Why We Need Degrowth

the holiday season crushes us with products

mountains of stuff piled high in store aisles and shopping carts under trees

endless boxes wrapping paper and noise

all accumulating in returned packages

and crowded landfills December

is truly the height of over consumption

and over production in the Imperial

core every year we buy gifts that corporations

say will bring us joy and in the process

burn fossil fuels at ever

higher rates the holiday season lays bear our current

societal self-destruction over the last 50 years the global economy has bloomed

in size and with it has come the rapid tick upwards

of warmer temperatures economic

growth capital accumulation and Rising emissions

seem to be in lock step which is why we need to Envision a

different path forward one where we dramatically

reduce production to avoid the worst of climate

chaos a vision that is Coes

in recent years under the banner

of degrowth but there are so many different meanings

to that charged term

and many critiques that champions of degrowth

must tackle so today we sift through the flourishing

debates and struggles of degrowth

in order to understand how we must not only dismantle

the growth Paradigm but why we must connect

degrowth to broader Anti-Imperialist

anti-colonialist and anti-c capitalist

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and to be honest

me since the marriage of coal and capitalist

factory production during the Industrial

Revolution the global economy has been on a perilous

Ascent of growth World production

and consumption has skyrocketed

as companies produce ever more under the Turning cycle

of capital accumulation because growth

the growth of the economy and the growth of our impact on the Earth

is ultimately the physical manifestation

of capital accumulation as the authors of the Futures

degrowth note capitalism appears

as growth and this materialization

is not only social

but also biophysical or material

so when we hear Biden celebrate

economic growth the United States

had the fastest economic

growth in nearly four decades

what he's really saying is that capital accumulation

or capitalists investing money into the production of Commodities

to sell for even more money in an endless cycle of over production

and money hoarding continues

to expand unimpeded growth

is thus an indicator

of the health of a capitalist

economy in other words an indicator

of capital accumulation but it also has become an ideology

Biden is celebrating economic growth because under capitalism

if an economy doesn't grow

it dies put another way the process of money turning into Commodities

turning into more money

can never stop or the economy

crashes we've seen this many times times throughout history

most recently in 2008 and during the pandemic

the GDP shrank by

4.8% that's the largest decline in the economy since the Great Recession in 2008

when the process of capital accumulation

is interrupted the world

suffers as degrowth scholar Jason hickel notes

if it does not grow

it collapses into crisis

as a result growth has become the core goal of most every corporation

and government across the 20th and 21st

century economic growth under capitalism

M has become synonymous

with progress while living conditions did certainly improve for some as economic growth turned

