Curbing consumption through socialist policy is far more effective than halting growth altogether

[Noah Smith, 09-06-21, "People are realizing that degrowth is bad," No Publication, ] WL

A better direction for Earth, a better direction for the degrowth movement Degrowth is a non-starter, and green growth won’t happen fast enough on its own. Thus, the world has only one viable option: Forced green growth. Government policy will have to accelerate the transition to green energy and dematerialized GDP faster than these transitions would otherwise take place. For climate, this will involve things like: A forced rapid transition to green electricity Forced rapid electrification of most energy use The forced rapid adoption of low-emissions heat for industrial processes Forced restriction of deforestation …and so on. For other resources, governments must act to avert the “tragedy of the commons”. For example, most of the plastic that gets dumped into our oceans is dumped by a few developing countries. These countries have to curb this practice, and bury the plastic like rich countries do. In addition, even when the tragedy of the commons doesn’t exist, countries need to manage their natural resources in a far-sighted way. The U.S., for instance, has done a lot of this with land conservation, but failed to do this with respect to aquifers. Governments have to be more far-sighted than their citizens, saving resources for future generations instead of letting the current generation consume everything. All of this requires planning. Lots of planning! But infinitely less planning than degrowthers’ schemes to reallocate global consumption and regulate the consumption of each commodity. Rapid decarbonization, curbing of global pollution, and resource conservation are tall orders, politically and logistically speaking, but unlike degrowth, they are possible. And degrowthers might actually have a constructive role to play in this process — if they want it. Instead of focusing on reducing growth, they need to focus on reducing consumption. To those who haven’t thought deeply about economics, those two things might sound like the same thing — aren’t degrowthers already trying to curb consumption? But here’s the key difference: We need to curb consumption in order to boost investment. Making a rapid transition to green, sustainable growth will require huge new investments. Many environmentalists — for example, the people who wrote the Green New Deal — understand this. We need to build out huge amounts of solar power, wind, and storage; retool buildings for electric power and industrial processes for hydrogen gas; build out fleets of electric vehicles to replace internal combustion; build trains and dense housing and so on; and invest in new technologies like tissue-culture meat. This is an absolutely enormous economic undertaking, and it is economic growth. It will require delaying some consumption so that the next generation can enjoy both higher standards of living and a more sustainable planet. But crucially, it represents delaying consumption, rather than permanently reducing consumption. That’s the big difference between green growth and degrowth. People are willing to delay consumption for a brighter future. Rapidly industrializing countries, with their high savings and investment rates and low ratios of consumption to GDP, do this all the time. But it requires political will and buy-in. People need to know that they’re not impoverishing themselves, they’re just delaying gratification — being the ants instead of the grasshopper. Degrowthers could play a part in creating this popular buy-in, but only if they substantially change their message. Instead of “consume less”, their message should be “consume less today, so you can consume more tomorrow”. After all, at its core, isn’t that what sustainability is about? Unfortunately, I’m pessimistic about the degrowth movement switching to a Green New Deal sort of investment-oriented framework. At its core, I feel like degrowth’s appeal comes from its implicit promise to recast genteel North European decline as some sort of grandiose world-saving moral quest. That’s an itch that no Green New Deal will scratch. But in any case, the rest of the environmental movement — and the political Left in general — must realize that degrowth, as currently formulated, is a non-starter. There are crusades out there worth fighting for; this is not one of them.