Less is more: Can degrowth save the world?

Less is more: Can degrowth save the world?
In recent years, a new approach to addressing the climate crisis has been gaining traction. A group of academics and activists are questioning the possibility of endless economic growth on a finite planet. They instead advocate for a bold solution: degrowth.
The movement argues for radically scaling back our global consumption of resources, the democratisation of the economy, and collectively managing key resources.
Critics of degrowth argue that economic growth has lifted many people out of poverty over the years, and that the movement underestimates both the power of innovation and the need for investment in new sustainable technology.
But what is degrowth and what does it look like in practice?
Film by Alvaro Alvarez

Executive Producer: Camelia Sadeghzadeh

webpage




https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0jg7gxh/less-is-more-can-degrowth-save-the-world-

Kyle Hayward wrote: A group of academics and activists are questioning the possibility of endless economic growth on a finite planet. They instead advocate for a bold solution: degrowth.

I have advocated for decades that we need a new economic model, but the transition will be difficult and painful.

One factor is the gradual shift in some countries from evaluating "success" based on GDP, to some sort of "happiness" quotient. There used to be many examples of communities around the world that had very low GDP and few material goods, but had huge community spirit and friendship and were very happy and content. People from "developed" countries, just had to show them all the "shinies" they were missing out on - usually so that the developed countries could make money off their new desire to a share of these products.

I will watch the video, but I suspect that many permies are already heading in that direction!

Degrowth aka anti-consumerism is something that I have been practicing all my life.

I don't have a closet full of new clothes as I have been wearing mine until they wear out.  This has been at least over 20 years.

When I buy I buy used clothing when possible.  

I have not had a brand new car since sometime around 1999.  I have only had two cars since that date, both used.

This concept can de done and it only take a person some convictions to do it.  

Remember the Three Rs:  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy

Thanks Kyle for bringing this up and thanks Anne for that degrowth Wikipedia link. I'm glad this is being seriously explored.

When people hear about "degrowth", they immediately think "deprivation" and "sacrifice", and I think it's something we can debunk by showing what degrowth really looks like.

My family has cut dramatically in our energy and goods consumption over the years: I estimate that we have about 25% of the carbon footprint we used to have. But really, we look totally "normal" to most of our peers. (Not that there's anything wrong with being so far on the anti-consumerism scale that you look "weird" to most people. I totally love and admire people who go further than we do on the full-hippie scale. But not everyone needs to go all the way there to save the world)

We still have a car - but I commute two days / week instead of five, and try to take public transportation whenever I can. We still travel internationally, but once every five years instead of twice a year like we used to (and when we do travel, we've saved up enough money and vacation time to make those epic "once in a lifetime" trips). We don't follow a restrictive diet or have crazy food bills - we've just tweaked things here and there and choose to eat some foods in moderation. I still dress in professional attire; most of it thrifted and much higher quality than I used to wear. I still have a cellphone, albeit always one that is refurbished/not brand new, and we carefully repair our tech for as long as possible.  

We've also gained a lot from that degrowth, mostly because we've reduced our working hours (and income) by about 30%. This leaves room for sports and hobbies, volunteering, being there for our families and friends. No one can argue that spending more time with loved ones, more time being physically active or more time doing something you love is a sacrifice.

Here are our two key principes:

1) Think of the global impact of our choices, especially the big ones that represent a long-term commitment (like where will welive, or how we'll heat our house)

2) Always ask ourselves "Can I cut that impact in half?". Cutting in half doesn't require sacrificing something forever, just using a little moderation in everything.  

And then one day, you find yourself mending for the thousandth time your favorite travel bag while your husband cooks a fancy lentil dish from an Ottolenghi cookbook. And you realize you've gotten spoiled by good food, good design and good materials, and now all you can see on the market is junk food, shabby manufacturing and crappy materials, and *that* feels like deprivation. And then the degrowth becomes the luxury, and you feel bad for people who don't have access to what you have because they're still stuck in the hamster wheel of consumerism.

Funny, when I saw `Degrowth`, I thought this topic was going to be about deforestation or something like that.

I was happily surprised at the Wikipedia articles.

On a more personal note, I have to say that once in a while, we meet with former colleagues or former subordinates, and get a twinge of something that looks like regret or envy when we compare our lifestyles, job titles, wrinkle-free botoxed faces, etc.

I think it's important to acknowledge that this twinge is part of human nature, like many other things, and that it's ok to feel that. It's just an artefact of some prehistoric survival adaptation mechanism, I guess. We reassess if that means something (so far it never has) and then go on living the lives we chose. I see so many people living their lives thrown left and right by all those twinges of "what will people think?", "how can I fix this flaw of myself that I wasn't even aware of until I saw this ad?" and "how can I appear more successful" without ever stopping to think about what they really want. I guess some people really have "Impress strangers with my wealth and status" as their core value, but I'm pretty sure most people do not actually rank that so high.

