The second reason to take time to understand the arguments of degrowth scholars is that, over the past fifty years, they have been doing the intellectual heavy lifting of taking the complaints lodged more generally against economic systems that pursue growth and assembling these into a coherent vision for a post-growth world. Their work therefore provides a useful starting point for reflecting on the origins and nature of economic growth itself, before going on to ponder its relationship with capitalism and climate change—a relationship that has only recently strayed onto the mainstream economics radar screen. Learning the arguments of the founding fathers and mothers of the movement also allows us to recognize that the ideas of recent degrowth proponents, their claims to novelty notwithstanding, are essentially identical to those past ideas. This may be why the snappy slogans posted on social media and quoted in articles about degrowth and the environment are almost always dug up from long ago (the epigraph of this chapter being a prime example). Unoriginality is not the issue here. Rather, the repetition suggests that the degrowth critique, framed as a matter of economy versus nature, may be one of those “internal contradictions of capitalism” that Marx spoke of—a tension that is ever-present, and indeed, in his view, so unresolvable that it must eventually cause the system to collapse. Again, the important function of this chapter is to explain where degrowth thinkers are coming from; even if by the end of this book you are persuaded, one hopes, against their policy recommendations, the concerns they raise are more often than not entirely legitimate and demand a response. This is especially true now, as our economic system seems to be underserving many people and threatening the very planet. To be credible at all, the strategy this book offers to head off climate catastrophe (or any other strategy for doing so) must address these legitimate concerns.

Another merit of the degrowth school is that it draws on multiple disciplines—from economics and sociology all the way to anthropology, philosophy, ecology, and design—as it imagines an alternative society for the post-growth world.⁵ The downside of the movement’s sprawl over multiple disciplines is that there are several high priests in the degrowth church, and the common heading often conflates their quite different worldviews. This makes it challenging to discern the fundamental principles of degrowth. Still, to stick to the religious metaphor, The Limits to Growth can be seen as the equivalent of the timeless Old Testament in the degrowth community, and as for the New Testament, that would probably be Tim Jackson’s best-selling Prosperity without Growth. Many other texts exist and deserve close attention, but in what follows we will turn often to these two fundamental ones as we consider the building blocks of the degrowth vision.⁶

First, the chart shows global CO₂ emissions still rising. If the goal is to slow down climate change, this trend alone stands as prima facie evidence that the current strategy, based on decoupling and improving energy efficiency, fails on the one metric that matters. The status quo is a road to disaster and must be profoundly modified. Second, degrowth advocates would argue that the trend shown for the advanced economies is deceptive. It is true that these countries’ carbon emissions have largely stabilized or even edged down a notch since the mid-2000s—but this is mainly because, responding in part to decades of tighter environmental regulation, they have pushed production of the most polluting items to the developing world. Yet these products are promptly imported back into the rich world to feed consumerism. Indeed, Figure 1.1 shows a widening gap between emissions as calculated based on the production (territorial) versus the consumption of goods. While the effect of this accounting trick might not seem very consequential in the aggregate, for some countries, like Switzerland, it does completely transform the picture. Swiss CO₂ emissions based on production flattened, while those based on consumption went up. For degrowth proponents, this closer scrutiny reveals that decoupling is a myth.

First, despite all the renewable energy sources (including solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal) being brought online, and all the regulatory actions in richer countries to compel greater energy efficiency, encourage shared mobility, and so on, CO₂ emissions have, at best, dropped very little. This paltry change is particularly disappointing when we contrast it with what climate scientists are saying is necessary. To give a rough sense of the sheer scale of the green transition needed, Figure 1.1 includes a linear trend line approaching zero emissions by 2050. Of course, this may overstate the challenge; after all, climate experts do not say that we must achieve zero emissions by 2050 to avoid climate catastrophe...