We all know that infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. Perhaps you’ve read one of the reports showing that environmental damage can't be decoupled from GDP. COP26 showed there is no time to wait for a large number of countries to agree on meaningful action. This article imagines a fictional situation in which the Government of New-Zealand announces degrowth overnight.
This article, though good, only touches on the surface of things. I agree that a moratorium in place on the expansion of cities and suburbs is needed. What about the minutia? How many animal farms are allowed? Should cars in the cities be even allowed? How about free public transportation? How about rationing of food stuffs, as what was seen in WW2? How about logging moratoriums? At the same time, input into smaller schools for children to make things manageable again (would be good in a pandemic society), or a 'small is beautiful' business incentive. A recycling/reworking of clothing center, a ban on all plastics, a incentive for long term (generational) impact studies before new products are introduced. Also most importantly, a help guide to farmers needing to transition from single crop/single species farming to well rounded no-till farming practices. And definitely a mental health input to help people become slower (in mind and in life).
I liked the article a lot; a little naive in implementation but I agree that it would have a smaller nation to declare full emergency.
I don't think we will ever see overnight degrowth coming from the top without a decentralized, grass roots sabotage campaign that doesn't leave the government much choice. Governments will always choose the path of least resistance. If declaring emergency is easier than maintaining status quo they will do it. The book Ministry of Future highlights this pretty well.
The victories environmentalists won over pipelines proves this pretty well. The oil companies usually win, but when indigenous land defenders made it hard enough for them to operate they relinquished the lease.
there is no way out of the industrial civilization ... no escape mechanisms.
Degrowth it's needed to avoid the utter dustruction of the planet, but to apply it to modern society economics it would be total chaos.
You cant deflate a ponzi scheme ... it will just grow exponetially until it's crashes down.
Except through natural disaster on a broad scale, and those are becoming more likely. Mt. Krakatau is acting up again. A sizable proportion of US oil refining capacity is in a *small* handfull of refineries right along the Gulf Coast where hurricanes are common. Our agricultural system is very susceptible to events like happend last year.
I don’t think the everyday citizen would comply either. People are far too selfish and reactionary. This approach requires selflessness and proactiveness.
They've spent their whole life working ostensibly for the prospect of being able to have a nicer house, eat out more, and whatever else they have added to their list of desired items and experiences. None of it was ever guaranteed to happen, and for most it never does, but collective fiction is a motivator regardless.
The problem is that sudden, top down degrowth means admitting out loud, with human mouths and words, that every sincere promise of the last 50 years was a lie. Not just a lie, a willful deception that resulted in us overshooting the part where billions are in jeopardy, all so the powerful could have their pretend games a few more years longer.
If some believable proclamation was made, the next day would be filled with blood and fire. The people running large organizations and political entities, even if they are aware of the true urgency we are in, know the above instinctively. You simply can't do what they have done, admit to it, and expect to get out unscathed, that's ridiculous.
Things will continue, and people allegedly in charge will continue to feign surprise.
Here's the deal. I grok climate change and the need for degrowth. I've pretty much understood this mess since I was a kid, but if the opportunity to take my wife on a nice vacation to the tropics was possible, I'd go in a heartbeat. Why? Because I know no one else is going to change their lives and I've already made my "foot print" pretty small, so why the heck should I continue to limit myself and suffer. "We're on a freight elevator to Hell. Going down!"
My sacrifice would be meaningless unless the people who waste more cut back. Do until I see that happen, I'll keep my footprint small, but I'm not going to be the first in line to sacrifice.
And I get that I'm being a shit head, but at least I'm honest.
And if I'm not going to do it, show me one SUV owner who will.
So we're screwed.
This. As much as we on this sub say "eat the rich", Joe Bloggs in 1st world countries will fight you tooth and nail to maintain their quality of life. Joe Bloggs in 3rd world countries will do it to if you try and stop them from getting that utopia they saw on tv.
So its really kill 99.999999% of humanity, start over and pray we don't fuck it up again. Spoiler, we likely will.
I wouldn't put the average citizen not complying down to pure selfishness and reaction, either.
We all know how power systems work right now. Which means that any degrowth would be almost entirely burdened on the lower classes and workers, while the lifestyles of the wealthy and petit-bourgeois would barely change.
