'The Barcelona school of Ecological Economics and Political Ecology', a wonderful collection in tribute to Joan Martinez-Alier, bringing together all that we've been doing these years
@ICTA_UAB
. . Open Access, free to download all chapters!
'Is degrowth against growth in poor countries'? There are many misunderstandings circulating on this issue, so time for a ... THREAD
@MaxCRoser
@BrankoMilan
A friendly reminder: Nature is a journal read by natural scientists. And our theory of degrowth, trained as most of us are in natural science, makes much more sense to natural scientists than the alchemy of economists whereby economies grow because we sell one another .. “ideas”.
My own position: in principle we can grow without limit, with finite resources, because we can sell new ideas to each other, and these don't mean more stuff.
1/ For those new to degrowth and my work, here is a a brief presentation of my 3+1 books on degrowth (the +1 is coming out this September) with a few selected highlights. THREAD (23)
Alert! I am back on twitter for an hour (wait, did its name change?) and before it gets me depressed I want to share the news of our new paper on the perceptions of degrowth among Euro-parliamentarians. /THREAD
On twitter we spend time in silly debates: is degrowth impoverishment, negative GDP, lockdown misery bla bla. But in our normal lives we are producing some pretty k.a. research. Here are 22 papers by researchers from the (broader) degrowth community published just the last year!
If we were serious about climate breakdown, we should be talking about a Fossil Fuels Lockdown, now. Not in 10 years, or by 2050, but now. Prohibiting as a minimum all new fossil fuel projects or investments. /6
I see myself retiring 20 years from now in a flooded city and with a heatwave coming to get us and still debating on twitter whether absolute decoupling is happening.
HOT OFF THE PRESS TODAY! 'The Case for Degrowth" by
@g_kallis
Susan Paulson
@F_Demaria
and Giacomo D'Alisa.
Its bold vision for a richer society and a better economy could not be more timely.
@R_Degrowth
I read the piece about degrowth on
@vox
by
@KelseyTuoc
and it is really disappointing. I thought I was interviewed by a journalist, but I realize I was just there to give a handy citation for an opinion piece. Not nice. /1
The planet is heating beyond repair and we must stop extracting fossil fuels now. Debates anout decoupling, whether emissions are plateauing, the policies that can incentivize transition etc are twenty years past their sell date…Now we can only pull the emergency brake.
Weird method. Say I want to write a review on the state of economics. I choose all articles with the word 'economics' in the title, and then - surprise surprise - I find most of them are reviews. What an indictment of the state of economics: 'they are only writing reviews'!
A method review of 561
#degrowth
studies finds major flaws. No good basis to draw conclusions about effectiveness & feasibility of degrowth as a strategy to tackle environmental/social problems. Suggests need for modesty about degrowth plans.
@IvanVSavin
For those who no longer read books :) here is the three minutes cartoon version of my book 'Limits. Why Malthus was wrong and why environmentalists should care'.
Last year I published a book on Malthus and Limits. Let me explain what I argued, and how it is relevant to current debates where the name of Malthus and his supposed false prophecy keeps popping up / THREAD
Friends ask me to comment on
@BrankoMilan
's barrage of posts against degrowth. I think the best responses are to be found below Milanovic's own posts and they come from his own audience. I consider myself actually part of his audience /THREAD
Talking of limits, my good friend Erik Swyngedouw had an excellent idea for a limit that would liberate all of us academics, and make the world a better place :-) 100,000 words career-limit for each academic. No pressure to publish, no bogus journals, more thinking, less writing.
For our class on 'degrowth and economics', our master's students prepared a series of informative videos on radical policy proposals from a degrowth perspective. Below the videos, with kudos to all (including those who are shy and didn't want their videos made public!)/1
I lived in the U.S. fifteen years ago for three years - whenever I return now I notice a significant decrease of living standards, esp. public infrastructure. Doomy feeling prevalent, upbeat attitude lost. Spain is still ok in comparison .Gdp does not tell the real story.
Insane.
In 2008 the EU's economy was 10% bigger than the US's.
14 years later the economy of the EU + the UK combined is 21% smaller than US's.
This is probably one of the biggest economic stories of the past decade. European weakness, US aggressivity, or most probably, both.
This technophile pseudo 'optimism' is so 1990s Wired. We are in freaking hothouse 2021. Techno-optimism (sic) is becoming a serious diversion rather than a source of solutions. I feel that really there is no hope when I read pieces like this /END
The media report these days on a new study that supposedly shows that, after all, not only money buys happiness, but that there is no limit on how much happiness money can buy. But is this so? /Thread.
1.
