The number of environmental disasters and their destructiveness are only ratcheting up in step with increases in global greenhouse gas emissions, ever more extraction of key minerals, the ever-greater exploitation of biological resources, and outbreaks of resource wars (most recently with the US assault on Venezuela). All of that is linked to one crucial phenomenon: the single-minded pursuit of economic growth by the owning and investing classes. Not surprisingly, they reap the lion’s share of the benefits from such growth and bear next to none of its devastating consequences.Imagine, dear reader, what the total weight of stuff would be if all those Third Worlders who used to eke out a living on a dollar a day had to devote their higher earnings to buying the radio or record player or land-line telephone they might have purchased but for the current generation of entrepreneurs having provided the same capabilities with a much lower material intensity. Economists don't have a good grasp of economic growth in the sense of more stuff and more people, let alone what it would look like with rising living standards shared among fewer people using advanced stuff. I note, further, that an increasing share of what we used to understand as the middle classes are participating both in the growth, and perhaps treating the noise of those leaf blowers as a tolerable consequence.
Though it’s seldom highlighted, the world economy has indeed reached an astounding physical scale. During the past century, resource extraction has doubled every 20 years or so. Indeed, humanity reached a grim milestone in 2021, when the global quantity of human-made mass—that is, the total weight of all things our species manufactured or constructed—surpassed the total weight of all living plant, animal, and microbial biomass on this planet. And worse yet, that mass of human-made stuff continues to grow, year by year, even as the natural world diminishes further.
Mr Cox, though, wants to restore those living standards of 1826.
Count on this: At some point, global economic growth will finally have to grind to a halt and shift into reverse. After all, if the corporate and political powers carry on with business as usual, such growth will end in chaotic, violent collapse. (Think Mad Max.) But if the elites can be thwarted and we can dramatically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and other resources in a reasonably well-planned way, we might be able to avoid that fate.Count on this: when somebody who views himself as the vanguard of revolutionary change writes of thwarting the elites and offering reasonable planning, suffering will follow.
Societies could indeed achieve a distinctly better quality of life because of (not in spite of) degrowth, since full-scale restraints on the endless extraction and consumption of fossil fuels could force them to ensure that their limited resources would be used to satisfy basic human needs instead of being wasted on yet more increasing profits for the already wealthy few.You first, Stosh. It's the same silly "fundamental reordering of priorities," starting with the War Machine, continuing with motorcars, and then the leaf blowers and other gas-fueled appliances, as well as lighting after dark, have to go. And we'll all be better persons for it.
The growth-addled political and economic forces pushing us toward ecological doom are many and formidable indeed. And that makes it ever more important that people in rich, overconsuming countries like ours come to realize how important it is that we stand up to the forces of ecocide, while developing a more realistic vision of the better world that awaits us once we’ve jumped off the growth-by-carbonization bandwagon.
One way to bring that better world into sharper focus is to examine a few of the many miseries and dangers that degrowth would help us alleviate or even leave behind.
A degrowth society dialing down its energy use would not only reduce light and noise pollution but achieve significant advances in environmental justice. Brightly lit industrial and commercial facilities and parking lots are all too often placed in low-income, racialized communities. As a consequence, across the United States, light pollution is more severe in neighborhoods where a larger proportion of the population is Black, Latino, or Asian.Sounds more like sufficiency for the muggers and burglars as more neighborhoods take on the sight picture of a dark alley. I repeat, because repeat I must, "Tell you what, Stan. You demonstrate that more sustainable way of living with solar and wind power alone at your house and a diet of bugs, and tell us how that's going, rather than attempting to impose your Moral Equivalent of War on everyone else." To that report, add the details of how you're making do without any security lighting or burglar alarms.
Amid mounting ecological and humanitarian crises and with Donald Trump still in the White House for another three potentially devastating years, the vanishing of the heavens may be regarded as a problem only for astronomers and aesthetes. But such a view badly underestimates how important the starry night sky has proven to be to our culture, scientific progress, and social cohesion. It was an unalloyed good, shared freely and equally by all humanity. And it could be so again if, with degrowth, we put our cities and towns on a dimmer switch.
To be clear, the degrowth movement’s not claiming that the way to prevent ecological and civilizational collapse is simply to play Whac-A-Mole by working our way through individual problems like traffic congestion or light and noise pollution. In fact, the point of degrowth is that societies should leave all such problems, including the potential disaster of climate change, in history’s trash heap. We’d reap myriad benefits by deeply cutting resource use while ensuring that collective sufficiency and justice for all become the focus of our world.
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