Degrowth fails—GND decoupling is best. Working class wouldn’t even welcome their project

[David Ecklein, 1-5-2022, "A critique of degrowth," Climate & Capitalism, ] WL

Ecosocialist responses to “degrowth” analysis and proposals have ranged from full support to total rejection. The author of the following critical commentary is an emeritus professor of biology at Howard University, and co-author of The Earth is Not for Sale (World Scientific, 2019). We encourage respectful responses in the comments, and hope to publish other views in future. by David Schwartzman The positive contributions of the degrowth proponents should be recognized, in particular, their rethinking of economic growth under capitalism, critiquing its measure, the GNP/GDP, as well as pointing to capitalism’s unsustainable use of natural resources, in particular fossil fuels in its production of commodities for profit generation regardless of their impact on the health of people and the environment. Further, they wisely critique eco-modernists who claim that simply substituting the right technology into the present political economy of capitalism will be sufficient to meet human and nature’s needs. But the degrowth solutions offered are highly flawed and their brand is not likely to be welcomed by the global working class, even as it attracts sections of the professional class.[1] Degrowth proponents commonly fail to unpack the qualitative aspects of economic growth, lumping all in one basket; i.e., sustainable/addressing essential needs of humans and nature versus unsustainable, leaving the majority of humanity in poverty or worse. Degrowthers point to the relatively privileged status of workers in the global North compared to those in the global South as a big part of the problem, instead of recognizing that the transnational working class will not only benefit from growth of sectors that meet its needs in both the global North and South but must be the leading force to defeat fossil capital.[1, 2, 3] A common claim in the degrowth discourse is that “perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to environmental calamity.”[4] This assertion fails to deconstruct the qualitative aspects of growth, what is growing, what should degrow, under what energy regime? While of course there are obvious limits to the growth of the global physical infrastructure, why can’t knowledge and culture continue to grow for a long time into the future in a globally sustainable and just physical and political economy? In addition, leading degrowthers say ’The global material and energy “throughput” has to degrow, starting with those nations that are ecologically indebted to the rest. Energy and material throughput have to degrow because the materials extracted from the earth cause huge damage to ecosystems and to the people that depend on them.’ [5]. In contrast: With respect to material throughput, we argue that it should increase globally in an ecosocialist transition as a culmination of a Green New Deal: “In an ecosocialist transition, as at least we envision it, the plan would not be simply for degrowth, but for a complete phasing out of the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC). The disappearance of MIC would liberate vast quantities of materials, especially metals, for the creation of a global wind and solar power infrastructure.”[6] Leading degrowthers advocate a global reduction in energy consumption,[5, 7, 8] which is a prescription for mass death for most of humanity, because it will condemn them to a state of energy poverty even worse than present, as well as prevent the creation of the wind/solar power capacity necessary for climate adaptation and mitigation. This scenario would make it virtually impossible to meet the 1.5 deg C global warming target, hence increasing the potential for climate catastrophe with horrors much worse than we now witness. And finally they advocate for the goal of a “satisfactory” quality of life for most of humanity living in the global South, in contrast to a higher standard for many in the global North, instead of demanding and mapping out a path to the highest state-of-the-science life expectancy/quality of life achievable for all children in their lifetime.[9, 10] This critique of degrowth has important implications to the agenda and strategy of a Global Green New Deal (GGND). In this context, while degrowthers wisely argue for reducing energy consumption in energy wasteful U.S., in a transition to renewable energy, they once again claim that globally energy use should go down by a significant level over the coming decades.[8, 11, 12] If increasingly informed by an ecosocialist agenda, a GGND will entail sustainable economic growth, the creation of a wind/solar energy infrastructure replacing fossil fuels, restoration of natural ecosystems, agro-ecologies, green infrastructure etc. Degrowthers fail to recognize the critical difference between the high efficiency capture of the solar flux generating wind/solar power and the fossil fuel energy supply because of their lack of understanding of thermodynamics, in particular the entropy concept in their appropriation of Georgescu-Roegen’s (G-R) fallacious so-called 4th law, which conflates open and closed systems with respect to energy and mass transfers; the Earth’s surface is not closed but rather open to energy going in and out. It should be noted that G-R’s 4th law was rejected over thirty years ago even by leading ecological economics scholars who recognized that incoming solar radiation could be the energy supply of global civilization.[13] A sufficient global solar/wind energy supply, greater than the present global consumption level, can eliminate energy poverty raising the global life expectancy to the world’s highest level, while creating the capacity for climate mitigation and adaptation. Further, this renewable energy supply can facilitate the virtual end of extractive mining by recycling and industrial ecologies.[14] Real zero, not “net zero,” is the only potential path to meeting the 1.5 deg C warming target set by the IPCC, in a progressively unfolding ecosocialist GND by building capacity of the transnational working class and its allies (indigenous communities, ecofeminist women’s movements and all oppressed people around the world) to undermine the imperial agenda of the MIC and defeat militarized fossil capital and its political instruments in governments. At the same time “green” capital must be challenged by building a global regulatory regime necessary for environmental, worker and community protection. Extractivism is a very real challenge that must be confronted in a wind/solar transition terminating fossil fuels, to create a truly just process which protects the rights and health of indigenous people around the world, along with the workforce and communities affected. There are significant future opportunities to limit mining in this transition, namely recycling the huge supplies of metals now embedded in the fossil fuel and military infrastructures, substituting common elements for rare ones (e.g., batteries using NaS, Fe/air etc.), enhancing public transit instead of relying on manufacturing hundreds of millions of electric cars. There are now significant energy savings in recycling metals instead of mining their ores: “recycled aluminum metal (e.g., in the form of cans), which can be simply cleaned and re-melted, saving 94% of the energy that would be required to produce the aluminum from ore…The largest energy savings achieved by recycling are generally for metals, which are often easy to recycle and otherwise typically need to be produced by energy-intensive mining and processing of ore. For example, energy savings from beryllium recycling are 80%, lead 75%, iron and steel 72%, and cadmium 50%.”[15] As the renewable energy supplies grow globally using this energy to recycle would sharply reduce greenhouse emissions as well as mining. These opportunities reinforce the need for a renewable energy transition increasingly informed by an ecosocialist agenda, especially global demilitarization and social governance of production and consumption.