Why would it be a humanitarian and ecological disaster to abandon SDG 8?

Goal 8 of the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in September 2015, is to "promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all." It contains a sub-goal (target) of at least 7% per annum GDP per capita growth for the least developed countries.&nbsp;
Eight years after this goal's adoption, progress has been <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02807-y">limited</a>, as in the case of the other SDGs. In low-income countries, GDP per capita growth has mostly been negative since 2006 &mdash; far off from the SDG target of 7.0%. Between 2015 and 2022, GDP per capita contracted in these economies by an average of 0.6% annually. Even in high-income countries, growth remains sluggish, marked by a "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Stagnation">Great Stagnation</a>." Appropriately, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02807-y">Nature</a> concluded that for the SDGs, "A rescue mission is urgently needed."&nbsp;
Some disagree. They argue that SDG 8 should be abandoned, claiming it <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/sd.1947">contradicts</a> the environmental SDGs. While their claims are worth consideration, it is argued here that it would be a humanitarian and ecological disaster to abandon economic growth.&nbsp;
<h2>Economic growth facilitates social progress&nbsp;</h2>
By 2020, world GDP per capita was, at an <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-00029-y">estimated</a> US$5400, around 5600% higher than what it was about 10,000 years before, during the Greenlandian Age &mdash; and most of the GDP growth took place only after 1800 as a result of the industrial, scientific and enlightenment <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691180960/a-culture-of-growth">revolutions</a>. As a result, humans are generally <a href="https://illuminem.com/illuminemvoices/in-defence-of-growth">better off</a> on virtually all human development indicators. Economic growth has also enabled social progress. As recently as two centuries ago, human society routinely enslaved people, subjugated women as a matter of course to the patriarchy, and considered autocratic states run by kleptocratic rulers God-given, amongst other horrors.
Growing wealth and upward social mobility enabled by exponential growth have thus profoundly improved society. As <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800916311260">put</a> by Kaitlin Kish and Stephen Quilley, "progressive forms of state, culture and society along with scientific rationality all depend very directly upon the progressive (growth) economy." One cannot decouple economic growth from social advances.&nbsp;
<h2>Economic growth facilitates a positive-sum society</h2>
The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_Commission">Growth Commission</a>, chaired by Nobel Laureate Michael Spence, <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/df194a38-cb6f-5553-8fd8-e48a8a7c9574/content">warned</a> against a zero-sum economy: "If an economy fails to grow, man's efforts to better himself become a scramble for a bigger share of a fixed amount of resources. Ecological stress quickly becomes social and political. "Similarly, physicist Tom Murphy has stressed that in the absence of economic growth, we risk our social progress, <a href="https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2015/09/you-call-this-progress/">stating </a>that "If our 21st Century standard of living peaks [&hellip;] then we may not have the luxury of viewing our social progress as an irreversible ratchet."&nbsp;
In a zero-sum economy, the trust and cooperation required to overcome the enormous <a href="https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2022/09/23/climate-change-as-a-collective-action-problem/#:~:text=Acting%20on%20climate%20change%20is,a%20suboptimal%20path%20is%20taken.">collective action problem</a> that climate change poses, would evaporate like mist before a hot sun.&nbsp;
<h2>The quality of economic growth&nbsp;</h2>
It is undoubtedly the case that exponential growth over two centuries is threatening an ecological <a href="https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023-01-11/william-e-rees-the-fundamental-issue-overshoot/">overshoot</a>, which may lead to societal collapse and a "<a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full">ghastly future</a>." This should be taken seriously. There is indeed much that is dysfunctional about the global economy and the quality of some of the economic growth it has generated. This does not necessarily, however, imply that we should scrap economic growth and SDG 8 altogether; those who argue as such misunderstand economic growth.&nbsp;
One mistake is to equate economic growth invariably with extraction. According to <a href="https://www.amazon.nl/-/en/Steven-Pinker/dp/0525427570">Steven Pinker</a>, it is wrong "to think that people need resources' in the first place. They need ways of growing food, moving around, lighting their homes, displaying information, and other sources of well-being. They satisfy these needs with ideas: with recipes [&hellip;] for manipulating the physical world to give them what they want."&nbsp;
Put <a href="https://longnow.org/ideas/can-economic-growth-continue-over-the-long-term/">another</a> way, "there's really no such thing as a natural resource. All resources are artificial. They are a product of technology," <a href="https://rootsofprogress.org/there-are-no-natural-resources?ref=longnow.org">and</a> moreover, "everything that nature gives us is in a highly inconvenient form [&hellip;] Through effort and ingenuity we make natural materials and energy into what we need."&nbsp;
The quality of economic growth &mdash; and of the ideas that drive it &mdash; is ultimately what matters. Hence, a fundamental <a href="https://degrowth.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Schwartzman-a-critique-of-degrowth-and-its-politics.pdf">criticism</a> of the degrowth movement, which <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/un-sustainable-development-failure-b2088465.html">opposes</a> the SDGs, is that it "fails to come to terms with qualitative versus quantitative aspects of economic growth [&hellip;] [it] lumps all growth into a homogenous outcome."&nbsp;
