What is degrowth
Reading time: 3 minutesTL;DR
Our world is hellbent on increasing GDP - the line must go up! That’s driving climate change.
However there are other ways to run a society, like monitoring our wellbeing instead of how much crap we sold.
Instead of endless expansion, a strategy known as degrowth is worth looking at.
Explanation
The world runs on increasing the GDP which only captures the value of goods sold. The people who came up with the GDP as a measure warned politicians and economists to never use it as a measure of how well humans are doing, but somehow it seems to be the only thing that matters.
Degrowth isn’t tied to climate change action only, it is also an argument that the world doesn’t have endless resources - how can we continue to expand forever. There’s only so many fossil fuels to find to dig up and burn, eventually we’ll run out. There’s only so much land to live on, eventually we’ll run out.
GDP doesn’t include everything - many things that happen everyday in society that aren’t captured because they have no dollar value. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable to humans - such as the care a parent provides their child, or an adult provides to their elderly parent. It doesn’t measure volunteer work. Importantly it doesn’t measure things that are priceless.
These don’t have a dollar value because by definition they are priceless. The environment isn’t just a thing outside our houses, it’s the entire globe and it is priceless.
Measuring GDP relies on putting a dollar figure on everything. The current configuration of our economies doesn’t really factor in pollution such as greenhouse gases. There are only a handful of carbon taxes. So we can burn fossil fuels freely - but it is impacting the environment greatly. Because it’s not captured in the GDP the money men don’t give a shit.
Eventually it will impact the GDP - when the costs of storms and floods gets too much, and insurance can no longer pay out to rebuild your house. Then the GDP will go down. Finally the money men will pay attention but it’s likely we’ve passed tipping points by then.
Degrowth is about looking at other measures - such as a human wellbeing index. If politicians were rewarded for increasing our wellbeing instead of GDP, how different would things be.
“Crucially, degrowth doesn’t suggest sacrificing societal needs. On the contrary, it champions an economic model that meets everyone’s fundamental necessities, all while honouring our planet’s ecological limits” (https://greenly.earth/en-gb/blog/company-guide/is-degrowth-the-solution-to-climate-change)
Climate activists often have “You want us to go back to living in caves” thrown at us, like that’s an actual thing we want. I think degrowth is the best way of retooling our world to be more focused on the society instead of the economy. It’s the best chance of both worlds - some level of modern conveniences but a decarbonised world where we’ve tackled climate change.
Further reading
Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World - Jason Hickel