows, since \u2018the economy\u2019 is\u00a0an invented concept<\/a>\u00a0that describes billions of human interactions as if they were one giant entity.<\/p>\n

But gross domestic product is a rate \u2014 the total money value of economic activity per year \u2014 and thus growth really means acceleration. Degrowth, according to this understanding, is slowing down.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0Giorgos Kallis<\/a>\u00a0calls\u00a0political ecological economics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Setting aside some of my big ambitions \u2014 studying,\u00a0writing<\/a>, trying to amass\u00a0twitter followers<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 to simply move slowly evolved my understanding of how to degrow. Maybe degrowth doesn\u2019t mean constantly, insistently pressing to spread and advance our small movement. And maybe that\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n

The bicycle is a tool for degrowth<\/strong><\/p>\n

Critical philosopher Ivan Illich\u00a0writes<\/a>\u00a0that bicycles enable people to \u201cbecome masters of their own movements without blocking those of their fellows.\u201d Of all modes of transport, the bicycle\u00a0consumes the least energy<\/a>\u00a0carrying humans a given distance.<\/p>\n

Choosing to travel by bicycle disobeys the growth economy\u2019s unwritten mandate to continually speed up the pace of life. Political scientist-anthropologist James C. Scott might call it an act of\u00a0everyday resistance<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 especially if we ride bikes every day.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Journey toward degrowth By Sam Bliss\u00a0 Growth means a process of increasing in physical size. When we think of economic growth, it is difficult to fathom what exactly grows, since \u2018the economy\u2019 is\u00a0an invented concept\u00a0that describes billions of human interactions as if they were one giant entity. But gross domestic product is a rate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[203,240,4549,391,11641],"class_list":["post-16370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-degrowth","tag-economic-growth","tag-gross-domestic-product","tag-growth","tag-sam-bliss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16371,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16370\/revisions\/16371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}