a degrowth manifesto

A Degrowth Manifesto by ellie stephenson

i: overstepping planetary boundaries

In the year 2000, when I was born, the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide had reached 370 parts per million (ppm), up from pre-industrial levels of around 280ppm. Humans had known about anthropogenic climate change for several decades. The threats posed by increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide - including sea level rise, food insecurity and desertification - had been identified decades before. Given that danger, you might have thought that by 2021, I would live in a world that had averted environmental crisis. You would be wrong: the situation has only worsened. Last March, when I turned 20, atmospheric carbon hovered around 415ppm.

Understanding how we arrived at this point requires us to look back in time: to the industrial revolution, when human activity on this planet dramatically shifted. Industrialisation set in motion the conditions for unprecedented levels of affluence, mobility and personal freedoms. To fuel such growth required energy, and lots of it.

Humanity found this energy in the form of fossil fuels. Since then, the extraordinary growth in our society’s econom ic wealth has been powered by unrestrained exploitation of the natural world. Our economies are leveraged on the promise of fossil fuels extraction. We show no sign of reigning in our appetite for emitting greenhouse gases: Australia’s most lucrative exports are fossil fuels.

This brief history illustrates a confronting truth: our way of life and our prosperity is built on overstepping planetary boundaries.

Planetary boundaries measure environmental limits beyond which humans cannot thrive - when we overstep the Earth’s ability to adapt to environmental change, we increase the risk of crisis for humanity. We cannot have infinite economic growth on a finite planet. Our best option is degrowth: a controlled slowing and shrinking of developed economies.

ii: facing disaster

The consequences of climate change are already beginning to unfold. Recent years have seen raging bushfires, storms and heatwaves. We know that extreme weather patterns will only worsen. Global heating will worsen the spread of tropical diseases and wipe out many habitats. Oceans will acidify, decimating ocean biodiversity and the communities that depend on it. We know that these effects will be worse for the most disadvantaged communities. The Global South that will be most vulnerable to the destruction caused by the Global North. Countries which are already facing food security pressures will face catastrophic droughts and crop failure. Two thirds of Bangladesh’s land area lies below 5m above sea level, making it highly susceptible to sea level rise; the same issue threatens many Pacific Islands. Worst of all, climate change could reach a tipping point, after which feedback loops are activated and the climate crisis worsens beyond our ability to reverse it. This means we need to act now, and radically.

With the imperative to act established, why is degrowth the only option for change?

Attempts to decouple growth from emissions are doomed to fail for a number of reasons. First, increases in efficiency often encourage people to use more resources, as it is cheaper to do so. This is known as the rebound effect, where the gains created by better efficiency are lost when people consume more carelessly.

Secondly, regardless of the efficiency of production, its massive scale means we still pollute at unacceptable levels. Data from the International Energy Agency shows that consumers are consistently choosing larger vehicles, houses with bigger floor plans, and more electronic devices, out-

Feeding humanity’s current energy needs with renewables would require huge mining operations which would continue to produce emissions and destroy ecosystems. Bar our energy needs, the staggering waste problem of human society is a direct consequence of unsustainable levels of production and consumption.

Finally, countries in the Global South deserve room to develop. While the international community should do its best to minimise emissions from this activity, it will undeniably require some pollution. Given the Global North has systematically extracted wealth from these nations through imperialism and global value chains, we have a moral duty to reduce our emissions.

iii: a better approach

Economic growth is embedded in how we imagine a functioning society. Our society is dependent on continuously expanding production and consumption; when GDP growth falters, people’s wellbeing and livelihoods are threatened. This makes it difficult to imagine a world where we have scaled down our economy. The policies I suggest are based on the idea that there are more valuable measures of growth than GDP. Reimagining our relationship to economic growth requires us to shift our focus elsewhere: what would our society look like if it pursued growth in equality, in health, in sustainability? These are harder to quantify, but far worthier goals.

How could an economy begin to slow and reverse its growth? Equitable degrowth hinges on significant redistribution of wealth. The spoils of unfettered growth have not been fairly shared; instead, we have seen the concentration of wealth to an elite few. We will need less production if we share what we have more equally. Recognising that our current affluence is a historical anomaly, we should be willing to sacrifice some of our discretionary consumption. Things like international travel, fast fashion and large scale meat production will need to be slowed. This can occur through state planning and the use of taxation, with tax revenue spent progressively. We need to collectively realise that the low cost of these commodities conceals their very high environmental cost.

We must reimagine labour to be both more fulfilling and less resource intensive. Our quality of life will increase if we can dedicate more labour to learning, recreation, entertainment and human wellbeing. Also, jobs can be created in solving environmental problems. Restoring and monitoring ecosystems is a worthwhile livelihood, while encouraging the repair of existing goods reduces waste. people should work less.

We simply do not need to be generating as much value as we currently are. Economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930 argued that the work week in 2030 would be 15 hours, based on his belief that once subsistence was guaranteed, leisure could be explored. That prediction seems absurd now, but the instinct which inspired it is valuable: humans should not overwork ourselves to finance unnecessary and unsustainable consumption.

Profiteering needs to end. At present, producers have terrible incentives: they prioritise their shareholders over communities and t h e environment, products are quickly rendered useless by planned obsolescence, their supply chains involve excessive worldwide transportation, and they thrive off irresponsible trends. Structurally, profits are funneled upwards into the hands of the already super-rich. In many ways, this is a fundamentally illogical system. A society in degrowth would reject this behaviour in favour of workerrun enterprise, flourishing local economies and just resource distribution.

iv: conclusion

My 20 years on earth have seen tragically limited environmental action. We are on the brink of catastrophe. This apathy and ineptitude regarding action is the result of an economic system illfitted to the challenges that face us. Our current system assumes we have the resources to feed infinite growth. We need to change this attitude: we are existing in a fundamentally finite environment constrained by human ills like inequality and commodification. Degrowth can pursue a distribution of our limited resources based on justice.