@TimHarford
wrote a piece in the
@FT
arguing ‘that the pandemic is giving us a taste of what an end to growth might look like’, proving that 'hitting demanding emissions targets through crude degrowth would be hopeless'. Some thoughts - THREAD
As I am still trying to come to terms with the sudden loss of my good friend and esteemed colleague Karen Bakker, I wanted to share here, and as a poor substitute of a public tribute, the ways Karen shaped my own work.
For some strange reason when tech-bros encounter degrowth, they immediately think about forced population decrease, which couldn’t be farther from what we call for. I wrote a whole book against Malthus distinguishing degrowth from neo-Malthusianism!
Last year I published a book on Malthus and Limits. Let me explain what I argued, and how it is relevant to current debates where the name of Malthus and his supposed false prophecy keeps popping up / THREAD
We are happy to announce that our new book on degrowth is on its way to printing and you can already pre-order it at . Publication date 3 September! Stay tuned, this is the best thing we've written to date on degrowth.
@politybooks
@ICTA_UAB
@R_Degrowth
Have you ever wondered what Degrowth is but got confused?
Check out our newest
@rosaluxnyc
video Demystifying Degrowth!
This video is based on the pamphlet of the same name by Jamie Tyberg and Erica Jung, is narrated by Fariha Róisín, and is animated by the Spumoni Cooperative.
Right now, we are living in a flaming oven (I write from Greece, with 42C, and the skies orange from fires). The article claims we have 10 years left. 10 yrs for what? Build nuclear power plants, solar panels, CCS, and all the other fancy techs Vox has been promoting for ages? /4
Interesting thread, but I don't think ecosocialists or degrowthers are arguing that if German socialists had come to power the world would be green by now. Socialism is not automatically green. Eco-socialism is what it says - a green version of socialism - to be tested /1
You get the impression from the eco-socialists and degrowthers that humanity wouldn’t face the threat of climate change or biodiversity loss if it weren’t for capitalism (or rather, if it weren’t for capitalist modernity).
But I see no evidence to suggest this is the case.
Great news: Stanford University Press will publish my book in their Fall/Winter series, less than a year from now! Thanks everyone for the good vibes you sent me 🙂
Malthus wrote in the Essay on Population 'there is not enough for everyone to have a decent share'. 200 years after and economists still repeat the same lie. As I showed in my book 'Limits', this was not true in Malthus's time and is even less true now. Jason here explains why.
The world is not poor. It is extremely unequal, and the global economy is organized around exploitation and accumulation rather than around meeting actual human needs. Here's my take on this controversy:
"A discourse analysis of yellow-vest resistance against carbon taxes" - our new paper is available open access! Here is a taste of what you will find there:
How will this realistically make any difference within 10 years? Maybe reduce emissions a little bit compared to what they would otherwise be. But we should be stopping extracting any new fossil fuels, TODAY. This is no longer about decoupling or no decoupling, bla bla /5
You think the world economy and its material extraction and waste discharges are enormous now, wait until 80 more years of 3% growth.... h/t
@ii_sambliss
and
@g_kallis
The pandemic has shown us the economy is a very limited way of organising life and deciding who is important and who is not important. If I could change one thing, it would be to get out of the system of production and instead build a political ecology.
I do expect though from fellow academics to do a minimum homework and read something longer than a tweet or blogpost before expressing strong opinions about degrowth. There are tens of books and hundreds of papers. Our 'case for degrowth' can be read in an evening. FIN
This is where our proposals for working hours reduction, universal basic (or care) income, etc, come in - they are not means to reduce carbon emissions, they are means to prosper w/o growth. You must have not read our work to confuse our causal route that much /11
I wouldn't imagine myself saying this, but I really long for scientists to be back in government. Not technocrat economists, but doctors, biologists, physicists - people who are trained to put human life above else, and tell truth from falsehood. Enough with all these clowns ...
Shouldn't Western countries like Spain, UK or Belgium get humbled & ask for 'aid' and 'knowledge transfer' from experts in countries like Korea or Vietnam on how to deal with the virus? These cycles of waves-lockdowns will be devastating for societies, economies and health...
The question is not whether the incomes of poor people should increase (of course they should!), but whether poverty reduction should be pursued through generalized growth, or through specifics: providing adequate water, energy, housing, food - good education, etc. /11
They also yell if we dare suggest that post-growth may need more funding compared to the avalanche of funding they get. Defund mainstream economics research, that should be our call - they’ve had decades and billions of taxpayers money to prove their value and they’ve failed.
and underfunded effort, recent projects notwithstanding. I mean, we have like, 6 major projects on degrowth/postgrowth. Mainstream economics has had, what, hundreds of thousands times that? Yet they dare complain when we get a couple of projects and a couple of papers published.
