Beyond Growth: Discussing Alternative Approaches to Climate Change
Summer 2023 was the hottest summer on record, marked by a series of extreme weather events, including the deadliest U.S. wildfire in over a century in Maui, the worst droughts in decades hitting Chile and countries in the horn of Africa, and a catastrophic Mediterranean cyclone causing record rainfall and thousands of deaths in Libya. The undeniable impact of climate change is front and centre. Scientific evidence confirms that climate change significantly increases the likelihood of extreme weather, making it a major contributing factor to these recent catastrophic events. In light of the havoc wreaked by these climate-induced disasters around the world, there is an urgent and compelling need to prioritize and address climate change more than ever before.
Our current approach to climate change includes imposing a variety of policies, regulations and measures which focus on decreasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across many sectors of the economy. These predominantly market-based solutions aim to achieve the international goal of holding the average surface temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, meaning that GHG emissions must be halved by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. The terms ‘green growth’ or a Green New Deal are often used to describe the economic pathways aimed at meeting the above goals. Green growth is arguably an ineffective strategy, with it being impossible to decouple emissions and GDP growth fast enough to stay within the 1.5 or 2 degree limit.
Not only is green growth ineffective, it also does not address one of the core causes of ecological breakdown: our relentless pursuit of continuous economic growth, often at the expense of everything else. Amongst the scientific community many have realised this fundamental contradiction, and in 2020 a group of 11,000 scientists published a paper calling for the world’s governments to move away from ever expanding GDP growth and overconsumption to a more sustainable economy which reflects the environmental costs.
How can the move away from growth be achieved?
Alternative strategies exist which present policy pathways outlining how to shift away from indefinite GDP growth, reimagining the economy beyond growth-centric goals. Post-growth is one of these approaches which involves embracing the concept of an economy where objectives other than GDP growth are prioritised. Another perspective is 'degrowth,' advocating for a deliberate reduction in unnecessary resource and energy consumption, primarily in wealthier nations, with efforts to reduce inequality and enhance living standards. Recently, Rishi Sunak claimed his government decided to drop significant climate policies because they put too much of the cost on consumers, claiming he is saving families thousands of pounds by delaying the green pledges. Alternative strategies have shown, addressing climate change does not have to negatively impact citizens. Following the ideas of degrowth and even post-growth, a more sustainable economy could be achieved that also promotes higher living standards, reduced inequality, and a more stable economy for all as central objectives.
What exactly does degrowth mean?
Embracing degrowth means decoupling economic success from resource depletion and infinite GDP growth. By consuming less and prioritizing sustainable practices, humanity’s ecological footprint can be significantly reduced, and we can work towards restoring the health of our planet. The main policies that drive the concept of degrowth include public service provision, completely replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and establishing a living wage and public job guarantees.
First, developing universal public services including healthcare, public transportation, education, and affordable housing would help secure living standards and increase societal happiness. Finland, a country which invests heavily in its welfare and public services, has topped the World Happiness ranking for 6 years in a row helping to show the importance of universal public services for society's wellbeing. In addition, decoupling economic success from economic growth and using more holistic measurements such as welfare and happiness scores to redefine economic success would help create incentives to shift perspectives and encourage sustainable businesses and lifestyles.
Next, introducing living wages and job guarantees would enable the creation of more sustainable jobs and ensure all could access decent living standards. A job guarantee would disconnect employment from growth. It would enable people to participate in sustainable, socially necessary meaningful jobs not just those based around corporate profit and consumerism, reorienting work toward social and ecological use-value rather than slaving away for corporate profit. A universal basic income could also be added; England rolled out its first small-scale trial of such a policy in June. There is an important place for a basic income in a more sustainable economic system through its provision of a safety net that ensures everyone's basic needs are met, as well as to reduce poverty and inequality.
Lastly, replacing our current fossil fuel infrastructure with renewable energy as swiftly as possible is necessary to address the cause of climate change. By using Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) governments could help fund this move. MMT argues that the primary concern of government fiscal policy should not be balancing the budget but achieving full employment and price stability. In other words, the government should use its fiscal powers (spending and taxing) to manage the overall economy, rather than focusing solely on deficit reduction. There is evidence of this during the 2008 financial crisis when vast amounts of government money propped up the banking system as well as during COVID when the government created as much money as it needed to help deal with the public health crisis. However, there are some limits to MMT such as inflation, but these can be resolved through progressive taxation to curb spending and lessen inequality.
What about post-growth?
The ideas of post-growth do not abandon the goal of growth completely as a policy adjective (unlike degrowth) but argue for the addition of other factors in measuring economic performance. Post-growth is about altering the structure of economic activity to include more goals and have a more rounded idea of social and economic progress. Growth is not always correlated with social benefit, whilst income growth is important for increasing wellbeing especially for those with low income, wellbeing depends on a much wider range of factors than just growth. The current growth-focused economic system is intrinsically linked with fossil fuels, intensive agriculture, and mining. This leads to the rampant exploitation of natural resources which is not sustainable for future generations, and will eventually lead to a decrease in living standards. Continuing with growth as the sole economic objective will cause decreased well-being as growth has an increasingly negative effect on the planet.
Post-growth proponents argue that instead of just focusing on GDP growth, four key objectives should be included in measurements of progress: environmental sustainability, increasing well-being, reducing inequality and system resilience – the system’s ability to withstand shocks without significant systemwide effects. Striving to achieve these goals instead of purely economic growth would benefit everyone. Some countries and organisations are already encouraging parts of the post-growth agenda, for example the European parliament passed a resolution in June 2022 highlighting the importance of creating a 'Beyond GDP' dashboard and data set which puts people and their wellbeing at the centre of policy design, as well as hosting a conference earlier this year based on the Beyond Growth agenda.
However, Growthism, as many call it, is one of the most hegemonic ideologies in modern history – because nobody has questioned it. To prevent significant ecological crisis, there must be a shift in beliefs, also known as a paradigm shift, without which putting the ideas of degrowth or post-growth into practice fully may be almost impossible. To achieve a paradigm shift history shows there are preconditions which are required. One of these is crises within the existing system, apparent in our current form of capitalism via not only environmental, but also social crises. The last two preconditions are the existence of multiple social groups who support the new ideas enabling their spread globally and some sort of consent from the public. The problem here is that the latter two preconditions are not yet present to enable such a paradigm shift or change in thinking. Most people do not even know of these theories, let alone support them, and many of us have become accustomed to our consumerist lifestyles. Convincing the public why embracing these strategies is beneficial and necessary may be difficult in our current society, however as climate change continues to impact society in a variety of ways, there is hope that people will start seeking out opportunities to question our current system.
Moving forward, we face a crucial decision: we need to decide what we wish to prioritise. Our economy represents our tangible connection with both society and the natural world, and it is within our power to define this relationship. We must choose whether it leans towards domination and extraction or towards reciprocity and care. Higher income countries do not need growth to improve living standards, instead the economy needs to be organised with wellbeing in mind in lieu of capital accumulation. Embracing strategies like post-growth and degrowth can guide us towards a more sustainable and equitable economy. While these approaches share similarities, the current political and economic landscape may make degrowth seem unrealistic and idealistic due to the significant shift in perspectives that its implementation would require. However, transitioning towards a post-growth economy would be a practical step in the right direction.
Image courtesy of Ma Ti via Unsplash, ©2020. Some rights reserved.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.