onward during the 20th century and into the 21st

the connection between economic growth and so-called

progress however is more tenuous

than many Champion it to be often

progress comes not from the expansion

of capital but from the struggles

of workers and oppressed communities

against the elite it was mass struggle that gained working hour limits

minimum wages and just recently it was a historic strike that won writers a

generous contract in Hollywood

and yet growth is now the primary goal of the global economy

this valorization of growth

undergirded by capital accumulation

and profit hunting is driving a reckless amount of material

production according to a 2022

research paper every single year the global economy

directly wastes or mismanages

around 78% of the total water withdrawn

49% of the food produced

31% of energy produced 85%

% of ores and 26%

of non-metallic minerals extracted

and even with this massive waste there is still excess production

that corporations dump onto consumers

regardless of whether it is needed or not and we gobble all that excess

stuff up because as workers under capitalism

we are alienated from any real meaning or value in our lives

our jobs aren't fulfilling

we're separated from the natural world

and were siloed into single family homes

removed from our communities

all the while operations

bombard us with messages

that the solution to this disconnection

is consumption in short alienation

drives us not to consume

for use and subsistence

but instead to fill a hole

to shop for the potential promise of a desirable

future that under capitalism

will never arrive by inciting

this insatiable appetite for consumption

capitalists can assure that there will be a market for their Inc ENT production

production which fuels a spiral of expansion

leading to massive emissions output

economic growth and Emissions

have historically been tightly

correlated this is because fossil fuels are a foundational

part of the cycle of capital accumulation

as I talked about in my previous two videos

as a result of Rapid economic

expansion in the last 50 years Alejandro

pedral and Juan borda

note that it is estimated

that we have already reached 90%

of the emissions needed to reach 1.5

de C and in a decade we will have exceeded

that limit and most of this accumulation

and growth has been driven

by the Imperial core

the US and Europe alone are responsible

for 49% of cumulative

carbon dioxide emissions while China and India represent

just 15% as writer Ian Angus points out if the poorest 3 billion people

on the planet somehow disappear

tomorrow there would be virtually

no reduction in ongoing

environmental destruction in short the growth of Corporations

and capitalists in the Imperial core that Biden is so excited about has come

at the expense of the Imperial

periphery indeed from 1990

to 2015 the Imperial Corp siphoned

$242 trillion worth of land labor energy and resources

from the Imperial periphery

that's roughly a quarter of the periphery's

total GDP so to fuel their economic

expansion imperialist corporations and countries are plundering

the Landscapes and people of the periphery

we saw this in the L

of Iraqi oil fields

and now in the gruesome

conditions of cobalt mining in the Democratic

Republic of Congo there multinational

companies extract and plunder

precious metals for smartphones

and electric cars to fuel capitalist

accumulation in the Imperial

Corp this is what growth really means under capitalism

rampant emissions Imperial plunder

and dispossession of the many while the few benefit and prosper

but there are many who refute these claims

who claim that we can grow the economy and dramatically

draw down down our emissions

they Champion the idea

of green growth an enticing

dream but as we'll soon see

an unattainable one in 2017

Barack Obama released a paper in the journal

science with a simple thesis

the US can grow the economy and cut emissions

at the same time this green growth or decoupling

strategy has been the primary

approach for capitalist forces

from the Paris agreement to some models of the ipcc

technology unproven at scale

like carbon capture and storage

combined with a massive renewable buildout

are held up as evidence

that we don't have to dramatically

downscale our resource use to take climate action

the core idea being that instead of radical transformation

or struggle against fossil Capital to address climate change we can just replace fossil

fuels with Renewables or electric cars with gas powerered ones

and so on we can somehow

continue with businesses as usual

but just make everything

electric unfortunately the promise of green growth

has fallen flat on its face

it is not a viable

strategy considering the speed at which we need to reduce emissions

indeed there is no indication

that on a global scale green growth has moved the needle an exhaustive

2020 synthesis of 835

peer-reviewed papers on decoupling

found that while there are some rare examples of countries decoupling

emissions from economic growth

large rapid absolute reductions of resource use and greenhouse

gas emissions cannot be achieved

through observed decoupling rates

in part this is due to the rebound

effect or What's called the jevans

Paradox as we increase

efficiency of energy or material use

that efficiency often leads to more energy use

not less we're seeing this play out with Renewables

even though the percentage of Renewables

installed has grown globally

the total amount of fossil fuels produced and consumed

has also grown this is because our economy

constantly thirsts for more energy to State its ever expanding

production and when the economy grows

the total amount of energy needed

also grows looking outside

energy consumption and Emissions

the materials and resources

needed to sustain a fully electrified

economy today not to mention

one that continues to balloon

would mean extensive exploitation

and plunder of the Imperial

periphery essentially the bigger the economy gets the deeper the hole we have to

dig ourselves out of

as degrowth researcher timate

perik explains so if you decarbonize

the economy but then you just

rematerialize by just you know using a lot of minerals

to to build a constantly

increasing renovable infrastructure you've just shifted

the problem elsewhere and even if some form of green New Deal passes in

the United States if it does so without an Anti-Imperialist

framework countries in the periphery

like the Democratic Republic of Congo

will feel the brunt of a new green

imperialism hunting for Precious Minerals

and resources helping rich countries hit their environmental

targets comes at a cost to the people

mining the accumulation of capital and the growth it manifests

is incompatible with a zero carbon just world

as younger Generations look ahead to the Future

growth no longer represents

progress but instead it means a future

of climate chaos we have to prevent that future

and degrowth is the

key as we blow past carbon budgets and Global temperature checkpoints

the promises that capitalism

has doled out over the last 40 years

feel superficial we need real

rapid and transformative action to address climate change

and so far capitalist Solutions based on growth and continued

capital accumulation have yet to move the needle

which is why we need degrowth

but what exactly is degrowth

at every turn it seems to have a different definition

for Jason hickle it's kind of planned and Democratic

uh reduction of less necessary forms of production in rich countries

to bring economies back into balance with the Living World

in a safe just and Equitable way for the research and degrowth

network it's an equitable downscaling

of production and consumption

that increases human well-being

and enhances ecological conditions at the local and Global level in the short and

