{"id":3504123,"date":"2024-10-31T08:03:33","date_gmt":"2024-10-31T08:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3504123"},"modified":"2024-10-31T18:24:44","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T18:24:44","slug":"to-grow-or-not-to-grow-that-isnt-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2024-10-31\/to-grow-or-not-to-grow-that-isnt-the-question\/","title":{"rendered":"To Grow or Not to Grow: That Isn\u2019t the Question"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recent articles in major newspapers\u2014including The New York Times<\/em><\/a>, The Guardian<\/em><\/a>, and The Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a>\u2014explore the possibility that deliberately shrinking our economy could forestall environmental catastrophe while still delivering the necessities of life to a populace currently hooked on perpetual industrial expansion. Why is degrowth increasingly in the news?<\/p>

At the heart of the degrowth argument is a simple observation: continual growth in the use of materials and energy would lead fairly quickly to absurdly high numbers that could never be sustained in the real world. For example, in the last couple of centuries, humanity\u2019s usage of energy grew at about 3 percent per year. If that rate of growth were to continue, regardless what energy sources we used, the planet\u2019s surface would reach boiling<\/a> temperature in about 400 years\u2014not due to the greenhouse effect, but to the simple thermodynamic impacts of so much energy being transferred.<\/p>

Kenneth Boulding was one of the first economists to acknowledge the contradiction between humanity\u2019s desire for continued expansion, on one hand, and Earth\u2019s limits on the other. In his influential 1966 essay \u201cThe Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth<\/a>,\u201d he argued that the economy must fit itself to the ecosystem\u2019s limited pools of resources. A few other public intellectuals agreed, and in 1972 philosopher Andr\u00e9 Gorz described the ideal economic goal as d<\/em>\u00e9croissance,<\/em> a term that, in 2006, was translated into English as degrowth<\/em>. (In a separate article I\u2019ll explore the state of degrowth discourse\u2014including the main thinkers and their ideas.)<\/p>

Mainstream economists generally disregarded Boulding (he failed to convince most of his colleagues, and later said<\/a>, \u201cAnyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist\u201d). In the past few decades, global economic growth has continued (with two pauses, one after the 2008 financial crash, the other during the COVID-19 pandemic), and we now see evidence of the costs of growth all around us: Earth\u2019s climate is perilously changing<\/a>, wild creatures are disappearing<\/a>, industrial toxins are spreading<\/a> throughout the environment, nature\u2019s resources are becoming scarcer<\/a>, and all four of these trends are accelerating<\/a>. Abundant evidence shows that, to be sustainable, the human presence on the planet must not just stop growing, but must actually shrink<\/a>.<\/p>

Today, while degrowth advocates have not yet prevailed, their argument is at last being taken seriously. In this article, we will review the growth-versus-degrowth debate and explore why and where the degrowth alternative is taking root. We\u2019ll explore the wide range of degrowth objectives and strategies. And finally, we\u2019ll see why it\u2019s only a matter of time before involuntary degrowth commences, and why advocating for voluntary degrowth makes sense now, even if nature-imposed contraction will come first.<\/p>

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This essay is part of a series of interviews, articles, and events that Post Carbon Institute is hosting on the topic of moving beyond growth. To access the full collection, sign up for the Moving Beyond Growth Deep Dive, which we are offering at half price in the spirit of degrowth (scholarships available).<\/em><\/p>\n\n

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Deep Dive: Moving Beyond Growth<\/a><\/h2>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t