SOFiA - Exploring Values, Meaning and Spirituality: Newsletter issue 165, Apr 2023
De-Growth
I want to begin by considering our present economy. For the past 40 years, like many other Western countries, New Zealand has practised a neo-liberal economy. The economy is seen as a perfect entity separate from society, government and the environment. Markets are efficient and should therefore be used for everything. Distribution of income is ignored, all unemployment is seen as voluntary and ethics are irrelevant. This theory refuses to discard any failures or take any responsibility for damage caused.
The result has been the biggest extractive operation the world has ever seen. Wealth is extracted from the economy and funnelled to the top 1% of the population. Natural resources are plundered, biodiversity plummets and the planet becomes dangerously unbalanced as we breach four of the nine planetary boundaries and threaten the rest.
Our current economic system cannot function without growth, so most of our politicians are clinging to the idea that we can change without changing, carry on our current lifestyles and continue to grow our economy. But prioritizing economic growth is a recipe for disaster. We must change the way we live. Here in New Zealand we have just experienced how unbalanced our planet has become. It is clear that we cannot go on transgressing planetary boundaries. We have to learn to live within planetary limits and also meet human needs for a satisfying life.
How are we to prioritize human wellbeing and ecological sustainability? How are we to change the way we live?
Some argue for green growth, relying on clean technologies to clean up our environment but mostly continuing as we are. In fact, it will take more fossil fuels than we can access to create the green technology needed, and green growth is still growth. Technological innovations are not sufficient to make the magnitude of changes needed. Energy alternatives are too small and too slow to meet the crisis. Not a single one of our major systems (agriculture, construction, transport, forestry, waste management) is sustainable.
Perhaps it is time to learn about degrowth significantly reducing the amount of energy and raw materials we use to live well. Most people, as well as the planet, would be better off with a degrowth future, provided we share equitably the resources we can use sustainably. (The richest 1% netted 66% of global wealth created in 2021-22. 50% of human impact on the living world is attributable to the richest 16% of us).
With DeGrowth, low income countries would be encouraged to continue to grow their economies in a sustainable way. Rich countries would be urged to offer job guarantees and a shorter working week, dramatically scaling down energy and resource use. Instead of expenditure on armed forces and the automotive industry, there would be more focus on renewables, public transport and the planned contraction of unnecessary production.
15
principles are suggested:
- Those making decisions about resource extraction should be those most impacted by those decisions
- Remain within the regenerative capacities of renewable resources
- Circularity – everything produced must be able to be recycled
- Socially useful production – what is not needed should not be made
- Small, not-for-profit co-operatives
- Produce local, consume local
- Technology as tool, not master – controllable, reversible and easily intelligible
- Work less, play more
- Economic valuation informed by social and moral values
- Strategic resources managed as commons
- Provision of goods, services and amenities needed for the satisfaction of needs should remain outside the market domain, organised by government
- Sufficiency for all, excess for none. Any surplus used to benefit the worse off
- Simple lifestyle
- Less stuff, more relationships
- Joie de vivre enjoying nature and culture
Is this a fantasy? Some say the idea that if we bake a smaller cake, the poorest will get a bigger share of it has never happened in history.
However, the market-based growth-dependent, technology approach has also failed. And the increasing floods, fires, earthquakes and cyclones are leaving us little choice. We cannot simply go on mending bridges and roads and living in flood-prone areas. We must transform our societies, by undertaking a huge, rapid, immediate, planned reduction in the scale of human activity.
One immediately effective tool is Universal Basic Income. If this was implemented, people would be freed to give up jobs they see as pointless or wasteful. Some families would decide they don’t need two incomes. So UBI would contribute to economic contraction. Some researchers estimate about 50% of jobs are pointless. (Think advertising, trade in out-of-season foods, shipping identical commodities in opposite directions, the weapons industry, fast fashion, private jets and luxury yachts). If we abandoned these, we would quickly cut emissions and slow the economy.
Orderly de-growth is the key not only to minimising climate change, but also to meaningful work and fulfilling lives. It would take political courage, but Covid showed us that slowing down would be good. The only way to persuade politicians to make the necessary changes is for large numbers of us to call for it.
If you feel daunted by this proposal, in the 1960s New Zealanders consumed one third of the energy used by a person today. Yet that period is not remembered for deprivation. Back then economic activity was about meeting basic needs – shelter, food, health services, safe transport, escape from drudgery.
Think what life would be like if we all had security regarding housing, health care, education, nutritious food, meaningful work. Think what life would be like if all could work fewer hours and have more time for personal interests. Think what life would be like if we did away with unnecessary goods such as luxury goods, private jets and yachts, fast fashion, advertising. Think what life would be like if we took the climate emergency seriously and withdrew subsidies for fossil fuel and implemented controlled reduction of fossil fuel use over a decade. Think what life would be like if we had a progressive wealth tax to fund these programmes.
Isn’t degrowth an idea worth taking seriously?
