﻿You probably remember when Greta Thunberg accused world leaders of believing in fairy tales of
eternal economic growth. How dare you, she said. The climate activist was livid. She believes that
leaders should focus on discussing how constant growth is destroying the planet instead. And she
is not alone. A lot of people believe that the only way to avoid climate catastrophe and provide
a better life to the population is to shrink production and consumption, causing an economy to
degrow. Forget GDP growth. The Degrowth movement wants to redefine the system with different
targets and reshape the world as we know it. But does it make sense? Let’s look into it.
To understand what the degrowth movement wants, we need to understand our situation at the moment.
If we look at what scientists are warning about climate change,
it’s hard to disagree that our societies need to go in a new direction.
According to goals decided by the Paris Climate Accord, the world needs to limit global warming
to well below 2 degrees, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.
Scientists believe that we would be heading to catastrophic effects of climate change if
we cross this threshold. Right now, there is a 40% chance that global temperatures reach 1.5
degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the next five years. The latest prediction indicates
that every year until 2025 will be at least 1 degree Celsius warmer. This does not mean that
the world will be 1.5 degrees warmer in the long term. There is still time to change, but it does
show that we are on the wrong track. To avoid this scenario, we need to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. Those are gases like carbon dioxide,
methane and nitrous oxides. They are largely considered the drivers of global warming. And we
are producing a lot of these gases. In 25 years, the emissions grew around 15 billion tonnes.
But reducing the emissions of these gases is not something easy. That’s because our
lifestyle is just possible as a result of those emissions. The biggest source of these gases is
the energy used in the industries. It accounts for around 24% of all emissions. Electricity use,
transport and also agriculture and land use have a big impact as well. In summary, producing
more means more emissions. Heating our houses, eating meat, driving cars, flying. All of these
activities emit gases that are warming the planet and therefore threatening our existence.
And although there is a lot of talk, right now, most of the countries are not reducing
their emissions. A study shows that only 64 countries managed to reduce their emissions
since the Paris agreement was signed. In 150 countries the emissions grew since then.
Globally, emissions grew by 240 million tons of CO2 per year during 2016-2019
compared to the previous four years. The situation is getting so dramatic that
scientists believe that just small things like a personal dietary change, or starting to drive an
electric car while everything continues business as usual won't make any significant difference.
We need to think of solutions to decarbonize the economy as a whole.
To do that, the leaders around the world essentially rely on two solutions: traditional
green technologies, like wind and solar energy sources, and what is known as negative emissions
technologies, which is basically a way of compensating your emissions with something else,
like reforestation, for example. If we look at the world's energy consumption,
just a small fraction of the energy used today is renewable. It’s unrealistic to expect that
transition from fossil fuel to green sources will be fast enough to save us from the impacts of
global warming. And while world leaders discuss strategies, the degrowthers are demanding more
radical changes. What do they want?
The Degrowth movement believes that the climate targets set by countries
are not ambitious enough and that there is no way we can avoid climate catastrophe if
we don’t change how our economy works. The degrowthers want countries to reconsider
the value of the growth of the gross domestic product as a metric for progress and find ways
to live within the limits of nature. The GDP is the total value of goods produced and services
provided in a country during one year. They see no other strategy to avoid climate catastrophe
than forcing countries to reduce their output and consumption, causing the economy to degrow.
They believe this is the change we need. For them, if growth is going to continue, the consequences
ecologically and socially will be very bad. And although it might seem radical for some,
a study by York University has shown that it might be our only solution to fight climate change and
its consequences. The scientist compared the greenhouse gas emissions within three scenarios:
normal growth, slow growth and degrowth. Using the Canadian economy as a simulation model,
the results show that degrowth is the only way to drastically reduce emissions.
In a timeline from 2005 to 2035, the study shows that greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise in
the business as usual scenario, growing 77% during the period. In a no-growth scenario,
the greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by 22%. And degrowth would reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by 78%. Canada’s long-term goal is to reduce emissions by 80% below 2005 levels by 2050.
According to the study, Degrowth is the only way the country
could achieve this goal. What would be the effects?
For degrowthers, downscaling production and consumption would not necessarily result in a
recession as we know it. But looking at how the economy works, it is hard to believe that this
would not be the case. To understand that, we need to understand how GDP is calculated. The number
can be quantified in different ways, but the most common method adds up consumption, investment,
government spending and net exports. Less production and consumption would mean fewer
exports and fewer revenues for companies and taxes for the government. It’s hard to see how
we would downsize our production and consumption as degrowthers want and at the same time avoid a
recession and well-known consequences like rising poverty and unemployment rates.
But the degrowthers don’t see it this way. In contrast to a recession, for them,
the process of de-growing an economy should be planned and accompanied with measures
that would reduce risks of negative impact in the society. Among others, they want to
shorten the working week, introduce measures providing job guarantee with a living wage,
review the tax system, with the super-rich paying a lot more taxes,
and create policies to expand universal access to healthcare, education and housing. Following
this chain of thought, those planned actions would mean better lives to the population
while reducing production and consumption and its impact on the environment.
In summary, what degrowthers want is not just about producing and consuming less,
but also reforming the pillars of the capitalist society we live in.
But is it possible that a country could live without growth?
It has happened before. If we go way back, income per capita at the end of the first
millennium was lower than at the beginning of the Christian era in Egypt and Byzantium for example.
We could say that in those two places somehow there was degrowth for almost a thousand years.
In Europe, we don’t need to go back too much in time. In the 500 years that preceded the
Industrial Revolution, there was no growth at all in the continent. In India, income
per person shrank consistently between the 17th to late 19th centuries. So, as we can see, it’s
possible and it has happened. Consistent economic growth around the world is a quite new phenomenon,
and began around 200 years ago, with the industrial revolution. So in a way, humans have
lived long eras with no growth. There is no reason to think it’s not possible to do it again.
It’s also important to mention that those were not always peaceful times. Back then, when a
country didn’T have enough resources to keep its population safe and fed, conquest and plunder of
other nations became a mechanism of growth. How can we expect that countries will not behave in
such a manner again? It’s hard to predict what a world of no growth would bring upon us.
What about countries that have not developed yet?
Among degrowthers, there is a debate about how to implement it and which countries should do it.
Some believe that the theory should be put in practice exclusively in rich countries,
some not. After the Industrial revolution, rich countries were able to develop mainly because
they burned lots of fossil fuels like coal and petroleum. But how about the countries that
have not yet developed? In a world where every economy needs to degrow, poor countries would
suffer the most with the consequences. Forcing poor and middle-income countries to degrow or
not grow at all would have a devastating impact on the lives of the citizens of these countries.
Although GDP growth is not a perfect measure to calculate living standards and poverty reduction,
it’s known that every 1% increase in GDP per head reduces poverty by around 1.7%.
Removing the possibility of growth would mean stripping countries of a way of taking people
out of poverty. That’s why some believe that rich countries should degrow and
reduce emissions while poorer countries grow and occupy the carbon space. The problem is complex,
and fewer emissions in rich countries cannot mean that poor countries can burn their ways
to development. But a degrowth strategy could see the less privileged slip into a cycle of poverty,
unemployment and no money to invest. For now, degrowth is still a theory that delivers
more noise than practical solutions. In a world recovering from a recession caused by covid-19,
it’s hard to believe that not growing is on top of the agenda of any government at the moment. But
thinking about solutions that can avoid climate catastrophe is urgent. And if shrinking economies
might not be the priority, putting the well-being of people as the main goal should not be seen as
radical or revolutionary, but necessary. So that’s it for this video. We hope you liked
to understand a bit more about degrowth. Since you made it to the end, click around
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