That’s key.
Martin ’22 [Emmanuel; October 13; senior lecture in economics at the Aix-Marseille University and Catholic Institute of Vendée in France; “The specter of degrowth,” GIS Report, https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/growth/]
The non-pricing of too many negative externalities (airplane kerosene, intercity highways, commuting in cars to big city centers) has prevented precise economic calculation of social costs imposed on society by various actors. There has been no proper internalization of social cost in private cost, as economist Ronald Coase would explain. Non-pricing and weakened property rights protection have thus not fostered innovation to limit the “internalized” cost of pollution or overexploitation.
Green growth, rather than degrowth, could make a difference if it is undergirded with strengthening pricing and property mechanisms. Movements like the Yellow Vests would accept such pricing as long as it is clear and accompanied by a degrowth of obese, unaccountable and costly government bureaucracies and cronyism. This sort of degrowth, materializing in lower taxes and transparency, would be the compensation for pricing externalities. In this scenario, clarifying property rights, prices and political responsibilities would be the key to cleaner growth.