In this context, it is understandable that rather than reject economic growth, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, economist Nicolas Stern and co-authors <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1350178X.2022.2040740">recently called</a> for:
<blockquote>
&ldquo;a new, cleaner, more efficient and more attractive form of growth, with better health and less pollution, in which case the apparent &lsquo;costs of action&rsquo; may turn out to be negative [&hellip;.] The successes in innovation in the past decade suggest this optimistic scenario may not only be a possibility but perhaps a probability.&rdquo;
</blockquote>
<h2>Phase shifts to new modes of economic growth</h2>
Over the course of modern humans' 300,000-year existence, different modes of economic growth can be discerned: that of the forager society, of the farming society, and the present industrial society. As Robin Hanson <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-age-of-em-9780198817826?cc=nl&amp;lang=en&amp;">pointed</a> out, each successive society was marked by a qualitatively different mode of economic growth significantly different from that which preceded it. Each experienced faster growth and had a shorter duration. One may <a href="https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/16139/melancholy-hues-the-futility-of-green-growth-and-degrowth-and-the-inevitability-of-societal-collapse">argue</a> that the current industrial society is in a phase-transition towards a post-industrial society, with its own unique mode of economic growth, which will be as different from the current mode of ecologically overshooting growth as the industrial society's growth was different from that of foragers.&nbsp;
Hanson <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-age-of-em-9780198817826?cc=nl&amp;lang=en&amp;">presents</a> a perspective of an eventual post-industrial society where economic growth is so fast that the world economy could double every month - compared to the 35 years it currently takes. It will ultimately not be possible to grow this fast for very long unless humanity expands into the galaxy. If such growth is achieved by energy use that grows at only 2.3% p.a., then the economy would <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-022-01652-6">use up</a> all the solar power that reaches the earth in 400 years and, after 1700 years, all the sun's energy.
One cannot imagine how a post-industrial mode of growth will eventually look or come about or how long it will last - just as foragers or pastoralists in centuries past would never have imagined that their descendants would come to depend on a collective intelligence known as the Internet. The problem with predicting future economic growth, material footprints and carbon emissions is that <a href="https://medium.com/@oliverwaters_76079/the-strange-necessity-of-infinite-economic-growth-ebc2e505cdf1">future knowledge</a> and technology <a href="https://www.mattridley.co.uk/blog/the-evolution-of-technology/">cannot</a> be predicted. No one predicted the wheel.
However, it is known that in each transition, the dynamics of energy, population and ideas influenced growth trajectories and limits. For instance, food, urbanisation, and transport technology influenced the forager-agriculturalist transition and pathway, as fossil fuels, population growth and knowledge influenced the transition to and features of the industrial society.&nbsp;
Today, the secular declines in economic growth that have been experienced in advanced economies since the 1970s reflect that energy, population, and ideas as engines of economic growth are facing headwinds. <a href="https://blog.gorozen.com/blog/the-permian-basin">Peak oil</a>, declining <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/~chadj/emptyplanet.pdf">population</a> growth and the specter of an <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545397/empty-planet-by-darrell-bricker-and-john-ibbitson/">empty planet</a>, and "<a href="https://web.stanford.edu/~chadj/IdeaPF.pdf">ideas getting harder to find</a>" are making it more and more challenging to sustain the type of economic growth the world has experienced. This suggests that a post-industrial mode of economic growth will not depend on fossil fuels or an expanding population and will be increasingly dependent on innovations in methods of innovation - such as <a href="https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/15713/the-future-economics-of-artificial-intelligence-mythical-agents-a-singleton-and-the-dark-forest">artificial intelligence</a> (AI), for example (one reason it is important not to stifle progress in AI, as many are proposing). It will not be a stationary (post-growth) society &mdash; just like the end of the farming society was not followed by a stationary mode but by an acceleration.&nbsp;
History teaches that the phase transitions between growth modes have been tumultuous (one such has been called the "dark ages"), partly because of uncertainty and oscillations in economic outcomes in between transitions. A significant challenge in the coming decades would be to minimise these oscillations by maintaining some semblance of economic growth. Failing, or worse, self-inflicting degrowth in such a world, will <a href="https://medium.com/@wimnaude/the-degrowth-movement-ecological-iatrogenics-6a7c2a54cf1b">worsen</a> matters. Innovation &mdash; finding new ideas to mitigate and adapt to climate change and ease the phase shift &mdash; requires economic growth. The bottom line is that &ldquo;shrinking economies <a href="https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/shrinking-economies-dont-innovate">don't</a> innovate."&nbsp;
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
The failure to make progress on SDG 8 is disastrous from both a human development and environmental perspective. A rescue mission is urgently needed to stretch out and share the age of industrial growth and buy time to support the science, technology, and entrepreneurship &mdash; the ideas and recipes &mdash; to continue pursuing the worthwhile goals around which the world united in 2015.
<div class="css-16rcf8n">
<div>
<div class="css-16rcf8n">
<div>
illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability &amp; Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