long term and for the authors of the futur is degrowth

it's a movement in constant

motion that in a democratic

process of transformation enables

Global ecological Justice degrowth

then is really an umbrella

term for so many different types of of ideas and solutions

for pulling the emergency

break on Reckless economic

and Emissions growth but for the sake of this video we'll treat degrowth

as the struggle for a good ecological

life for all through the planned

Democratic and drastic reduction of destructive

production in the Imperial core

the redistribution of wealth and knowledge

globally and the eradication

of the capitalist mode of production

the vision of degrowth

isn't a utopian pipe dream it's called for in climate models

and climate times because the reality is that we need to act decisively

on fossil fuel emissions

right now if we are to have any chance of avoiding the worst of

climate chaos the intergovernmental

panel on climate change projects the capitalist tinkering of the Paris agreement

will still push us down a path of roughly 3.2

de C of temperature rise by the end of the century

when every decimal of warming

increases risks of extreme floods

species Extinction Wildfire drought and sea level rise

this path is unacceptable

right now we're running out of carbon budget which is a calculation

of how much carbon we can burn and still remain below

1.5° or 2° C of warming so drastic cuts are not only crucial

but scientifically called for we're hearing Arguments for a form of degrowth

straight from the ipcc

itself where they write all Global modeled Pathways

that will limit warming to 1.5°

C involved rapid and deep

and in most cases immediate greenhouse

gas emissions reductions in all

sectors this decade green growth and capitalist Market Solutions

just aren't delivering these emissions reductions

which is why we need to reduce the rampant overproduction

of the Imperial core

and multinationals this is where degrowth

comes in when we look across history

Global fossil fuel emissions

only declined in times when GDP

fell we saw exactly this during the pandemic

as the global economy fell and Emissions

dropped drastically for a year but pure GDP

decline is not the goal of degrowth

it is instead the global redistribution

of resources and abolition

of unnecessary and destructive

Industries like fossil fuels

and the military degrowth

is necessary because of the jevans

Paradox it's not enough to just build Renewables

and hope that they will eventually

replace fossil fuels we've seen that fossil fuels

and capital are so intimately

intertwined that this will never happen organically

which is why we need to actively

minimize the production in emissions

intensive Industries and degrowth

isn't just the plan dismantling

of harmful Industries it's about fostering

thriving communities locally and globally

degrowth is ultimately a divest

invest Paradigm so at the same time we're reducing

unnecessary production we need to struggle for Global Climate

reparations and the expansion

of care work public transportation

and joyful sustainable lives for all in short degrowth

is a framework that reprioritizes

public goods ways of being that heal the natural world and Foster

happiness in the good life all the while it seeks to dismantle

systems of profit and competition

that drove us into this crisis in the first place

systems that so far

have failed to dig us out of this

mess on the grounds of utk

University in the Netherlands

artists and authors Christa Decker and Mel smetz

Envision a building of the future a 22f

floor student dormatory that's been repurposed

into a zero emissions

Haven one that's equipped with 700 50

individual student rooms communal showers

laundry floors communal kitchens

biogas digestors that convert food scraps into energy

and wind turbines on the roof but Behind the Walls of this dormatory

lies something different there are no elevators

in the building and the bottom three floors

of the structure house

the human power plant for Decker and Smets

this artistic think piece is one of their many four Rays into the low

Tech and degrowth space

the human power building inv enion students spending

time at the human power plant which is essentially a gym as a way

to produce the primary

power for their building

for many who first stumble across the concept of degrowth

this is often what comes to mind hardship toil and sacrifice

to minimize our ecological

impact or as one journalist from the conversation

weekly asks how could we possibly

reduce more without going back into caves and living next to candles

this fear of anything other than economic growth and capital accumulation

lies at the heart of many critiques

of degrowth while some are merely just bad faith or misunderstood

readings of degrowth other critiques are valid and need addressing

for many degrowth can be misconstrued

as austerity by another name

this is not the case degrowth

seeks a democratically planned

contraction of production based on the needs of the masses

this is very different from an economic recession

or top- down austerity

measures that hollow out public programs

for the sake of fre bring up the markets

and enriching the capitalist

class degrowth is not austerity

but it may slip into dangerous

directions like eco- fascism

without the incorporation of racial Justice

decolonial and disability Justice lenses

the Decker in sms's

vision of a human power plant for example

while intriguing reveal those pitfalls

without elevators this 22

floor building is made with only the able-bodied

in mind in addition a building

powered primarily on the physical toy

of humans could easily slip into a form of eco- fascism

especially if implemented under a capitalist

system where marginalized communities

and people of color are historically the ones forced to power the devices

of those living quite literally

above them this Envision

building could easily Echo the precious metal mining

in the Imperial periphery

that powers our smartphones

and electric cars in the Imperial core ultimately

the human powered plant

reveals the Trap of lifestyl

ism that pervades degrowth

Aur that claims that transforming

the way we live and consume

whether by moving out of the country or going off grid

is how we achieve a decrease in emissions

there are many degrowth

communities out there doing

just that but while these might be examples of what's possible

in the future they will unfortunately

not end the supremacy

