2022 marks the 50th anniversary of The Limits to Growth, a key work in the ecological literature that pioneered the clarification and modeling of the almost self-evident proposition that infinite growth is impossible on a planet with finite resources. It follows that any progressive social project must consider ensuring a better life, compatible with the limits of the biosphere in which we live and on which we depend.
With the increasingly visible effects of climate change, the most urgent and advanced of the multiple faces of the ecological polycrisis we are suffering, and growing scientific confirmation of other dangerously breached planetary boundaries, economic growth is once again being called into question. At least as an extension of the material dimension of our societies, something obviously incompatible with an increasingly decaying planet. The inability of growth to ensure the well-being of citizens reinforces these doubts.
This growing skepticism about the growth project is evident both in a timid questioning of the dominance of GDP as an economic indicator by the political mainstream and in the increasing emergence of a whole new literature on degrowth, which is experiencing a second wave after its emergence in the 90s with works by Giorgios Kallis, Jason Hickel, Thimotee Parrique, Matthias Schmelzer and Kohei Sato.
However, the intellectual maturity of the degrowth idea does not match its political maturity. Among the points of criticism that can be leveled at degrowth from an environmental point of view, we highlight two. First of all, while it’s an inspiring idea that we can all certainly agree with, it’s a term that’s still too antithetical to the prevailing cultural meaning. It is therefore a sharp scalpel in the culture dispute, but a blunt instrument at the political level. In other words, although degrowth sets us an indicative goal, it is hardly applicable in our institutional contexts and lacks a broad social and electoral translation, an essential condition for its scientific truth (the existence of material limits to growth). to transform the world. Secondly, in the vast majority of formulations, degrowth is still held in a purely eunciative position. A moral abstraction that cannot land on the concrete and its contradictions. A more symbolic than practical gesture. Another suggestion focused more on the what than the how.
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Given the first question, our hypothesis is that the goal of political environmentalism today should be to attempt to articulate a broad post-growth coalition. The term can be confusing or clunky, and maybe someone will come up with a better word soon. But the content of the idea is clear: the aim of this broad coalition must be to build an ecologically sustainable and just society that secures a social basis of universal rights without crossing the planetary boundaries that are currently being exceeded. But he shouldn’t seek a direct political fight against the idea of growth in his media, but rather a collateral approach. Broader ideological vectors, such as “Green Keynesianism”, would fit into a coalition of this kind. And it might even occasionally work with sectors that openly profess themselves under the paradoxical umbrella of ‘green growth’.
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This post-growth bloc might find its first touchpoints, leaning on the concrete and the practical against the maximalist and abstract vision that characterizes degrowth. And that means formulating a post-growth policy approach that they can become part of the agenda of the next progressive governments. For post-growth public policy we understand those sectoral, partial and specific policies (thus implying no change of the whole) that achieve an increase in the well-being of the population with a demonstrated reduction in certain material impacts, such as: B. the ecological footprint, connect or the CO2 footprint. We believe these policies should have at least four characteristics:
First and foremost the goal: to separate personal well-being and the idea of a good life from the growing environmental pollution. We are aware that both aspects (well-being and material impact) are concepts that contain contradictory and complex realities. In the second case, for example, it is so undeniable that the installation of renewable energies has a local impact on the territory that they have, with few exceptions, a positive net ecological balance due to their contribution to containing the greatest current ecological threat.
Second, they must be politically viable measures. That is, being able to be publicly defended without coming across as Martian or a minority, able to be supported by broad sections of society, and despite the fact that they may face cultural or sectoral opposition , they should not require deep structural changes on a quasi-human level.
Third, they must be transformative policies, but at the same time institutionally viable, ie compatible with the reform latitude that our legal framework offers and the flexibility and speed that our economic inertia leaves behind.
Finally and fundamentally, they must aim to force evolutionary novelties, that is, experimental novelties open to uncertain outcomes and unforeseen adaptations that force economic and political actors to adapt to them and that may have the impact of historical changes that themselves Although oriented (they have one goal: more well-being, less ecological footprint), it is not subordinate to a previously known comprehensive social engineering.
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We give three examples: first, we highlight the reduction in working hours, a good example of post-growth public policy. It is one of the most common, if not almost essential, measures in any degrowth program or steady-state economy. However, its entry into the public debate was not through a direct conflict with the logic of economic growth, but through the defense of more free time and its benefits for reconciliation, the improvement of workers’ physical and mental health and, paradoxically, their association with increases in business – and labor productivity or even consumption.
As a second example, we would like to highlight concrete actions that can help us scale up in the necessary recycling of critical minerals on which green technologies depend. This would result in a more secure supply with limited resources and reduced socio-environmental impacts in the form of new mining. Today, these materials are hardly recycled, but that is not fate, it depends on public policy. And the situation would change significantly if these aimed at facilitating government investment in recycling plants, promoting standardized designs to facilitate the dismantling of our objects, and draconian laws against phenomena such as planned obsolescence.
Finally, the third example of post-growth public policy would be an ecological reform of national accounts, which we can link to a redefinition of post-growth public procurement criteria. We need to introduce recognized biophysical indicators into national accounts that go beyond GDP and give us clear information about the environmental impact of our production processes. With this information, criteria could be set in public procurement that would significantly reduce the material impact of production and imply changes of structural scale, as public procurement accounts for 18% of GDP.
Historical Diagnosis
This approach is based on a historical diagnosis of how systemic transitions occur. No one has ever suggested making the move from feudalism to capitalism as a planned and global process. What happened were cultural changes, as well as legal reforms and, in some cases, “public policies” (though they weren’t so called) that gave way to mutations in favor of the market and the increasing wage-earning of work within feudal society. A process that evolved into an undesigned adaptation that produced the capitalist social structure centuries later.
The same thing will happen with the transition to a post-capitalist society (post-growth, eco-socialist, whatever we want to call it). Except that this has to happen much more quickly, for which it is unanimously true that social processes and cultural changes have indeed accelerated considerably since the Middle Ages.
Others wiser than us predicted that the journey is everything and the destination is nothing. The phrase is wrong because it’s exaggerated, but it has some truth. In our context, we think it’s time to set the stick more on the how, the path, than on the what, the goal. Degrowth is an ever better calibrated compass, with ever more sophisticated and valuable propositions, that leads us to an inescapable north: increasing well-being and social justice by reducing our environmental impact on a finite planet. But in the political realm, traveling down this path requires a broader, more agnostic umbrella of ideas into which most transformative ideological sensibilities fit. And above all, as with any difficult path, it requires much more attention to the concrete steps on solid ground full of obstacles than to the ideal and complete picture of a distant point of arrival. Cross the river and touch the stones.
Emilio Santiago He has a doctorate in anthropology and is a tenured researcher at CSIC. Hector Tejero He is deputy for Más Madrid in the Madrid Assembly and political coordinator for Más País in the Congress of Deputies.
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