Margaret Gwynn
I want to begin by considering our present economy. For the past 40 years, like many other Western countries, New Zealand has practised a neo-liberal economy. The economy is seen as a perfect entity separate from society, government and the environment. Markets are efficient and should therefore be used for everything. Distribution of income is ignored, all unemployment is seen as voluntary and ethics are irrelevant. This theory refuses to discard any failures or take any responsibility for damage caused.
The result has been the biggest extractive operation the world has ever seen. Wealth is extracted from the economy and funnelled to the top 1% of the population. Natural resources are plundered, biodiversity plummets and the planet becomes dangerously unbalanced as we breach four of the nine planetary boundaries and threaten the rest.
Our current economic system cannot function without growth, so most of our politicians are clinging to the idea that we can change without changing, carry on our current lifestyles and continue to grow our economy. But prioritizing economic growth is a recipe for disaster. We must change the way we live. Here in New Zealand we have just experienced how unbalanced our planet has become. It is clear that we cannot go on transgressing planetary boundaries. We have to learn to live within planetary limits and also meet human needs for a satisfying life.
How are we to prioritize human wellbeing and ecological sustainability? How are we to change the way we live?
Some argue for green growth, relying on clean technologies to clean up our environment but mostly continuing as we are. In fact, it will take more fossil fuels than we can access to create the green technology needed, and green growth is still growth. Technological innovations are not sufficient to make the magnitude of changes needed. Energy alternatives are too small and too slow to meet the crisis. Not a single one of our major systems (agriculture, construction, transport, forestry, waste management) is sustainable.
Perhaps it is time to learn about degrowth significantly reducing the amount of energy and raw materials we use to live well. Most people, as well as the planet, would be better off with a degrowth future, provided we share equitably the resources we can use sustainably. (The richest 1% netted 66% of global wealth created in 2021-22. 50% of human impact on the living world is attributable to the richest 16% of us).
With DeGrowth, low income countries would be encouraged to continue to grow their economies in a sustainable way. Rich countries would be urged to offer job guarantees and a shorter working week, dramatically scaling down energy and resource use. Instead of expenditure on armed forces and the automotive industry, there would be more focus on renewables, public transport and the planned contraction of unnecessary production.
15 principles are suggested:
-
Those making decisions about resource extraction should be those most impacted by those decisions
-
Remain within the regenerative capacities of renewable resources
-
Circularity – everything produced must be able to be recycled
-
Socially useful production – what is not needed should not be made
-
Small, not-for-profit co-operatives
-
Produce local, consume local
-
Technology as tool, not master – controllable, reversible and easily intelligible
-
Work less, play more
-
Economic valuation informed by social and moral values
-
Strategic resources managed as commons
-
Provision of goods, services and amenities needed for the satisfaction of needs should remain outside the market domain, organised by government
-
Sufficiency for all, excess for none. Any surplus used to benefit the worse off
-
Simple lifestyle
-
Less stuff, more relationships
-
Joie de vivre enjoying nature and culture
Is this a fantasy? Some say the idea that if we bake a smaller cake, the poorest will get a bigger share of it has never happened in history.
However, the market-based growth-dependent, technology approach has also failed. And the increasing floods, fires, earthquakes and cyclones are leaving us little choice. We cannot simply go on mending bridges and roads and living in flood-prone areas. We must transform our societies, by undertaking a huge, rapid, immediate, planned reduction in the scale of human activity.
One immediately effective tool is Universal Basic Income. If this was implemented, people would be freed to give up jobs they see as pointless or wasteful. Some families would decide they don’t need two incomes. So UBI would contribute to economic contraction. Some researchers estimate about 50% of jobs are pointless. (Think advertising, trade in out-of-season foods, shipping identical commodities in opposite directions, the weapons industry, fast fashion, private jets and luxury yachts). If we abandoned these, we would quickly cut emissions and slow the economy.
Orderly de-growth is the key not only to minimising climate change, but also to meaningful work and fulfilling lives. It would take political courage, but Covid showed us that slowing down would be good. The only way to persuade politicians to make the necessary changes is for large numbers of us to call for it.
If you feel daunted by this proposal, in the 1960s New Zealanders consumed one third of the energy used by a person today. Yet that period is not remembered for deprivation. Back then economic activity was about meeting basic needs – shelter, food, health services, safe transport, escape from drudgery.
Think what life would be like if we all had security regarding housing, health care, education, nutritious food, meaningful work. Think what life would be like if all could work fewer hours and have more time for personal interests. Think what life would be like if we did away with unnecessary goods such as luxury goods, private jets and yachts, fast fashion, advertising. Think what life would be like if we took the climate emergency seriously and withdrew subsidies for fossil fuel and implemented controlled reduction of fossil fuel use over a decade. Think what life would be like if we had a progressive wealth tax to fund these programmes.
Isn’t degrowth an idea worth taking seriously?
Margaret Gwynn