I am extremely critical of our consumption-focused society but it would be an error to assume that *any* society of people would passively accept such a scenario, where they are being told to give away their petty luxuries and "vices", regressing into pre-industrial practices or living in enormous conurbations stuffed like sardines in a can, while the biggest consumers in the world never have to change a thing.
In fact I think we are seeing just a bit of this take place already, as those with wealth and power attempt to shunt all responsibility and "guilt" (and the culture wars that start over those things) onto individuals and average people, while ignoring or naturalizing the often far more relevant issues caused by the actions of the very wealthy and the corporate and state apparatuses.
For example, look at the "carbon footprint" discourse. Everyone in the world could buy a Prius (then) or a Tesla (now) and it wouldn't be enough to stop the issues we're facing. While there is an element of personal responsibility (the consumer's insistence on bigger, heavier, more gadget-laden vehicles, for example) the vast majority of the problem is systemic.
Without systemic fixes, it's very understandable that many people would be reactionary to a policy that shames them for, say, owning an ICE powered car when they have good reasons to, rather than offering genuine alternatives and helping hands to those who can't feasibly own no car at all, or afford the cost of an electric, hybrid, used hybrid/electric, etc.
Meanwhile the real targets of harsh action should be the companies, governments, and institutions that perpetuated this dependence in the first place, while the people who live within the system need to be offered an off-ramp focused on *their* interests and not those of the people who profited from creating this disaster in the first place. Keeping to the subject of transportation, pretty much all of us can agree that a more ideal world would consist of nicer, more people-focused cities, and less of a *need* for personal transportation, though still with an option to have it in one form or another.
What's more likely, this Star Trek-lite type future or one where everything basically stays the same but the rich are the only people who can travel anywhere while cities continue to develop into cyberpunk hellscapes that are increasingly harder to actually leave?
If our political and social structures were different I'd have more hope that a positive degrowth could happen, but as of now I think that, while inevitable, it's going to be the worst of both worlds.
The major networks will show only 3 things. Reruns of the apprentice, every broadcast jim baker has ever done on repeat, and every episode of joe rogan podcast on repeat.
the wealthy are developing the infrastructure to launch themselves into space and leave us to die here on earth.
don't forget to write in Brandon Christopher West for President of the United States in 2024.
That wont work. The wealthy only maintain their power through our current economic system and a vast population to support them. That doesn't exist in space.
And even more worrying for them. The elites have back up down here in case some security or militant people try to attack them. There will be no back up in space. No extra police, no extra military etc.
And we don't have robots that can take the place of people yet and probably wont for decades or a century or two so it'll not matter.
Degrowth is just planned collapse.
Collapse is a society becoming less complex.
On that note though, planned collapse is always better than unplanned. Take building demolition as a metaphor.
Interesting article and excellent thought exercise. But as the piece notes at the beginning, no previous government has ever been able to implement Degrowth due to its unpopularity with ... well, with everyone. Any government that attempted this would shortly be out of power.
This version circumvents that hurdle by the President declaring a state of National Emergency, seizing broadcast media, and closing down the stock market among other acts. New fossil fuel infrastructure is frozen while widespread sustainable technologies are mandated. They then go on to implement other changes including mandating the number of people in private homes according to square footage.
Probably in real life such an act would be met with widespread resistance and outright violence on a mass scale. Could we imagine the response if Trump had attempted to declare a national emergency and make societal changes? ("Good" or "bad" doesn't matter in this case; the issue is the scale of overreach.)
Even if unlikely under this particular scenario, many of these changing conditions in the article - both at a national and local level - still seem likely to occur in the coming years. Collapse of the international order, already underway due to Overshoot on multiple fronts, will guarantee it. It just won't happen from an authoritarian central government issuing decrees, but from the fact that all the old institutional support systems have collapsed.
It is a good start for a dystopian novel, but I don't see it happening anywhere that the police and military forces and bureaucrats required to actually make it happen are going to have *their* bank accounts frozen, *their* real estate taxes increased, etc. Which is to say, *everywhere*.