'Is degrowth against growth in poor countries?' Faq, we've answered that! Check the 'frequently asked questions' (faqs, that is) in our new book 'The case for Degrowth'!
Me to driver driving at 150 mph towards a wall: “Hey, slow down, we’ll crash”
Driver: “No, we won’t “
Nature journal: “You two should talk it over, you have so much in common”
After 50 years of debate on the arguments laid out in the seminal "Limits to Growth," it's time to forge a consensus and take action to insure a livable future.
Are there limits to economic growth? It’s time to call time on a 50-year argument
In the degrowth community we are trying to develop the economics (and social/political) thinking for how to manage a necessary Fossil Fuels Lockdown and its economic aftermath by design and not disaster. How to provide employment, how to secure welfare, etc, etc /10
The piece talks only of an urgency to develop more (more nuclear, more renewable, etc), in the speculative hope that this somehow this will reduce oil extraction to zero or so in 10 or 20 years. This is really what is utopian. To think that oil will be phased out like that. /7
Excited to start teaching today for our new (first and only) online master's on degrowth. 50 students enrolled for my class! Check the program of our master's here:
My main concern is that the framing of the article, as a supposed opposition between a utopian degrowth and a more realistic and pragmatic 'eco-modernist' approach to climate mitigation, is way past its sell date. Would be a good article if written in say 2002 or so..../3
In this 30 min talk I summarize my research the last 10 years: on Malthus and limits, ideology of scarcity and power, degrowth, biopolitics and mal-adaptation. Take a look, faster than reading all that stuff!
I am surprised by those surprised that energy efficiency gains 'rebound' and lead to new energy use. When labour is concerned, this is common wisdom - productivity leads to more growth and new jobs that employ the labour 'saved'. Why would it be different for energy?
No, growth is growth in GDP and it IS using more natural resources. That it may not use more resources in a hypothetical alternate world, does not mean that it doesn't in the actual world that we are living in.
Yep. This.
Lots of degrowthers DEFINE "growth" as using more natural resources, and then conclude that...growth always uses more natural resources.
It's such a charade.
I am happy to share our new paper with
@ANGELOSVARVARO1
and Panos Petridis, published open access
@WorldDevJournal
. . In it we propose a new way to study ‘real-existing degrowth’. THREAD
This book is by far the best thing I’ve ever written and is only 25,000 words. In another world, where there wouldn’t have been corona, I would be on the road promoting it (well not really, I just had newborn twins and I am in 😍 with them).
Happy
#EarthDay2020
! We have assembled a recommended reading list of titles about sustainability, nature, and the environment.
#ReadUP
Our first book is Limits: Why Malthus Was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care by
@g_kallis
So, I tried an 'Impossible Burger' and while I was chewing this impossible meat my mind wandered off to thoughts about 'substitution', a core idea of ecomodernism.
@ii_sambliss
/1
Our call about degrowth applies to Europe and North America. Degrowth means stopping the pursuit of GDP growth, prioritizing wellbeing and the environment. This will likely have negative effects on output, hence a need for policies for "managing without growth" (Peter Victor) /3
Those of us who write about degrowth write first and foremost about the part of the world we live in - Europe and North America. We do not see ourselves part of the expertocracy that feels entitled telling Africa or the rest of the world what they should be doing. /2
No one would claim that somehow we could lockdown the economy to stop the epidemic, and still have phenomenal growth. And yet somehow, we are told, that we can lockdown fossil fuels, the lifeblood of the economy, within 10 yrs, and still have 'green growth'. Right../9
'We compare selected model characteristics of 75 (!) degrowth and post-growth related modeling studies, compiled through a systematic literature review (2000-2023)'. 👨🦱🧔
Our new book on degrowth is out. If you want to organize a zoom lecture and have one of us present the book to your University or collective, please let us know! Email me at and let me know possible dates, context and size of audience.
You will hear that the emissions reduction this year came at the cost of the lockdown. No, the lockdown was implemented to save thousands of lives and avoid the collapse of health systems. Emissions reduction was a free bonus.
One of the strongest empirical regularities in economics is that between economic activity and energy/material use (or 'footprint'). As long as a $ of income can be a claim over labour and resources, growth will have material effects, no matter how 'immaterial' its source is.
I am cited for claiming that degrowth is not about climate change. I said instead that degrowth is about much MORE than just climate change, but cited out of context I fit the wish of the author. Jason points to other flaws in the article here. But.... /2
I welcome thoughtful critiques of degrowth, and I often learn from them. But this piece by Kelsey Piper is so wildly off the mark that it's hard to know where to start. Here are a few responses, in the thread below.
The cool thing about working on degrowth is that everyone loves you. It's overwhelming really. The idea sells like hot cakes, especially among economists who just cannot get enough of it.