At the heart of industry’s claim that the world’s economies can expand without limit is the idea of “green growth.” Like the fabled economist’s can opener, the green-growth assumption allows us to believe that the impossible can be made possible. In this case, that means generating greater aggregate wealth year by year while emitting fewer tons of greenhouse gases, extracting fewer tons of resources, and causing less ecosystem destruction, biodiversity loss, and other damage to the Earth and our fellow humans.
I really don’t like the term degrowth used here. The Grove usually implies returning to the Stone age or something like that. Not hey we’re going to phase out some problematic fossil fuels.
Maybe it means that in some circles that I’m not familiar with, but “degrowth” as used in this piece has been around for some time. It draws from a variety of traditions, including feminism, since many economic measures like GDP generally excludes women’s work, and anti-colonialism, which is closely tied with capitalism’s need for continual growth. It’s also the term used by scholars of environmental and economic policy.
Reddit had a small but nice /r/degrowth community. I made one at /c/degrowth@lemmy.ml in the hopes that we could replace it. Maybe join us (well, just me for now I suppose) there! Even if you don’t agree with the movement, it’s an interesting critique of one of our society’s foundational assumptions: The economy should grow forever, and that will be good for people.