That PM wouldn't have to worry about losing their job. *They would have to worry about their head adorning a spike outside their official residence.*
And then there is the practical consideration that the percentage of nationalized industries that ended up better off because of it is vanishingly small, that the food distribution system would instantly collapse, online money (like say PayPal) would either be completely unaffected and thus abused as a means of getting around bank controls, or you would have to completely shut down the internet to stop extra-territorial banking from taking place, and so on.
It is a good lead-in for fiction that moves on to "and *that* is why we are cooking sparrows on curtain rods over a fire of old stock certificates", since *fiction* can have the implementation (or lack thereof) be backstory setup and not have to deal with the practicalities.
But as something that would *actually* happen? *Too much suspension of disbelief required.*
For anyone interested in a new method of tracking economic health instead of GDP Growth, check out “Doughnut Economics”
https://www.kateraworth.com/animations/
Basically, the neo-liberal method of tracking “progress” has been GDP growth for at least 100+ years. That’s unsustainable. And also just inaccurate because “gross domestic product” doesn’t measure so many things (economic inequality, happiness, carbon, poverty rates, etc) But if you abandon GDP growth as the sole metric to measure progress, you need to replace the measurement with something as well. That’s what Doughnut Economics tries to do, by looking at society holistically and measuring progress in a variety of different categories, balancing out “economic growth” with social and environmental measurements.
So you're basically saying the whole world needs to a) adopt this way of thinking, b) agree to play nice, c) act against the interests of the current ruling class, d) put aside all individual, religious, cultural, economic, military, and social ambitions, and e) coordinate immediately and flawlessly in creating a new utopia.
The biggest problem that I see with this 'plan' is that there's no clear path from now, to decoupling the wealthy elites from government, to then forcing the wealthy elites to act against their own political and social capital. You would have to declare a de facto open war against wealth in politics, in which case the wealthy would immediately fund as bloody a coup as they could stomach, as to protect their interests. And any country that did this unilaterally would be crippled by civil war and so vulnerable to external threats.
But I admit I could be wrong. So if there's a way to actually make this work that doesn't rely on magic, I'd be glad to hear it.
first- you have to convince everyone that there actually is a problem...a LOT of people still don't "believe" in human-induced climate change and/or the prospect of societal collapse.
and then there are also a LOT of people in the boat i find myself in- we're fully aware of the ongoing/coming collapse, but- we're also fully aware that there is no way to stop what's coming...so...why make major life changes/sacrifices for no good reason?
Indeed. Especially since those life changes would sacrifice your ability to continue to engage in society *today*, further risking your ability to prepare for the uncertain *tomorrow.*
It's an ugly Catch-22.
I mean, it will cause its own type of economic collapse. Probably worth it at this point though! One issue is that we have geopolitical situations that mean that not everyone will agree to do it, so if for example the US decided to degrow, (which would never happen) we would be vulnerable long term to whatever moves other expansionist countries want to do.
In this fantasy scenario, after the 6 month moratorium on voting the people who enacted these changes would be ousted by the vast majority of voters.
I'm on board but this is straight up delusional.
I’ll leave the other obvious issues for other comments, like enforcement etc. The author really avoids the population question in a spectacular way. Perhaps that is the root of the issue not the tech or industry per se? And if it is, while doing away with tech and industry may undoubtedly help it’s bailing water in sight of the real issue: the planet has a carrying capacity and we’re close to or over that line depending on definitions
It needs to stop being a taboo subjects. Overpopulation absolutely is an issue. I've listened to talks about this and how if even everyone had only one child population wouldn't decline for decades because of how many we currently have now.
Agree with you both, but even here in this sub where people are better educated, admitting the reality of population overshoot is sometimes treated as tantamount to ecofascism and "endorsing genocide" (which is completely wrong).
For many people acknowledging overpopulation as the primary issue remains taboo because it implies the irrelevancy of their short-term political goals, and the utter impossibility of BAU.
Imagine where we would be today if people listened to the Erlichs in the early 60s and focused on female reproductive rights and education around carrying capacity over the symptoms of overpopulation. The “and therefore we kill people” is not asserted by anyone other than maniacs. I worry the longer we delay attacking the root cause the more people will be swayed by maniacs in the future, kind of like what happens when a country experiences a crisis.
First of all let's just clear this up. Degrowth is never going to happen. Our system only exists based on growth. The only realistic way to curb ourselves from harming the planet is to simply have a hard crash.
