This is a brief response to Tim Thornton’s recent article for JAPE (94, Summer 2024/2025), ‘Beyond green growth, degrowth, post-growth and growth agnosticism’. I am not intending to go into the arguments he uses in detail but instead to explain the green growth and degrowth positions as I see them. I find his account of it confusing and somewhat misleading — and feel there is a point in setting the record straight.
An important starting point is Tim Thornton’s definition of ‘economic growth’. This is the usual economist’s definition of growth as growth in GDP. In other words, a growth in the monetary value of transactions in an economy. Leading on from that he reviews various positions on the relationship between economic growth and environmental sustainability. He ends up with a position he refers to as a ‘contingent’ position. Though he eschews any identification with the ‘green growth’ position, his argument is totally consistent with what green growthers have been saying for decades. Whether or not economic growth causes environmental damage depends on the context. For example, whether we are using fossil fuels or renewables to power up our energy system. To explain this argument, I will resort to an example. Let us say that $120 of GDP is being spent. We could spend it on petrol for a 4WD car or on a massage session. Clearly the environmental impacts of these two alternatives are radically different but the contribution to GDP is identical. Hence, green growthers argue, let us have an economy that concentrates on less damaging monetary expenditures. That way we can have economic growth while environmental impact declines. As green growthers and Tim Thornton, say, the means to steer the economy in this direction is regulations and incentives created through correct policy choices combined with a shift in values in the community at large. While growth in past decades may have been correlated with environmental impact, this does not have to be the case in the future — after these new policy settings have been implemented.
Tim Thornton is correct in saying that the degrowth position rejects this argument. But his account of the degrowth position is quite misleading. He suggests that many de-growthers, if not all, are simply arguing that the way to move policy is to cut economic growth and thereby ensure less environmental impact. Strangely he does not mention a single measure that de-growthers have advocated to cut economic growth per se.
My take on the degrowth position is as follows. Degrowth is a broad church. Consequently, as I will suggest, de-growthers differ on many issues. But what holds the movement together are the following points.
As Nelson and Liegey point out in their ‘Introduction to Degrowth’, degrowth is ‘both a qualitative and a quantitative concept’ (Nelson and Liegey 2020:2). By qualitative, they mean that the degrowth strategy is to implement a change directed at improving the quality of life. For example, ‘conviviality, autonomy and enjoyment of life, along with establishing principles consistent with ecofeminism and social and environmental justice’ (Nelson and Liegey 2020: 20). By quantitative they refer to a ‘reduction of overall consumption and production’, degrowing in order ‘to live within Earth’s environmentally sustainable limits’ (Nelson and Liegey 2020: 13-14). This definition of degrowth is characteristic of writing from within the movement. Note that where quantitative measures are concerned, degrowth is not defined as a reduction in GDP. Instead, the definition rests on a reduction of material production and consumption, so as to bring the human economy within environmental limits – a socio-metabolic transition.
So, in relation to its quantitative side, degrowth refers to a democratically planned reduction in material throughput. A selective reduction in the extraction of resources, both renewable and non-renewable, but especially non-renewable. A reduction in the expulsion of wastes into the environment. These reductions are necessary to reduce environmental impact and end up with a sustainable society (Hickel 2021; Pineault 2023). Reductions of resource use are to be tailored to alleviating environmental damage while ensuring people’s basic needs are met. For example, reductions in CO2 emissions must be on a fair-sharing basis, redressing historic and accounting for current sources of emissions from overproducing and overconsuming societies (Hickel 2021).
So, reduction and radical changes in resource use are aspects of degrowth aims. It is not, as Thornton constantly tells us, a reduction in GDP growth that defines the movement.
While degrowth authors do not define degrowth as a reduction in GDP, they do have a consensus position on the relationship between GDP and environmental damage. Degrowth authors show a close correlation of global GDP with various kinds of resource use and environmental impact. When GDP falls, as in the 2008 crisis, environmental impact reduces. For example, the sale of oil. These issues have been reviewed comprehensively. As Trainer points out, ‘Parrique, Hickel and Kallis, and Haberle review hundreds on papers and find that, in general, no absolute “decoupling” of resource and energy use from GDP growth is occurring’ (Trainer 2024; Haberle 2020; Hickel and Kallis 2019; Parrique et al 2019). Against this, Thornton poses three arguments.
One is that there ‘is evidence that absolute decoupling of carbon emissions has been achieved in 23 countries.’ The other is that the past failure of decoupling cannot tell us what the future may hold. This is the eco-modernist lietmotif. In another argument he suggests that advanced countries have entered the service economy. It is nothing short of astonishing that Thornton seems not to have noticed that the successful decoupling of emissions and GDP in some countries of the global north is closely tied to a globalisation of industrial production. Countries like India and China expand fossil fuel energy to produce cheap manufactured goods for the global north, relieving the rich countries of their responsibility for emissions. Meanwhile these rich country electorates demand the easy pickings of an energy transition. Measures that do not cost governments too much in disruption or taxes.