(I once read a fantastic study about cars and expected satisfaction. They asked people at the dealership "how much happiness do you think this car will bring you?" and then, after random car rides, "how much happier are you after this ride". People buying budget cars expected little of their car beyond getting them from point A to point B (let's say 5/10), and got exactly that in terms of happiness. People buying luxury cars expected a 8 or 9/10, but in reality were not happier in any way while actually driving their car (they also gave ratings of 5/10). )

Most of what drives growth at the national level is that insane machine of creating artificial needs and then feeding them in the name of the bottom line. Heck, government could borrow money to buy widgets just for the sake of throwing them in the sea (which *cuff cuff* is nearly what we're doing in practice) and that would still feed GDP. How is that a relevant measure of quality of life?

Kena Landry wrote:When people hear about "degrowth", they immediately think "deprivation" and "sacrifice", and I think it's something we can debunk by showing what degrowth really looks like…

And then one day, you find yourself mending for the thousandth time your favorite travel bag while your husband cooks a fancy lentil dish from an Ottolenghi cookbook. And you realize you've gotten spoiled by good food, good design and good materials, and now all you can see on the market is junk food, shabby manufacturing and crappy materials, and *that* feels like deprivation. And then the degrowth becomes the luxury, and you feel bad for people who don't have access to what you have because they're still stuck in the hamster wheel of consumerism.

This is how I often feel when I make a sortie to big-box land. When I was pregnant with first child, visiting relatives drove me out to a “Babies R Us” (I didn’t have a car then). We were walking around this absolutely massive store, and there was practically nothing there I wanted at all. Tons of contraptions to entertain/protect kids in back seat of car; massive strollers that would never fit on the bus, lots of superfluous baby furniture that would not even fit in our apartment, all sorts of crap for dealing with disposable diapers that I didn’t plan to use. 90% of the store was just literally useless to me. There was one tiny corner of practicality where I found a hand-powered breast pump and baby food grinder.

While in a limited sense I strongly agree with this thinking I mostly oppose it.  I am all for wise use of resources and self control in their use.  

That said though I am totally for wise progress too.

While there was all of the, "we are totally going to exhaust resources" movement, from the late 60's or early 70's we have more than we ever had then and or were predicted to have.

I think this is more what we should be looking at and for.  Here is a more optomistic and reasonable looking answer.

The age of plenty

Many permies compatible goals will come out of this.  For example I will bet most herbicides and pesticides will be replaced by robotic AI driven controls over the next couple of decades.  We will continue to produce more food on less land.  50 years ago we couldn't have produced enough to feed the current world's population yet we are doing it on less land and there is less starvation than ever today.  Now it has come with costs but we are learning to reduce or eliminate those too.  For example we couldn't feed the world without artificial fertilizers and that has come with ecologic costs as part of the learning curve.   But by adding cover crops, soil carbon building and other biologic activities to the process we can greatly reduce the need and should be able to almost completely eliminate the ecological damage from the rest.  The entire world will be more productive while maintaining greater wildlife carrying capacity as we learn.  

As we increase world wide intelligence and knowledge and use the resources in better forms we will do exponentially more with what we have.  

Now it is up to us to try and guide these things in truly wise paths.

Kena Landry wrote:When people hear about "degrowth", they immediately think "deprivation" and "sacrifice", and I think it's something we can debunk by showing what degrowth really looks like.

This is a really good place to mention Paul Wheaton and Shawn Klaussen-Koop's fantastic book How To Build a Better World in Your Backyard without being angry at the bad guys. It's about luxuriant environmentalism without the feeling of deprivation. It's about is making a personal difference. True change is in our positive solutions.

Counted in money, we're really quite poor compared to some people we know. Do we feel poor? Nope. We spend about four months per year in our forest, and hope to extend this. We work (for money) roughly three months per year, and are hoping to decrease that. We don't own a car, so don't pay for gas, repairs, car tax, etc. We don't pay rent (except a very low one for somewhere to stay while working). Our food costs are modest, and decreasing as we get better at fishing and gardening.

In short, we live a life we love, we're following our dreams, and we have all that we really need. And still, conventional thinking would have us believe we're "poor". What does that even mean? Would we be happier with three cars, a big-screen TV and a massive mortgage that we'd have to work all our waking hours to pay for? Looking at the people we know that are living lives like that, the answer appears to be a very definite "no". Would we be happier if we could go out shopping new clothes every weekend (clothes that will statistically get worn about seven times before they're thrown)? No, why? What's the point? Why go shopping when we could go fishing? (Writing all this, I guess we are aspiring to Gert-hood.)