Economic growth on a finite planet: should SDG 8 be rescued? 

Energy prices are soaring. National inflation has breached double digits. The longest-serving British monarch has died. […]. Behind the lurid headlines, however, is a deeper story of decades-long economic dysfunction

<h2>Trouble for the West</h2>
Indicators of business dynamism, entrepreneurship and innovation remain bleak in major Western economies. The "Ossified Economy", as I termed this in my 2022 Cambridge Journal of Economics <a href="https://academic.oup.com/cje/article/46/1/105/6378308?login=false">paper</a>, will face particular challenges over the coming years. Three recent developments are of concern.
First, the EU's largest economy, Germany, seems set to continue its deindustrialization and degrowth trajectory. In 2017, a colleague and I published a <a href="https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/11194/technological-innovation-and-inclusive-growth-in-germany">paper</a> detailing the decline in German innovation. It was met with incredulity. How could we argue that Germany, the powerhouse of Europe that is keeping the Euro alive, is anything but a bastion of innovativeness? Even though we showed, using a <a href="https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/15607/the-ossified-economy-the-case-of-germany-1870-2020">wide array</a> of innovation and entrepreneurship measures that Germany&rsquo;s golden period of innovation was in the late 19th century &ndash; consistent with Jonathan Huebner&rsquo;s analysis that global innovation <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0040162505000235?via%3Dihub">peaked</a> in the 1870s &ndash; the message was difficult to swallow. Today, five years after our first analysis, Germany &ndash; and Europe&rsquo;s &ndash; economic and innovation stagnation is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/25/germany-economy-falls-into-recession-high-prices-take-toll">deepening</a>.
The shockwaves of the Russian invasion of Ukraine hit the German economy especially hard, costing the economy already more than <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-war-costs-germanys-economy-100-billion/a-64768176#:~:text=DIW%20President%20Marcel%20Fratzscher%20said,gross%20domestic%20product%20(GDP).">&euro;100 billion</a>, with its resilience probably at its lowest point since unification. According to <a href="https://landreport.com/2023/02/peter-zeihan-shares-geopolitical-forecast/">Peter Zeihan</a>, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re looking at the end of the entire German manufacturing base within two years.&rdquo; A recent article <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/rust-belt-on-the-rhine-the-deindustrialization-of-germany/">quotes</a> Marcel Fratzscher, head of the DIW institute as declaring that "Germany has nothing to offer in any of the most important future-oriented sectors, [...] What exists is old industry.&rdquo; This is consistent with extensive evidence of Germany's innovation decline that I documented in a recent IZA Institute of Economics <a href="https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/15607/the-ossified-economy-the-case-of-germany-1870-2020">paper</a>.
Second, new <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/distressed-firms-and-the-large-effects-of-monetary-policy-tightenings-20230623.html">research</a> from the US Federal Reserve shows the share of firms in financial distress in the USA to have "reached a level that is higher than during most previous tightening episodes since the 1970s." They conclude that the recent monetary tightening in the USA will hence have more pronounced effects on the economy and that "these effects might be most noticeable in 2023 and 2024."&nbsp;
It is not only the USA and Germany, two of the West&rsquo;s largest economies that are facing further economic stagnation. The UK and France are not only struggling to keep their stuttering economies running, but their socio-political realities are shattering. Derek Thompson <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/10/uk-economy-disaster-degrowth-brexit/671847/">described</a> the UK&rsquo;s impoverishment reflected in &ldquo;lurid headlines&rdquo;:
Energy prices are soaring. National inflation has breached double digits. The longest-serving British monarch has died. The shortest-serving prime minister has quit [&hellip;]. Behind the lurid headlines, however, is a deeper story of decades-long economic dysfunction...
