Degrowth: Adjusting Economy to Life
(RATHER THAN VICE VERSA)
by Anthony T. Fiscella
How do we define “progress,” “development,” or even “happiness”? For many decades—and to the peril of many species on Earth (including humans)—politicians, industry, and most media in the United States have inextricably tied answers to those questions to economic growth. According to this formula, an expanding market resolves all problems ranging from war to energy scarcity. Growing economies bring growing prosperity for everyone (eventually). This ideology pertains even to environmental movements where the two dominant frameworks—“eco-modernism” (i.e., technology will solve the eco-crises) and “sustainable development” (i.e., green economies plus social justice)—both advocate an ever-expanding economy on a planet of finite resources. This belief keeps our consumer-oriented society constantly consuming more and more even while wondering: “Why hasn’t it worked?”, “Why hasn’t recycling done what we hoped it would?”, “Why do global temperatures and ocean water levels keep rising?” and “Why do thousands of plant and animal species keep disappearing each year?” In fact, rises in carbon emissions neatly follow rises in GDP.
A minority viewpoint, yet increasingly powerful one, offers a strikingly plain response: our expanding economies themselves increase carbon emissions, destroy natural habitats, and threaten countless species. This view, known as degrowth, insists that we need to topple the ideology of the economic growth paradigm and decouple economic expansion from health, prosperity, and social progress. According to degrowth principles, we need radically different means of assessing the welfare of society. Many people would feel more happiness and harmony in their lives if they had less money but more time—if they could meet their basic needs. Subsequently, degrowth calls for a radical redistribution of wealth for all people to have the option of working less and consuming less.
As a movement among activists and scholars, the idea of degrowth (from the French décroissance) formally took hold at the first international degrowth conference in Paris in 2008. Its ideas and basic premises go back as far as the early 1970s in the Global North and have roots in indigenous societies back to time immemorial. After all, Native Americans had far fewer material technologies at their disposal than a typical urban household, yet they worked less hours to secure their basic needs. They enjoyed the opportuni¬\ties to travel without passports, to resolve conflicts without police or prisons, and to build with—rather than at the expense of—nature. In South America, Native principles that advocate a collective life in shared simplicity have acquired the name Buen Vivir. As with the southern African concept of Ubuntu, Buen Vivir views humans as embedded within nature instead of separate from it.
Similarly, John Africa (1931-1985) founded the MOVE Organization in Philadelphia in the 1970s to defend Mother Nature, animals, oceans, and all life from the constant threats of industry and economic “development.” Their inner-city experiment in communal, sober, low-tech living constituted an early foray into modern degrowth alternatives. Most degrowth scholars, however, trace their lineage to people such as priest and deschooling activist Ivan Illich (1926-2002) and Romanian-American economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1906-1994), who, each in their own way, advocated ridding ourselves of addictions to unnecessary and destructive technologies whether luxury cars, plastics, or weapons of war.
According to Georgescu-Roegen, we could ostensibly revert to a “steady state” economy (in which the growth rate remains flat, neither increasing nor decreasing), yet, as we already consume far beyond our means, we would need first to sustain a declining economy until we reached a genuinely sustainable level of production and consumption. Illich emphasized that our current paradigm makes poverty unnecessarily miserable by supplying health care that makes people sick, education that makes people stupid, and courts that deprive people of justice. Such a system, he argued, made people ever dependent upon commodities. John Africa saw this as an extension of a misguided sense of identity. He argued that until we identify our personal lives as one with all life, we will continue to mistakenly destroy ourselves in our attempts to heal.
Right or wrong, degrowth offers a very different approach to how we answer some basic questions regarding ecology, economy, and life. (For more info, see www.degrowth.info).
How do we define “progress,” “development,” or even “happiness”? For many decades—and to the peril of many species on Earth (including humans)—politicians, industry, and most media in the United States have inextricably tied answers to those questions to economic growth. According to this formula, an expanding market resolves all problems ranging from war to energy scarcity. Growing economies bring growing prosperity for everyone (eventually). This ideology pertains even to environmental movements where the two dominant frameworks—“eco-modernism” (i.e., technology will solve the eco-crises) and “sustainable development” (i.e., green economies plus social justice)—both advocate an ever-expanding economy on a planet of finite resources. This belief keeps our consumer-oriented society constantly consuming more and more even while wondering: “Why hasn’t it worked?”, “Why hasn’t recycling done what we hoped it would?”, “Why do global temperatures and ocean water levels keep rising?” and “Why do thousands of plant and animal species keep disappearing each year?” In fact, rises in carbon emissions neatly follow rises in GDP.
A minority viewpoint, yet increasingly powerful one, offers a strikingly plain response: our expanding economies themselves increase carbon emissions, destroy natural habitats, and threaten countless species. This view, known as degrowth, insists that we need to topple the ideology of the economic growth paradigm and decouple economic expansion from health, prosperity, and social progress. According to degrowth principles, we need radically different means of assessing the welfare of society. Many people would feel more happiness and harmony in their lives if they had less money but more time—if they could meet their basic needs. Subsequently, degrowth calls for a radical redistribution of wealth for all people to have the option of working less and consuming less.
As a movement among activists and scholars, the idea of degrowth (from the French décroissance) formally took hold at the first international degrowth conference in Paris in 2008. Its ideas and basic premises go back as far as the early 1970s in the Global North and have roots in indigenous societies back to time immemorial. After all, Native Americans had far fewer material technologies at their disposal than a typical urban household, yet they worked less hours to secure their basic needs. They enjoyed the opportuni¬\ties to travel without passports, to resolve conflicts without police or prisons, and to build with—rather than at the expense of—nature. In South America, Native principles that advocate a collective life in shared simplicity have acquired the name Buen Vivir. As with the southern African concept of Ubuntu, Buen Vivir views humans as embedded within nature instead of separate from it.
Similarly, John Africa (1931-1985) founded the MOVE Organization in Philadelphia in the 1970s to defend Mother Nature, animals, oceans, and all life from the constant threats of industry and economic “development.” Their inner-city experiment in communal, sober, low-tech living constituted an early foray into modern degrowth alternatives. Most degrowth scholars, however, trace their lineage to people such as priest and deschooling activist Ivan Illich (1926-2002) and Romanian-American economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1906-1994), who, each in their own way, advocated ridding ourselves of addictions to unnecessary and destructive technologies whether luxury cars, plastics, or weapons of war.
According to Georgescu-Roegen, we could ostensibly revert to a “steady state” economy (in which the growth rate remains flat, neither increasing nor decreasing), yet, as we already consume far beyond our means, we would need first to sustain a declining economy until we reached a genuinely sustainable level of production and consumption. Illich emphasized that our current paradigm makes poverty unnecessarily miserable by supplying health care that makes people sick, education that makes people stupid, and courts that deprive people of justice. Such a system, he argued, made people ever dependent upon commodities. John Africa saw this as an extension of a misguided sense of identity. He argued that until we identify our personal lives as one with all life, we will continue to mistakenly destroy ourselves in our attempts to heal.
Right or wrong, degrowth offers a very different approach to how we answer some basic questions regarding ecology, economy, and life. (For more info, see www.degrowth.info).