One of the things that I always wonder when people talk about economic growth is precisely that: what's the point? If the economy could somehow be made to keep growing indefinitely, there would logically come a time when everyone spends 100% of their time simultaneously both producing and consuming goods and services, preferably as many as possible at the same time, and never doing anything that doesn't contribute to the growth of GDP. But who'd want an existence like that? Wouldn't it be extremely stressful, every time it seems like your needs and wants might be fulfilled, to have to come up with some new ones? Yes, I think it would.

Of course, it could be that I'm missing something, but I can just not see the point of pushing that line in that diagram upwards for ever. Even if it was somehow physically possible.

I'm afraid I continue to struggle with what "degrowth" actually means in practice. I personally am not sure the proponents have thought the matter through.

It's easy to agree with degrowth in terms of personal consumption, the physical crapola stuff that adds little value and heads straight for the landfill -- I'm a signatory to that pact. But a great deal of the economy in developed nations, and the promise for emerging nations, is based on knowledge and services, not just physical stuff.

So I wonder what services and innovations, what scientific and medical advances, should be "degrowthed?" They do not exist in a vacuum: they are closely intertwined with growth in knowledge and technology and innovation in the wider world. Who would decide? My 2c.

Eino Kenttä wrote:

One of the things that I always wonder when people talk about economic growth is precisely that: what's the point? If the economy could somehow be made to keep growing indefinitely, there would logically come a time when everyone spends 100% of their time simultaneously both producing and consuming goods and services, preferably as many as possible at the same time, and never doing anything that doesn't contribute to the growth of GDP. But who'd want an existence like that? Wouldn't it be extremely stressful, every time it seems like your needs and wants might be fulfilled, to have to come up with some new ones? Yes, I think it would.

Of course, it could be that I'm missing something, but I can just not see the point of pushing that line in that diagram upwards for ever. Even if it was somehow physically possible.

The point you are missing is productivity.  People producing at least some types of goods are showing such huge increases in their productivity that the average number of hours people need to work actually decreases. The video I posted up above some time back makes the point one way.  In like 1800 a certain amount of work would buy buy 1 lb of sugar and now the same work would buy something like 250 pounds of sugar.(go watch the video for the real numbers)

Or lets take an example. 50 years ago my parents chopped corn for silage for roughly 6 weeks.  We had 7 operators to do it. (chopper driver, pile packer and 5 trucks) A guy down the road had a contractor in and chopped silage this year.  His pile was 10X to 20X bigger than my parents pile ever was.  He did it in less than 5 days total with 6 operators.(chopper driver, 2 pile packers steady with one of the truck drivers stopping to pack with a 3rd tractor at times when they got behind, and 3 trucks).  Back then we started harvest before the crop was finished growing and kept harvesting well after the optimal point on the other end.  Our corn was 6 to 8 feet high.  Modern silage corn the is 12 to 16 feet tall.  Modern crop most of it is harvested while it is in its prime.  Bigger silage piles mean less waste because the skin of the pile increases as the square of dimension but volume increases as the cube.  In nearly every way things have improved.  The major difference is no one farm can afford the equipment and so must contract it out.

As for ever increasing wants on the other end, won't those come naturally?  And they might not be a complicated as you think.  They might come in the form of durability, or self heating home, or redundancy or comfort.  Cell phones with internet access is one that is fairly universally desired that didn't exist 50 years ago to even want.  For example on my immediate wants list is an infrared camera for diagnostics.  The neat addition to it would be built into a cell phone which is an available technology that is coming down in price.  It should make me both more productive and capable of fixing more things.  Another on my wants lists is vacuum insulated windows.  Taking window glass from a bit over R 3 to potentially R 13 or even R 20.  Would bring the house closer to self heating and cooling and reduce needs.  Even if it is not your immediate want it could be society's want.  But the societal list might include things like photo-chromic and thermal-chromic pavement for area heat control. (exists but not cost effectively yet)  Another might be long buckey molecules to make buckey cables with, for making space elevator cables.  This one is still wishful thinking but would be one of the first major steps involved in importing major metals from space so we don't have to do the environmental damage of mining them here.  More metals, more corrosion resistant metals at cheaper prices would result in greater durability and potentially greater cost effectiveness economy wide.

This sounds like the book The Art of Frugal Hedonism.  We've been meaning to buy a copy and start utilizing what we find there because I heard an interview with one of the authors and really felt like it made a lot of sense.