In terms of the degrowth analysis, to cut resource use and waste production in the context of a market economy means a fall in GDP. But this would not necessarily entail a ‘recession’ of the kind Thornton fears. Much degrowth discussion and debate is around exactly what kind of planning and policies and societal transformation all this might entail. Thornton castigates degrowth for divergences in the degrowth position. However, most degrowth people see different opinions as inevitable and view the diversity of degrowth as a strength. What they refer to as pluriversity. Their varying critiques of capitalism and the market economy lead to different emphases for socio-economic change and/or policy proposals.
I am inclined to see degrowth as facing a conundrum at this point. Experience tells us that GDP and environmental impacts are connected — but classic economic theory explains why this is not implied. As Thornton is surely aware, the most common explanation of why there is this connection in practice refers to the economic and political consequences of the market economy. This is an argument put by Marx and taken up by a great variety of environmentalist writing that rarely mentions Marx.
The correlation in practice makes sense when you look at how a capitalist economy works. The politics of the capitalist economy. Firms and countries compete to make profits however they can achieve them. To do anything else is suicidal for any owner of capital. This creates a politics of capitalism. Managers depend on profits to survive. If it is cheaper or more profitable to do environmental damage, they will choose that option. Workers depend on the flourishing of businesses to get jobs and income. As a class, capitalists put pressure on policy makers to back environmentally damaging growth. The proletariat mostly backs these policy settings because they depend on a flourishing capitalist economy. Governments do not fail to enact environmental policies because they are afraid of a fall in GDP, as Thornton suggests. That is not what worries them. It is that they will be voted out by an angry working class fearing a loss of jobs in damaging industries. That a very well-funded campaign will attack these proposals in the media. Not to mention capital flight or an investment strike. With consequent unemployment.
There is a strange implication of the green growth position that Thornton keeps telling us: that the same amount of money can be made by doing environmentally good things. It is as though the capitalist class are stupid, not realizing they can make as much money planting trees as they make selling 4WDs. The problem, as Thornton sees it, is a problem of political will. There is a ‘lack of ambition to drive the necessary environmental protections.’ The issue is primarily ‘about the design and implementation of effective policy measures’. Those of us who have been around in the environmental movement for a number of decades tend to yawn at this point. We have been hearing this for ages. At what point do proponents of green growth realize that the structure of a capitalist economy makes it extremely difficult to get the political will to do anything effective to deal with our problems? Thornton’s tale of action on the hole in the ozone layer cannot be successfully generalised. His narrative goes like this. When policy makers realized what the science implied, they developed a system of global regulation. Despite the fears of some capitalists, there was no economic downturn from banning ozone depleting chemicals. It is all a matter of wise scientific advice, benevolent policy makers and a willing electorate. Thinking that this strategy can be applied to every environmental problem is leading us to extinction.
Degrowth maintains that the connection between economic growth and environmental impact is an effect of the structures of the capitalist economy. The implication is that we need to move beyond the capitalist economy. Nevertheless, there are a variety of opinions about what kind of post-capitalism is required. A popular position in degrowth is to support more nationalisation of the economy with democratic control (Hickel 2021; Schmelzer et al 2022). A minor tendency in the movement is an economy without money. Also referred to by other names, the community mode of production, non-market socialism, the gift economy (Nelson 2022; Leahy 2011; Leahy 2021).
Thornton repeats an argument of Chomsky that the earth cannot wait for an anti-capitalist revolution. From a degrowth perspective, it is just honest to tell people that to be sustainable we need a planned degrowth. To follow that up with acknowledging that the economy we will end up with will not be a capitalist one. There is no point in going for a solution that sounds feasible, but which cannot actually work. That unworkable solution is green growth. Degrowth thinks it is an urgent task to educate the people of the rich countries. To explain to them that their current lifestyle is unsustainable. That we need to reduce our use of raw materials and environmental impact by having less. It is mythology to suggest otherwise.
Acknowledgements: Anitra Nelson helped me with the editing of this response. However, this final version is my responsibility alone.
References
Haberle, H., et al. (2020) A Systematic Review of The Evidence on Decoupling of GDP, Resource Use and GHG Emissions, Part II: Synthesizing the Insights, Environmental Research Letters,15
Hickel J. and Kallis G. (2019), Is Green Growth Possible? New Political Economy, April
Hickel, J. (2021) Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World, London: Windmill Books
Leahy, T. (2011) The Gift Economy, in A. Nelson and F. Timmerman (eds), Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies, London: Pluto Press, pp. 111-138
Leahy, T. (2021) The Politics of Permaculture, London: Pluto Press
Liegey, L. and Nelson, A. (2020) Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide, London: Pluto Press
Nelson, A. (2022), Beyond Money: A Post-Capitalist Strategy, London: Pluto Press
Parrique, T., Bath, J., Briens, F. and Spanenberg, J. (2019) Decoupling Debunked. Evidence And Arguments Against Green Growth as a Sole Strategy for Sustainability. A study edited by the European Environment Bureau, July, EEB: Brussels, Belgium. https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/
Pineault, E. (2023) A Social Ecology of Capital, London: Pluto
Schmelzer, M., Vantsinjan, A., and Vetter, A., (2022) The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism, London: Verso
Trainer, T (2024) Some Thoughts on Richard Heinberg’s ‘Envisioning a Livable Future’, Resilience, https://www.resilience.org
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