Rethink° May
This time it's all Degrowth | What happened at the Beyond Growth conference, a look into the debate around degrowth and a look at the Degrowth-Country Japan. Enjoy and share our latest issue!
G’day everyone,
Let’s get right into it. You’ll find a degrowth narrative on Japan, a summary of the Beyond growth conference, meet the leftists who want to shrink Europe and receive a definition for degrowth. And don’t forget to scroll down for the quote of the episode. Without further ado, let’s get started.
Degrowth In Japan
📰 Teaser: The year is 2023 AC. The world is entirely occupied by the Growth-ists. Well, not entirely... One decently siced economy of indomitable Gauls Japanese still holds out against the invaders. And life is not easy for the Growthists in Japan, because the economy is not growing anymore…“We’re preoccupied with GDP ranking and growth, but GDP is a poor measure of a nation’s well-being and happiness,” Saito says. “Here in Japan, we have delicious food, the world’s longest lifespans, safe streets, and excellent public transportation, not to mention the considerable attractions of our culture and art. These assets aren’t reflected in GDP. The adoption of value indicators unrelated to GDP would be a positive step toward degrowth by itself.” Read more here → (6min)
🤔 Moritz two cents: While the narrative sounds nice, let’s look at the figures that count: CO2 Emissions. If we cannot decouple, degrowth would have to lead to a cut in emissions. I have to admit, I was a little disappointed by the graph. Annual emissions certainly decrease in Japan, but their tendency does similair to Germany and the UK (France and Italy also look similair; US and China would be off the chart).
Decreasing emissions are due to the fact that during that period GDP growth was in part decreasing in all those countries. Though it is clearly visible: Japan’s growth is lowest, but decrease of emission is not - so simply degrowing GDP might also not be the solution. But as we will learn in this episode: It’s not about degrowing primarily, it’s about shifting away from growth towards other factors that actually constitute human well-being.
The European Parliament is thinking beyond growth
From the 15th to the 17th of May, an event took place in the European Parliament that we had not expected there: A Post-Growth-Conference. Organized by the greens and called Beyond Growth.
📰 Teaser and 🤔 Moritz two cents : Yeah, I’ll just mix it this time. Because, this was not just some wishy-washy conference, the European Parliament (EP) really brought together the who-is-who of the scientific degrowth community and everyone could chip in from everywhere. As I only followed digitally, I’ll support my points with Tweets from the conference.
What happened?
The opening plenary by Roberta Metsola, President of the EP, was slightly off, the crowd was not amused (1), and also President of the EU Commission, could not really let go of growth (2).
But then the floor was all degrowth. 💡 Here are some highlights:
A fitting opening by Sandrine Dixson Declève (Club of Rome President)
“People don’t want economic growth, they want economic Security”
Watch it here → (14 minutes)
We do not have to focus on growth, we can focus on staying within our means
And that’s what the doughnut by Kate Raworth helps us with. She probably explains it best herself, as she did at the Beyond growth conference.
“There is a rumor around, some people call it green growth”
And Timothée Parriuqe debunks it for us (As he did previously for Economist Paul Krugman, if you remember our February Edition).
Absolutely worth watching, my personal favorite of the ones I have seen.
Watch it here → (10 min)
🫖 You want to see what the conference had to offer? 👉 Click here to go to the full program. Each session has been recorded and you can re-watch it.
👉 Click here to go to the YouTube playlist put together by the Greens with highlights from the conference.
Meet the lefty Europeans who want to shrink the economy
📰 Teaser: The European left has declared that economic growth has reached its limits and a new form of “degrowth” is necessary to avoid societal collapse due to ecological concerns and social injustice. This sentiment was expressed at the “Beyond Growth” conference held at the European Parliament in Brussels. The animus against economic growth comes in 50 shades of red. It ranges from those who decry the use of GDP as the primary gauge of a society’s success, to those who advocate for shrinking the pie deliberately to avoid damage to the planet and benefit the rich. The idea is to take what there is and share it more equally, with panels of citizens advising what is wasteful and socially desirable. However, some solutions appear to resemble the more stringent policies of the early Soviet era, such as citizen assemblies to decide on the level and type of growth that is acceptable.
Continue Reading → (8 min)
🤔 Max’s two cents: The criticism expressed in the opinion piece in The Economist follows the classic line of argumentation that commonly green growth advocates follow. It tries to use historic developments of continued growth, quality of life and life expectancy, despite early warnings by the likes of the Club of Rome. It then attributes the ability to overcome assumed ecological limitations to continued economic growth to the innovation unleashed by free markets. Not only that, but it finishes by mentioning the minimal economic growth in high-income countries and tries to provide proof for green growth by referring to a decoupling of economic growth and carbon emissions. This line of argumentation is flawed in several ways.
