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Book review: The Case for Degrowth

Book review: The Case for Degrowth, Jeremy Williams, The Earthbound Report  , 16 Nov 20,  “………….  What are the objectives of degrowth? It’s not shrinking the economy for the sake of it. The aim is to get GDP growth out of the driving seat and then steer towards “what really matters: not GDP, but the health and wellbeing of our people and our planet.”

Or there’s the alternative, which is to stop taking growth as the primary measure of progress and get on with delivering what people need. So many political directions open up when GDP growth takes a back seat and we get on with delivering what people need more directly.

In fact, downsizing in the rich world may be a key enabler of flourishing elsewhere. “There is no technological or policy fix that can generalize to nine billion people the material standard of living currently enjoyed by a minority at high cost to others.” Instead, “high-consumption nations and people must degrow to free space for low-consumption ones.”

• A Green New Deal
• universal incomes and services
• policies to reclaim the commons
• shorter working hours
• public finance that supports the first four

Being a short book, it no doubt opens up lots of other questions that the authors don’t cover, though the frequently asked questions at the end captures many of them. Perhaps the one that still sticks out for me is the word ‘degrowth’ itself. In my opinion it doesn’t capture the positivity of a vision for qualitative progress, for improvement rather than enlargement. I know it’s an old debate. We had it when founding the Postgrowth Institute ten years ago, and it doesn’t feel resolved today.

Still, The Case for Degrowth is a brief and straightforward explainer, and a good starting point for anyone who wants to get their head around the degrowth movement and what it wants to acheive.

• You can get The Case for Degrowth from Earthbound Books UK or my US store. It’s powered by Bookshop.com and supports your local book store as well as this blog.
• More recommended degrowth books here.    https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/95197302/posts/3025203412

November 17, 2020 - Posted by Christina MacPherson | ENERGY, resources - print