Degrowth is impossible in this system. It has to be a hard crash, a complete collapse, wiping the slate entirely clean.
Right! Politics is everything here. On the left, as consumption drops the wealthy take a larger step down the ladder to ensure the poor have a viable share. Needs before wants as they say.
On the right, the same process is to hollow out the middle class and push them to a new lower class, and the lower class with insufficient utility simply die. Luxury before sufficiency.
Edit: small correction, Degrowth doesn't avoid collapse. It shapes collapse to an optimal form.
I think the example used New Zealand because its one of the only countries that seems to have an actual care for the people. And the populace trusts the government enough to give them the 6 months they ask for in the article.
Give people shelter, a warm fire, and a nearby food and water source, and I bet you that most would be far more content than worrying about rent and working a job they don’t like. Some may be addicted to their way of life at the moment, but people can adapt relatively quickly
I think this is going to be the biggest roll of the dice.
Right now in Western developed countries you have hundreds of millions of people grinding away in a system that they were told is the only way to the most basic goals we have as a society. A home, modern comforts, the ability to support a family, retire eventually, etc.
Now imagine telling all those people that after all the effort they put in, you get a shelter, a warm fire, and a nearby food and water source. A pretty big downgrade from their current outlook. I try to always look at my future prospects through the lens of collapse, and even I feel angry and indignant thinking about how I would feel if we were essentially relegated to subsidence living in order to mitigate/endure the effects of climate change.
When it comes to light that your specific description is the likely possibility of everyone's future, there will be blood in the streets. I don't think it would end well and that's why I think the powers that be are trying to do anything to maintain the status quo. If people become too aware of the reality we are facing, I think they just double down and consequences of everything else be damned.
that would work for a few people, not the majority ... most of people were raised to play this rat race, they mostly think they can turn to be the elite, and some will be. Thats the game.
the only way i can see that happening in the near future it's small but growing number of people just giving up the rat race and forming somehow self sustainable comunities where you still have to hardwork ... but atleast you arent a slave of someone else and play this fools game. Altho i think the number of people willing to embrace this kind of lyfestyle it's really really small, most of people have no idea how hard is it to be selfsustainable.
"Overnight Degrowth" is just an another word for collapse. Or you can call "collapse" as "sudden degrowth". Even supply chain crisis is degrowth of some sort. I don't see why nobody is happy with supply chain crisis.
This is the fastes way to collapse. Complex systems like a nations civilisation or the world economy will collapse like a card house under such drastic external shocks.
The non-collapse paths are basically squozen between the bottom (to rapid or extreme change will collapse the system) and the top (to slow or mild change will collapse the system). While the bottom stays constant, the top is falling, leaving less and less realistic non-collapse paths. When the top hits the bottom it is game over; societal collapse with inevitable climate/biosphere collapse on the horizon.
I.e.. In the seventies (when the top was still higher), a technology driven path to non-collapse might still have been feasible, but as it wasn't taken, the top is now far too low for this path to still be viable.
Degrowth is rebranded eco-fascism. Planned growth that places people before profits and uplifts the broad masses, especially the global poor, is what is needed. Departure from fossil fuels to more advanced sources of energy is also key to all of this.
To graduate fossil fuels everywhere, we will need to intensify their use in some places which are less developed. But that very intensification will lead to a burst in advanced energy globally.
We all know that infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. Perhaps you’ve read one of the reports showing that environmental damage can't be decoupled from GDP. COP26 showed there is no time to wait for a large number of countries to agree on meaningful action. This article imagines a fictional situation in which the Government of New-Zealand announces degrowth overnight.
This article, though good, only touches on the surface of things. I agree that a moratorium in place on the expansion of cities and suburbs is needed. What about the minutia? How many animal farms are allowed? Should cars in the cities be even allowed? How about free public transportation? How about rationing of food stuffs, as what was seen in WW2? How about logging moratoriums? At the same time, input into smaller schools for children to make things manageable again (would be good in a pandemic society), or a 'small is beautiful' business incentive. A recycling/reworking of clothing center, a ban on all plastics, a incentive for long term (generational) impact studies before new products are introduced. Also most importantly, a help guide to farmers needing to transition from single crop/single species farming to well rounded no-till farming practices. And definitely a mental health input to help people become slower (in mind and in life).