First, while the history of the past decades has shown that technological innovation, such as the Green Revolution, enabled increased agricultural output, it did so by increasing environmental destruction pushing us beyond the planetary boundaries. This continued growth was possible, but not sustainably.
Second, while currently mostly left-leaning people contemplate degrowth, it should not be mistaken for soviet style centrally planned economies. Such pseudo-references to assumed historic precedents fail to accept that even today the market context is mostly set through democratic forms of participation, in the form of regulations, taxation, labor law, and social norms and values. The proposal to use citizen assemblies to determine changes to economic output and market context, to limit resource consumption and to reduce wealth inequality is just a more direct, and tried and tested, form of democratic participation. When talking about degrowth and when critically analyzing our current economic system, one should not fall into a binary thinking of innovative liberalism and oppressive and backward planed economies akin to the socialist models. As the opinion piece states, there are at least 50 shades of degrowth. Nuanced discussion and analysis trumps dogmatism and is necessary to account for the complexity of our socio-economic political systems.
Third, the reference to low economic growth or stagnation in high-income countries, such as Germany or Italy, as an argument for the apparent existence of degrowth economies falls short as this argument narrowly focuses on GDP measures. It ignores sustained high resource consumption despite near-steady state economies, as brought to our attention every year with the publication of the Earth Overshoot Day. Furthermore, it is less the growth of individual states that matters, and rather the resource consumption of our global economic system. The latter keeps growing, moving the Earth Overshoot Day a couple of days earlier each year. Furthermore, it is also global wealth equality which continues to increase, as highlighted by the “Survival of the Richest” report by Oxfam and World Inequality report highlight. Thus, while on some narrow measures there might be a relative decoupling to observe, it is not an absolute decoupling on a global scale. The latter is what ultimately matters to prevent the climate, ecological and social crises.
One central problem underlying the significant challenges to decouple is that increased material consumption forms the basis of dominant images of social status and success. Changing those is possible, but challenging.
Furthermore, innovation in the private sector requires safe spaces for open, honest, and fact-based discussion, where there are no holy cows that cannot be criticized or challenged. The same environment is required when working on innovations of social, political and economic systems. That many, who advocate for innovation-friendly environments in the private sector, undermine such environments through dogmatic criticism when it comes to innovations in other spheres is rather ironic.
50 Shades of Degrowth
Some definitions to engage in the critical analysis and debate on economic systems
Degrowth
Degrowth is a political and social movement that advocates for a voluntary reduction of production and consumption as a means of achieving sustainability and social justice. Degrowth challenges the traditional economic model of growth and its reliance on infinite resource consumption and technological advancement, instead promoting a model that prioritizes well-being, social equity, and ecological resilience. Degrowth is an umbrella term for a variety of alternative economic and political models that aim to create a more sustainable and equitable society.
Post-growth
Post-growth is a concept that challenges the notion that economic growth is necessary for societal well-being. It argues that societies should prioritize human well-being over economic growth and embrace a steady-state or degrowth economy. The post-growth movement is not opposed to economic development, but rather seeks to shift the focus from GDP growth to indicators of human well-being, such as health, education, and social equity. Post-growth economics represents an attempt to move beyond the narrow confines of growth economics and to explore more explicitly the possibility of prosperity in a world of ecological limits.
Green growth
Green growth is a concept that seeks to reconcile economic growth with environmental sustainability. It argues that economic growth can be decoupled from resource consumption and environmental degradation through the development and implementation of green technologies and policies. The green growth paradigm has been criticized for its reliance on technological optimism and its failure to address the social and political factors that contribute to environmental degradation and resource depletion.
Not yet enough? Here are some evergreens and recent content we came across:
📔 Any open questions on degrowth? You might find an answer in this book: “The political economy of degrowth” with 850+ pages by Timothée Parrique.
📊 On relative and absolute decoupling with an optimistic liberal anti-degrowth view by Andrew McAfee of MIT.
📉 Degrowth isn’t the same as a recession – it’s an alternative to growing the economy forever.
⚡️ Clean energy investment continues to grow faster than fossil fuel investment, according to the latest IEA Word Energy Investment report.
🌊 A €5.5bn flood barrier to protect Venice from floods is undermined by rising level. Raising the complete city might be the cheapest and only effective countermeasure.
🤖 What can the Copernican Revolution Teach us about the Future of AI? A concise but insightful analysis by Azeem Azhar of Exponential View.
🗞️ The ESG on a Sunday newsletter is for everyone who wants to keep up with developments in sustainable finance.
🌍 Planet Critical is an excellent podcast for everyone who is into changing the world.
📅 Rethinking is timeless. Read the April issue.
You come across something we might want to read/listen/watch? Send it to us or leave a comment.
We hope you enjoyed it. Please comment, subscribe and share.
All the best, and keep rethinking,