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​Featured Articles:
Environment, Food Security, Conflict Prevention

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).
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  • Home
  • PRIORITIES
    • Anti-War & International Law
    • Social Justice
    • Environment, Food Security, Conflict Prevention
  • EVENTS
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
  • JOIN
  • Nebraska Report
    • Current Issue
    • Archives
    • Featured Articles >
      • Articles: Anti-War & International Law >
        • Oct Nov Dec 2022 Civil War II Continued
        • July Aug Sept 2022 An Underground Civil War and Control of Nebraska
        • Apr June 2022 Sauce for Both Goose and Gander
        • Feb March 2022 Peace and Disarmament
        • Nov/Dec 2021 Bloated Pentagon Budget
        • July/August 2021 Nebraska a Nuclear Sponge?
        • May/June 2021 Amid Widespread Disease, Death and Poverty, Major World Powers Increased Their Military Spending in 2020
        • Mar/Apr 2021 Assessing the Environmental Risk of the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent
        • Jan/Feb 2021 United Nations Outlaws Nuclear Weapons
      • Articles: Social Justice >
        • Oct Nov Dec 2022 Malcolm X : Celebrate with Action
        • July Aug Sept 2022 Omaha Together One Community Leads Statewide Effort
        • Apr June 2022 Niskithe Prayer Camp: Our Next Steps
        • Feb March 2022 Land Back: Everything Back
        • July/August 2021 The Critical Race Theory Controversy
        • May/June 2021 The Scourge of White Privilege
        • Mar/April 2021 LAND BACK: A Movement, A Spirit, A Practice
        • Jan/Feb 2021 Conversations on Racism and Anti-Racism
      • Articles: Environment, Food Security, ​Conflict Prevention >
        • Oct Nov Dec 2022 Degrowth: Connecting the Dots
        • July Aug Sept 2022 Degrowth: Adjusting Economy to Life (RATHER THAN VICE VERSA)
        • Apr June 2022 AltEn Nightmare Continues
        • Feb March 2022 Poison in Nebraska
        • Nov Dec 2021 Build Back Better Statement
        • July/August 2021 Change. It's What's for Dinner.
        • May/June 2021 Solve Climate by 2030
        • Mar/April 2021 The Future of Food
        • Jan/Feb 2021 Sen. Tom Brandt Introduces “Farm to School Program Act”
      • Articles: What's HOT in Global Warming >
        • Oct Nov Dec 2022 Climatic Gut Punches
        • July Aug Sept 2022 Where Was the Supreme Court When the Earth Burned?
        • Apr June 2022 War, Nationalism and Climate Change
        • Feb/March 2022 We are Asphyxiating the Ocean
        • Nov/Dec 2021 Is Global Warming Inevitable?
        • July/August 2021 Hitting The Spot
        • May/June 2021 Energy and Environment: Some Tough Questions
        • Mar/April 2021 Where Was Our Warming? It Was AWOL in the Arctic
      • Articles: HARD TRUTH >
        • Oct Nov Dec 2022 Science of Evil
        • July Aug Sept 2022 Top Five Big Lies from the Right
        • Apr June 2022 Building Beloved Communities
        • Feb March 2022 Thich Nhat and Hope
        • Nov Dec 2021 A Tribute to Tim Rinne
        • June/July 2021 A Methadone Testimonial
        • May/June 2021 Building Resilience in Post-Pandemic Rural Nebraska
        • Mar/April 2021 Nebraska is having a Flint, Michigan moment
  • ABOUT US
    • NFP History
    • Board Members
    • Chapters
    • Staff
  • Contact Us
  • NFP Scholarships
  • DONATE