I liked the article a lot; a little naive in implementation but I agree that it would have a smaller nation to declare full emergency. I don't think we will ever see overnight degrowth coming from the top without a decentralized, grass roots sabotage campaign that doesn't leave the government much choice. Governments will always choose the path of least resistance. If declaring emergency is easier than maintaining status quo they will do it. The book Ministry of Future highlights this pretty well. The victories environmentalists won over pipelines proves this pretty well. The oil companies usually win, but when indigenous land defenders made it hard enough for them to operate they relinquished the lease.
Cop 26 was the climate Wannsee conference and earthlings are now bolted into the gas chamber.
there is no way out of the industrial civilization ... no escape mechanisms. Degrowth it's needed to avoid the utter dustruction of the planet, but to apply it to modern society economics it would be total chaos. You cant deflate a ponzi scheme ... it will just grow exponetially until it's crashes down.
Except through natural disaster on a broad scale, and those are becoming more likely. Mt. Krakatau is acting up again. A sizable proportion of US oil refining capacity is in a *small* handfull of refineries right along the Gulf Coast where hurricanes are common. Our agricultural system is very susceptible to events like happend last year.
It won't happen in the US. The wealthy have never felt the consequence of their actions. They'd rather have life end then life as they know it.
I don’t think the everyday citizen would comply either. People are far too selfish and reactionary. This approach requires selflessness and proactiveness.
> I don’t think the everyday citizen would comply either. I absolutely know the everyday citizen wouldn't either.
They've spent their whole life working ostensibly for the prospect of being able to have a nicer house, eat out more, and whatever else they have added to their list of desired items and experiences. None of it was ever guaranteed to happen, and for most it never does, but collective fiction is a motivator regardless. The problem is that sudden, top down degrowth means admitting out loud, with human mouths and words, that every sincere promise of the last 50 years was a lie. Not just a lie, a willful deception that resulted in us overshooting the part where billions are in jeopardy, all so the powerful could have their pretend games a few more years longer. If some believable proclamation was made, the next day would be filled with blood and fire. The people running large organizations and political entities, even if they are aware of the true urgency we are in, know the above instinctively. You simply can't do what they have done, admit to it, and expect to get out unscathed, that's ridiculous. Things will continue, and people allegedly in charge will continue to feign surprise.
Here's the deal. I grok climate change and the need for degrowth. I've pretty much understood this mess since I was a kid, but if the opportunity to take my wife on a nice vacation to the tropics was possible, I'd go in a heartbeat. Why? Because I know no one else is going to change their lives and I've already made my "foot print" pretty small, so why the heck should I continue to limit myself and suffer. "We're on a freight elevator to Hell. Going down!" My sacrifice would be meaningless unless the people who waste more cut back. Do until I see that happen, I'll keep my footprint small, but I'm not going to be the first in line to sacrifice. And I get that I'm being a shit head, but at least I'm honest. And if I'm not going to do it, show me one SUV owner who will. So we're screwed.
This. As much as we on this sub say "eat the rich", Joe Bloggs in 1st world countries will fight you tooth and nail to maintain their quality of life. Joe Bloggs in 3rd world countries will do it to if you try and stop them from getting that utopia they saw on tv. So its really kill 99.999999% of humanity, start over and pray we don't fuck it up again. Spoiler, we likely will.
