Degrowth fails — it’s too vague and has internal contradictions

The degrowth program is highly problematic because of its failure to analyze the qualitative aspects of economic growth and its emphasis on the local economy without recognizing the urgency to address global anthropogenic change from a transnational political perspective. In particular, a major challenge humanity now faces is to rapidly implement a prevention program to avoid catastrophic climate change. Demilitarization, solarization, and the creation of agroecologies are critical if we are to have any chance of success. This demands struggle on all spatial scales, from the neighborhood to the globe. While degrowth proponent Mauro Bonaiuti (Citation2012; this issue) provides an interesting discussion of the social limits of economic growth driven by capital reproduction, I find the paper's degrowth argument shallow and frankly incapable of providing a viable political agenda for confronting the converging economic and ecological crises of real existing fossil fuel nuclear capitalism in the face of the growing threat of catastrophic climate change (“C3”). Specifically, it fails to come to terms with qualitative versus quantitative aspects of economic growth and the critical difference between using the current energy supplies and a solarized infrastructure. The concept of economic growth should be deconstructed, with in-depth consideration of its qualitative versus quantitative aspects, particularly its differential ecological and health impacts. Growth of what are we speaking? Weapons of mass destruction, unnecessary commodities, SUVs versus bicycles, culture, information, pollution, pornography, or simply more hot air? What growth is sustainable in the context of biodiversity preservation and human health, and which is not? Bonaiuti fails to confront these questions and instead lumps all growth into a homogenous outcome of the physical and political economy. Most of Bonaiuti's paper is occupied with an examination of the social limits of economic growth. However, it fails to account for the highly contradictory character of corporate-driven globalization. For example, now for the first time in history, a majority of humanity lives in urban areas. Population density in the global South has grown alongside great inequalities (Davis Citation2006). On the other hand, a vast new terrain of class struggle has emerged centered on the potentials of green urbanism in the context of the growing threat of C3 (Davis Citation2010). Davis’ argument for a green (and red) approach to urban reconstruction is very welcome. Even now cities like New York are much more energy efficient than suburbia. And in China, now the greatest carbon emitter on the planet (not per capita, of course), almost half its population is urban (46 percent), with urbanization rapidly increasing. Davis points out that very significant reductions in carbon emissions could potentially occur with aggressive energy conversion in buildings and transportation centered in and around urban areas. So the urban question as a nexus of class struggle is now also a climate security challenge. This huge challenge is also a huge opportunity to create that other world that is possible—a green and red utopia—especially in metropolitan areas. Undoubtedly, this is a vision that will attract many more adherents than the “end of growth, we must all sacrifice” mantra of so many neo-Malthusian greens. Clean air and clean water, meaningful employment, and more free creative time for all on this planet should be the transnational red and green program. One more example of degrowth's limited vision should suffice: economic growth created globalized information technology with its immense potential for a transnational movement, a development made possible by this revolution in communication.