Degrowth fails and exacerbates poverty in the global south

Much of the rest of their introduction attempts to answer common criticisms. First, whereas carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions tend to crowd out many other considerations for a sustainable niche, in degrowth discourses, these are often inadequately addressed. With the focus on decreasing material throughput overall, questions of investment in renewable energy are given relatively scant attention, as Pollin correctly observes. Degrowth advocates don’t seem to want to even countenance the idea that there might indeed be a growth bubble driven by the clearly needed, extreme investment in renewable energy since a simultaneous retirement of fossil fuel energy sources is required if a degrowth trajectory is overall desired. Such investment would generate economic growth, and thus flies in the face of degrowth principles. Yet, a “pure” degrowth program couldn’t possibly achieve emissions targets as quickly.

Second is the question of growth in the Global South. The authors concede that countries in the South will need to grow in standard terms to satisfy basic needs: “Indeed, degrowth in the North will liberate ecological space for growth in the South. Poverty in the South is the outcome of the exploitation of its natural and human resources at low cost by the North. Degrowth will reduce demand for, and the prices of, natural resources and industrial goods, making them more accessible to the developing South.”Footnote115 Here, the internal inconsistencies of the argument show more clearly. On the one hand, degrowth is simply too diffuse a set of ideas to adequately address this question. On the other, degrowth’s origins are interventions in fundamentally liberal policy debates. An idea of the extractive practices of colonization is operative here, but absent is an acknowledgement that this extraction is rooted in the very structure of imperial domination—a structure of unequal distribution of power which is not wholly explicable from the quantitative aspects of the practices of extraction (i.e. those enabling growth). There is no real theory of the political economy of geopolitics (i.e. imperialism) at play. Returning to the extractive circuit, it is not simply a question of supply and demand. A popular sovereign DRC fundamentally alters the ability of capital to recoup profits. A sufficiently strong political force in wealthy states would, far short of a transition to socialism, try to extract funds from existing accumulated wealth to purchase the resources now in higher demand. This is a good thing, as it is the most likely channel for actual redistribution of wealth from North to South. Regional and other forms of alternative cooperative institutional infrastructure is necessary to regulate South-South relations, or to set different prices, or to facilitate the quick development and exchange of vital technologies, etc. Factors of geopolitical power—from the enforcement of intellectual property to the simple continued reality of American military hegemony—are structural questions (that is, regarding the structured distribution of power within the modern world system). The North has far more of a role to play here beyond reducing its overdevelopment. As I’ve noted elsewhere, twenty-first century socioecological conditions mark probably the first time in modern history in which basic self-interests connect majorities in South and North.Footnote116 Whereas it was once rational in a narrow way for majorities in the capitalist core to favor nationalist compromise and imperial domination, political economic shifts, particularly globalization and the structure of the major twenty-first century multinational firms—alongside palpable socioecological realities—have undermined even the limited rank self-interest of such arrangements. Instead, despite the still staggering global differences, the kinds of changes necessary for a sustainable global human ecological niche have the potential to build from the same narrow basic self-interest in ways that converge across many lines, North and South included.

Perhaps due to degrowth’s diffuse conceptual universe or its principal location as an intervention in liberal policy debates, the degrowth literature tends to gravitate towards liberal diversity arguments. “First and foremost,” the authors contend here, degrowth liberates “conceptual space for countries there to find their own trajectories to what they define as the good life.”Footnote117 Even if the gesture to sovereignty is welcome, sovereignty alone offers no solutions to matters of political economy or political ecology. Three examples of alternative “trajectories” are cited. The first, buen vivir, is directly an alternative development model, already in use by activists and political parties in South America, based on alternative conceptions of the good life that challenge dominant developmental paradigms and have already been elaborated in economic terms as explicitly anti-capitalist. The second example, South Africa’s ubuntu philosophy, is more of a general humanistic philosophy of social cooperation. These two concepts have little in common except for not focusing on growth and originating in the South. The third concept cited is “the Gandhian Economy of Permanence.” Gandhian economics was rejected in India in favor of Nehruvian developmental socialism. Why the former—particularly with its extreme personal restrictions and somewhat bizarre and certainly anti-modern formulations—is to be preferred to the latter? A glance at the “ally” mini-essay indicates hostility to Nehru on grounds of his being a “Fabian socialist, Westernized, and fascinated by modernity.”Footnote118 Is there any “trajectory” for Global South modernisms, even if ecologically sound? If not, why not?

Degrowth is plagued by this strange Orientalism and largely inexplicable commitments to asceticism and self-denial without solid ecological or economic grounds. Discussed within the range of degrowth “action” are: back-to-the-land movements, UBIs, alternative currency schemes, co-ops, Nowtopias, community gardens, eco-communities, urban gardens, etc. These, however, remain unconvincing efforts with little ecological effect, as long as they are not positioned within a larger structural transformation backed by some kind of public authority to secure enforcement, especially in the face of right-wing climate realism and the direct and indirect force that any serious climate program will face.

Some formulations of degrowth do employ a more focused, systematic approach. Jason Hickel gives an account of the social and natural costs of the development of capitalism and locates the growth imperative within the structural logic of capital. His account of the growth imperative makes the leap from a “pure” account of growth to an understanding of growth in terms of what is needed for large firm profitability.Footnote119 He places capitalism in its current ecological contexts. Hickel addresses clean energy transition concerns directly and simultaneously demonstrates how a “growth obsessed economy powered by clean energy will still tip us into disaster.”Footnote120 In addition to his invaluable ecological economics work, Hickel provides a vivid and clarifying portrait of imperialism as a kind of uneven and combined ecological development. Unfortunately, true to the degrowth paradigm, Hickel switches his focus from capitalism to growth as he nominates “growthism” as the culprit: “it is because of their commitment to growthism that our politicians find themselves unable to take meaningful action to stop ecological breakdown.”

Even while largely bracketing questions of direct politics, it is hard not to notice the continuities in degrowth’s deficiencies. Without a discernible political strategy and critique of the structural drivers of growth, it cannot reach its emancipatory potential.