And France, the country of the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/12/03/672862353/who-are-frances-yellow-vest-protesters-and-what-do-they-want">gilets jaunes</a>, is after yet another fortnight of riots being described as &ldquo;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/25/democracy-is-broken-france-view-of-pension-reform-and-protests">broken</a>&rdquo; and &ldquo;<a href="https://www.economist.com/interactive/europe/2022/03/29/fractured-france">fractured</a>.&rdquo; During these latest riots, it deployed <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2023/07/01/youths-clash-with-french-police-and-loot-in-4th-night-of-riots-triggered-by-fatal-police-s">45,000</a> police officers, almost as many as the USA&rsquo;s occupation force in <a href="https://twitter.com/Raphfel/status/1675791211263672320">Iraq</a> since 2011.
<h2>The end of easy oil</h2>
Third, on top of the recessionary conditions in the USA and the largest economies in Europe, a new report by natural resources firm <a href="https://blog.gorozen.com/blog/the-permian-basin">G&amp;R</a> has found that peak oil is being reached:&nbsp;
<blockquote>
"The most crucial development in global oil markets is depletion in the Permian basin. We first warned about this in 2018, predicting the Permian would peak in 2025. In retrospect, our analysis was too conservative. We now believe the basin could peak within the next twelve months. The implications will be as profound as when United States oil production peaked in 1970, starting a chain of events ultimately sending prices up five-fold over ten years."&nbsp;
</blockquote>
<h2>Misdirection</h2>
These three bits of bad news come as the world suffers a multitude of extreme weather events, with the northern hemisphere experiencing its <a href="https://earth.org/world-sees-hottest-july-in-history-amid-record-high-land-and-ocean-temperatures/">hottest</a> July on record. And to top off the bad news, both <a href="https://unherd.com/thepost/is-this-the-week-that-net-zero-died/">renewable energies</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/16/big-oil-climate-pledges-extreme-heat-fossil-fuel">decarbonisation</a> have been facing tough headwinds lately. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWuKqFUsDH0">Green Growth</a> paradigm, a political compromise selling the idea that faster economic growth and profits are to be made from investments in green technology, has failed to deliver both on economic growth and on the ecological crisis.&nbsp;
As these realities sink in, political <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/28/end-times-by-peter-turchin-review-elites-counter-elites-and-path-of-political-disintegration-can-we-identify-cyclical-trends-in-narrative-of-human-hope-and-failure">disintegration</a> in the USA, UK and EU will accelerate. There are already many bad ideas out there to tackle the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/polycrisis-adam-tooze-historian-explains/">polycrisis</a> - expect these to proliferate in coming years. Tech billionaires are investing in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Survival-Richest-Escape-Fantasies-Billionaires/dp/0393881067">doomsday bunkers</a>. The modern clerisy is advocating Degrowth, a form of <a href="https://medium.com/@wimnaude/the-degrowth-movement-ecological-iatrogenics-6a7c2a54cf1b">ecological iatrogenic</a> rooted in <a href="https://www.amazon.nl/-/en/Kohei-Saito/dp/1009366181">Marxism</a>. Others want to accelerate and deepen the use of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fossil-Future-Flourishing-Requires-Gas-Not/dp/0593420411">fossil fuels</a>. Some are creating wholly fantastical new threats, such as malevolent <a href="https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/06/10/no-ai-does-not-pose-an-existential-risk-to-humanity/">AI</a> and the presence of aliens and their <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/27/key-takeaways-from-the-us-congressional-hearing-on-ufos">UFOs</a> on earth, perhaps to enjoy some reassurance that at least some existential risk can be solved, even if they are imagined risks.
illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability &amp; Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.