of capital accumulation and imperialism

the vast majority of people don't have the luxury

to check out of a city or move away from family

and bills many are trapped under the Cog

of capitalist production narrowing

in on individual lifestyle

transformation as the authors of the futurist

degrowth right is environmentalism

of the rich which blames overc consumption

and not the true culprit

of over production and in doing so

those who aren't able to minimize

their impact because of a disability

the pressures of their work or so many other forces

under a fossil fuel Centric

capitalism are ostracized by those who do have the luxury in time to build

a bubble of personal degrowth

within capitalism so degrowth needs to attack and dismantle

fossil Capital not our individual

consumption habits if it is to be

successful tucked away in the suburbs of Melbourne

Australia is this unassuming

house owners Sam and Helen have retrofitted

their residence with solar panels an abundant Garden a biogas

digestor and more is this degrowth

well yes and also no Sam and Helen's house certainly point to the wonderful

Poss possibilities and solutions

to building individual zeroc carbon systems

but for me if degrowth

ends there at lifestyl

ISM it will ultimately

fail as a political

project which is why as the authors of the futur of degrowth claim

degrowth must Envision a pevere

they quote the zapatista

saying we must Envision

a world where many worlds

fit according to the futur is deth

these many worlds coales

in five main currents of degrowth

some of which are more effective in moving past and struggling

against capitalism than others

the first of which is the institutional

current a strain of degrowth spearheaded

by Green liberal reformers

wielding government power and electoral

politics these degs are trying to use current capitalist governments

to push through regulations

and fiscal deterrents like carbon taxes or heat pump subsidies

these are ultimately reforms

many of which like window retrofit

subsidies or electric stove tax rebates

Tinker around the edges

avoiding groundup demolition of capitalism

While others represent radical

or non- reformist reforms

like income maximums work hour reductions

or free electrified public transit

which seek to weaken

capitalist power on the road to an ecosocial

degrowth Revolution but there are also more individualized

currents of degrowth what we can call the sufficiency

oriented current this current emphasizes

the right sizing of individual

consumption through DIY approaches

like that of Helen and Sam in the suburbs

while effective on a small local scale this focus on individual lifestyle transformation

not only ignores the constant

capitalist forces pushing us to consume

as I mentioned before

but it also as the authors of the future is degrowth

WR downplays the importance

of necessary social instructural

change in short completely

cutting yourself off from fossil fuels

and dramatically decreasing your resource consumption

is difficult in a world where most everything around us

requires or is produced

through fossil fuels and even if you're successful

in that personalized degrowth

fossil capitals profits will still continue to rise unimpeded

which is why this current must be combined with the third current of degrowth

what the future is degrowth

calls the commoning or alternative

economy current with a focus on sovereignty

solidarity and resource sharing

this current attempts to achieve Collective

nutopia outside of our capitalist mode of production

this looks like community

supported agriculture worker owned co-ops or lands

sovereignty and agrarian struggles

in the Imperial periphery

that seek the production

of materials for use

rather than exchange and profit

one of the goals of this current is to build enough Collective power outside

of the dominant capitalist

model to eventually challenge it head on

this community centered degrowth

current also ties into the fourth path of degrowth

the feminist current feminist degr foregrounds

the importance of care and reproductive

activities as a crucial part of a zeroc carbon world

it's a current which seeks a transformation

from the nuclear family

into ways of being and relationships

that encourage strong Community

networks of care instead

and finally the post- capitalist current

this type of degrowth

argues that International emancipatory

revolutions that place the ownership

of production into the hands of the masses

are crucial for any degrowth

agenda this means building worker and peasant power

it means the destruction of capitalism

and in its ashes

the construction of an EOS

socialist state that decreases

production to focus on use and Necessities

rather than profit it also looks like a worker-led

revolution to obtain a reduction in work hours the shuttering

of industrial behemoths like the fossil fuel industry

the redistribution of resources

internationally reparations to the periphery for centuries of Imperial plunder

and much more ultimately

by the Numbers degrowth

looks like as this paper describes

a 60% reduction in global energy consumption

and a 95% reduction of energy use in Imperial core countries like the US

researchers of this paper claim that it is possible to do this while also

providing a decent living for everyone

on Earth they claim that in this world

everyone has access to highly efficient washing

cooking and housing facilities

rapid and expansive public transit

free health care and education

free internet access fresh and hot water

and more there would be abundant green spaces in communal Gardens

and subst stantially reduced work hours

the authors of this paper show that a world that uses and produces

less is possible in technical terms

the barriers are not Technologies

but instead social and economic forces

which is why we'll most likely need some form of all those five currents

in the struggle to achieve this degrowth

but some of these currents are more crucial than others

because capital accumulation will not magically end because a few communities

revealed that living a zero carbon low consumption

lifestyle is possible ultimately degrowth

must be married to a post capitalist

economic framework one that places

production into the hands of the people one that is democratically

planned so that we aren't creating mountains of waste or products that only mask

our Hollow alienation for a brief moment degrowth

must be accompanied by ecosocialism

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