Climate Crisis and Degrowth

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Climate reality is today’s common denominator all across the planet. The impact of the climate crisis confirms that today’s definition of prosperity is a healthy planet.

We need all the imaginative climate action we can get; degrowth is an option, a crack in the edifice of economic growth.

A wave of literature underscores the recognition that we are in an ecological predicament and the need for innovative thinking. Books like Tim Jackson’s Post-Growth: Life After Capitalism, Kate Soper’s Post-Growth Living, Giorgos Kallis’s In Defense of Degrowth, Vincent Liegey and Anitra Nelson’s Exploring Degrowth, and Jason Hickel’s Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World are all part of this movement.

In 1972, the French theorist André Gorz coined the word décroissance to ask whether "no growth — or even degrowth" in material production was necessary for “the earth’s balance,” even if it ran counter to “the survival of the capitalist system.” Gorz was writing the same year that The Limits to Growth was published, a report by a group of scientists warning that surges in population and economic activity would eventually outstrip the planet's carrying capacity.

Notably, the degrowth movement does not advocate for a complete halt in all forms of growth. Exceptions like climate action initiatives and policies, regenerative finance systems, eco-technology solutions, and societal initiatives are the constructs of a new global prosperity framework and are necessary for our collective well-being.

#ClimateReality #HealthyPlanet #ProsperityRedfined #ClimateCrises #Degrowth #Ideas #ClimateAction #EconomicGrowth #Degrowth #Capitalism

References:

A recent New York Times article: Shrink the Economy, Save the World.

Here is a free download of The Limits of Growth from The Club of Rome.

Here are the Recommendations from the UN’s Action Plan for the Human Environment in 1972.