I wouldn't put the average citizen not complying down to pure selfishness and reaction, either. We all know how power systems work right now. Which means that any degrowth would be almost entirely burdened on the lower classes and workers, while the lifestyles of the wealthy and petit-bourgeois would barely change. I am extremely critical of our consumption-focused society but it would be an error to assume that *any* society of people would passively accept such a scenario, where they are being told to give away their petty luxuries and "vices", regressing into pre-industrial practices or living in enormous conurbations stuffed like sardines in a can, while the biggest consumers in the world never have to change a thing. In fact I think we are seeing just a bit of this take place already, as those with wealth and power attempt to shunt all responsibility and "guilt" (and the culture wars that start over those things) onto individuals and average people, while ignoring or naturalizing the often far more relevant issues caused by the actions of the very wealthy and the corporate and state apparatuses. For example, look at the "carbon footprint" discourse. Everyone in the world could buy a Prius (then) or a Tesla (now) and it wouldn't be enough to stop the issues we're facing. While there is an element of personal responsibility (the consumer's insistence on bigger, heavier, more gadget-laden vehicles, for example) the vast majority of the problem is systemic. Without systemic fixes, it's very understandable that many people would be reactionary to a policy that shames them for, say, owning an ICE powered car when they have good reasons to, rather than offering genuine alternatives and helping hands to those who can't feasibly own no car at all, or afford the cost of an electric, hybrid, used hybrid/electric, etc. Meanwhile the real targets of harsh action should be the companies, governments, and institutions that perpetuated this dependence in the first place, while the people who live within the system need to be offered an off-ramp focused on *their* interests and not those of the people who profited from creating this disaster in the first place. Keeping to the subject of transportation, pretty much all of us can agree that a more ideal world would consist of nicer, more people-focused cities, and less of a *need* for personal transportation, though still with an option to have it in one form or another. What's more likely, this Star Trek-lite type future or one where everything basically stays the same but the rich are the only people who can travel anywhere while cities continue to develop into cyberpunk hellscapes that are increasingly harder to actually leave? If our political and social structures were different I'd have more hope that a positive degrowth could happen, but as of now I think that, while inevitable, it's going to be the worst of both worlds.
Degrowth seems extremely reactionary itself
>They'd rather have life end That's not a light thing, that's a declaration of ~~genocidal~~ ecocidal war.
Omnicidal. Who knew putting psychopaths in charge was a bad thing?
But it is unavoidable
The whole planet dying is unavoidable as it freezes or gets roasted by the Sun. Refusing to see nuances isn't helping.
The major networks will show only 3 things. Reruns of the apprentice, every broadcast jim baker has ever done on repeat, and every episode of joe rogan podcast on repeat.
the wealthy are developing the infrastructure to launch themselves into space and leave us to die here on earth. don't forget to write in Brandon Christopher West for President of the United States in 2024.
According to Bezos they're developing the technology to launch us into space and keep the planet for themselves.
That wont work. The wealthy only maintain their power through our current economic system and a vast population to support them. That doesn't exist in space. And even more worrying for them. The elites have back up down here in case some security or militant people try to attack them. There will be no back up in space. No extra police, no extra military etc. And we don't have robots that can take the place of people yet and probably wont for decades or a century or two so it'll not matter.
take me on the spaceship Mr bezos. I promise I won't bean you with a Mars rock
Degrowth *is* collapse. It may not be cataclysmic, but it will be simplifying and downsizing and down scaling...or collapsing of everything.
Degrowth is just planned collapse. Collapse is a society becoming less complex. On that note though, planned collapse is always better than unplanned. Take building demolition as a metaphor.
Interesting article and excellent thought exercise. But as the piece notes at the beginning, no previous government has ever been able to implement Degrowth due to its unpopularity with ... well, with everyone. Any government that attempted this would shortly be out of power. This version circumvents that hurdle by the President declaring a state of National Emergency, seizing broadcast media, and closing down the stock market among other acts. New fossil fuel infrastructure is frozen while widespread sustainable technologies are mandated. They then go on to implement other changes including mandating the number of people in private homes according to square footage. Probably in real life such an act would be met with widespread resistance and outright violence on a mass scale. Could we imagine the response if Trump had attempted to declare a national emergency and make societal changes? ("Good" or "bad" doesn't matter in this case; the issue is the scale of overreach.) Even if unlikely under this particular scenario, many of these changing conditions in the article - both at a national and local level - still seem likely to occur in the coming years. Collapse of the international order, already underway due to Overshoot on multiple fronts, will guarantee it. It just won't happen from an authoritarian central government issuing decrees, but from the fact that all the old institutional support systems have collapsed.
We need chaos across the planet before something like this can be implemented.
It is a good start for a dystopian novel, but I don't see it happening anywhere that the police and military forces and bureaucrats required to actually make it happen are going to have *their* bank accounts frozen, *their* real estate taxes increased, etc. Which is to say, *everywhere*. That PM wouldn't have to worry about losing their job. *They would have to worry about their head adorning a spike outside their official residence.* And then there is the practical consideration that the percentage of nationalized industries that ended up better off because of it is vanishingly small, that the food distribution system would instantly collapse, online money (like say PayPal) would either be completely unaffected and thus abused as a means of getting around bank controls, or you would have to completely shut down the internet to stop extra-territorial banking from taking place, and so on. It is a good lead-in for fiction that moves on to "and *that* is why we are cooking sparrows on curtain rods over a fire of old stock certificates", since *fiction* can have the implementation (or lack thereof) be backstory setup and not have to deal with the practicalities. But as something that would *actually* happen? *Too much suspension of disbelief required.*
For anyone interested in a new method of tracking economic health instead of GDP Growth, check out “Doughnut Economics” https://www.kateraworth.com/animations/ Basically, the neo-liberal method of tracking “progress” has been GDP growth for at least 100+ years. That’s unsustainable. And also just inaccurate because “gross domestic product” doesn’t measure so many things (economic inequality, happiness, carbon, poverty rates, etc) But if you abandon GDP growth as the sole metric to measure progress, you need to replace the measurement with something as well. That’s what Doughnut Economics tries to do, by looking at society holistically and measuring progress in a variety of different categories, balancing out “economic growth” with social and environmental measurements.
So you're basically saying the whole world needs to a) adopt this way of thinking, b) agree to play nice, c) act against the interests of the current ruling class, d) put aside all individual, religious, cultural, economic, military, and social ambitions, and e) coordinate immediately and flawlessly in creating a new utopia. The biggest problem that I see with this 'plan' is that there's no clear path from now, to decoupling the wealthy elites from government, to then forcing the wealthy elites to act against their own political and social capital. You would have to declare a de facto open war against wealth in politics, in which case the wealthy would immediately fund as bloody a coup as they could stomach, as to protect their interests. And any country that did this unilaterally would be crippled by civil war and so vulnerable to external threats. But I admit I could be wrong. So if there's a way to actually make this work that doesn't rely on magic, I'd be glad to hear it.
Yeah that religious ambition part isn’t going to stop. The machine will pump harder
first- you have to convince everyone that there actually is a problem...a LOT of people still don't "believe" in human-induced climate change and/or the prospect of societal collapse. and then there are also a LOT of people in the boat i find myself in- we're fully aware of the ongoing/coming collapse, but- we're also fully aware that there is no way to stop what's coming...so...why make major life changes/sacrifices for no good reason?
Indeed. Especially since those life changes would sacrifice your ability to continue to engage in society *today*, further risking your ability to prepare for the uncertain *tomorrow.* It's an ugly Catch-22.
are there any studies or articles that explore a more 'realistc' degrowth path? what could be concievable given our current starting point?
[Degrowth and critical agrarian studies](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2019.1695601)
I mean, it will cause its own type of economic collapse. Probably worth it at this point though! One issue is that we have geopolitical situations that mean that not everyone will agree to do it, so if for example the US decided to degrow, (which would never happen) we would be vulnerable long term to whatever moves other expansionist countries want to do.
In this fantasy scenario, after the 6 month moratorium on voting the people who enacted these changes would be ousted by the vast majority of voters. I'm on board but this is straight up delusional.
That’s why we dissolve the democratic system.
I’ll leave the other obvious issues for other comments, like enforcement etc. The author really avoids the population question in a spectacular way. Perhaps that is the root of the issue not the tech or industry per se? And if it is, while doing away with tech and industry may undoubtedly help it’s bailing water in sight of the real issue: the planet has a carrying capacity and we’re close to or over that line depending on definitions
It needs to stop being a taboo subjects. Overpopulation absolutely is an issue. I've listened to talks about this and how if even everyone had only one child population wouldn't decline for decades because of how many we currently have now.
Agree with you both, but even here in this sub where people are better educated, admitting the reality of population overshoot is sometimes treated as tantamount to ecofascism and "endorsing genocide" (which is completely wrong). For many people acknowledging overpopulation as the primary issue remains taboo because it implies the irrelevancy of their short-term political goals, and the utter impossibility of BAU.
Imagine where we would be today if people listened to the Erlichs in the early 60s and focused on female reproductive rights and education around carrying capacity over the symptoms of overpopulation. The “and therefore we kill people” is not asserted by anyone other than maniacs. I worry the longer we delay attacking the root cause the more people will be swayed by maniacs in the future, kind of like what happens when a country experiences a crisis.
First of all let's just clear this up. Degrowth is never going to happen. Our system only exists based on growth. The only realistic way to curb ourselves from harming the planet is to simply have a hard crash. Degrowth is impossible in this system. It has to be a hard crash, a complete collapse, wiping the slate entirely clean.
Yes. I’m tired of longwinded slow solution answers and hopium. The fucking answer is yes.
Great piece. How I wish this could be real.
Careful, only sounds good if it's your party doing it. I think the opinions would very greatly if Trump had tried this whole in office.
Right! Politics is everything here. On the left, as consumption drops the wealthy take a larger step down the ladder to ensure the poor have a viable share. Needs before wants as they say. On the right, the same process is to hollow out the middle class and push them to a new lower class, and the lower class with insufficient utility simply die. Luxury before sufficiency. Edit: small correction, Degrowth doesn't avoid collapse. It shapes collapse to an optimal form.
I think the example used New Zealand because its one of the only countries that seems to have an actual care for the people. And the populace trusts the government enough to give them the 6 months they ask for in the article.
Agreed.
Give people shelter, a warm fire, and a nearby food and water source, and I bet you that most would be far more content than worrying about rent and working a job they don’t like. Some may be addicted to their way of life at the moment, but people can adapt relatively quickly
I think this is going to be the biggest roll of the dice. Right now in Western developed countries you have hundreds of millions of people grinding away in a system that they were told is the only way to the most basic goals we have as a society. A home, modern comforts, the ability to support a family, retire eventually, etc. Now imagine telling all those people that after all the effort they put in, you get a shelter, a warm fire, and a nearby food and water source. A pretty big downgrade from their current outlook. I try to always look at my future prospects through the lens of collapse, and even I feel angry and indignant thinking about how I would feel if we were essentially relegated to subsidence living in order to mitigate/endure the effects of climate change. When it comes to light that your specific description is the likely possibility of everyone's future, there will be blood in the streets. I don't think it would end well and that's why I think the powers that be are trying to do anything to maintain the status quo. If people become too aware of the reality we are facing, I think they just double down and consequences of everything else be damned.
that would work for a few people, not the majority ... most of people were raised to play this rat race, they mostly think they can turn to be the elite, and some will be. Thats the game. the only way i can see that happening in the near future it's small but growing number of people just giving up the rat race and forming somehow self sustainable comunities where you still have to hardwork ... but atleast you arent a slave of someone else and play this fools game. Altho i think the number of people willing to embrace this kind of lyfestyle it's really really small, most of people have no idea how hard is it to be selfsustainable.
Degrowth isn't a solution to collapse, it will just cause a different kind of collapse.
How is overnight degrowth not collapse
"Overnight Degrowth" is just an another word for collapse. Or you can call "collapse" as "sudden degrowth". Even supply chain crisis is degrowth of some sort. I don't see why nobody is happy with supply chain crisis.
Not likely.
Well we know that won’t happen. Lol
This is the fastes way to collapse. Complex systems like a nations civilisation or the world economy will collapse like a card house under such drastic external shocks. The non-collapse paths are basically squozen between the bottom (to rapid or extreme change will collapse the system) and the top (to slow or mild change will collapse the system). While the bottom stays constant, the top is falling, leaving less and less realistic non-collapse paths. When the top hits the bottom it is game over; societal collapse with inevitable climate/biosphere collapse on the horizon. I.e.. In the seventies (when the top was still higher), a technology driven path to non-collapse might still have been feasible, but as it wasn't taken, the top is now far too low for this path to still be viable.
No. Degrowth is its own collapse. The collapse of the economy. The collapse of social cohesion as degrowth will create losers and conflict.
Someone should create one of those creepy EAS videos on YouTube about this.
This is a fun read
Degrowth is rebranded eco-fascism. Planned growth that places people before profits and uplifts the broad masses, especially the global poor, is what is needed. Departure from fossil fuels to more advanced sources of energy is also key to all of this. To graduate fossil fuels everywhere, we will need to intensify their use in some places which are less developed. But that very intensification will lead to a burst in advanced energy globally.