No end to the West’s economic stagnation as the climate crisis worsens

Given that the degrowth movement was born in a recession, it is a superb irony that it wants more of the same: more degrowth, not less

The degrowth movement is a reaction against degrowth

The degrowth movement is calling for an end to economic growth, as measured by GDP, and shrinkage of the economies of developed countries. Developing countries should use this space in world GDP created by the contraction of developed economies to develop - freed from the unequal and exploitative restrictions imposed by global capitalism. Degrowth advocates do not believe in green growth, the compatibility of continued GDP growth within planetary boundaries, or that technological solutions exist.

Degrowthers diagnose a real problem. Unfortunately, the downsizing of western economies is not a solution. At least seven reasons can be highlighted why degrowth is insufficient.

<a href="https://www.overshootday.org/">Earth Overshoot Day</a>, "when humanity has used all the biological resources that the Earth regenerates during the entire year", fell on 28 July 2022. In 1971, it fell on 25 December. This acceleration in using biological resources means that humanity is overshooting planetary <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1259855">boundaries</a>. Our ecological <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/26/facts-about-our-ecological-crisis-are-incontrovertible-we-must-take-action">crisis</a> is an <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2602943/">overshoot</a> crisis, of which anthropogenic climate change and <a href="https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cobi.12380">biodiversity</a> losses are symptoms. The full <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full">scale</a> "of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms - including humanity - is so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts."&nbsp;We face a &ldquo;<a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full">ghastly future</a>.&rdquo;
To avoid this, the degrowth movement is calling for an end to economic growth (as measured by GDP) and shrinkage of the economies of developed countries. Developing countries should <a href="https://degrowth.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Kerschner-2010.pdf">use</a> this space in world GDP created by the contraction of developed economies to develop - freed from the unequal and exploitative restrictions imposed by global capitalism. Degrowth advocates do not believe in green growth, the compatibility of continued GDP growth within planetary boundaries, or that technological solutions exist - they <a href="https://earth.org/techno-optimism/">reject</a> techno-optimism or any possibility of <a href="https://gaiageld.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/decoupling_debunked_evidence_and_argumen.pdf">decoupling</a> between growth and the material footprint of nations.
<h2>Limitations of degrowth</h2>
Degrowthers diagnose a real problem. Unfortunately, the downsizing of western economies is not a solution. At least seven reasons can be highlighted why degrowth is insufficient.
<h3>Degrowth will not decrease decarbonization</h3>
Most (<a href="https://www.cgdev.org/media/developing-countries-are-responsible-63-percent-current-carbon-emissions">63%</a>) of current carbon emissions come from developing countries - where it will only continue to increase in the foreseeable future. The 2022 <a href="https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2022">Emissions Gap Report</a> notes (p. 67) that &ldquo;virtually the entire future increase in global primary energy demand is expected to occur in these [developing] economies.&rdquo;&nbsp; Even if western economies are shrunk, they would still be extensive and emit significant carbon.
<h3>Degrowth will make matters worse</h3>
Degrowth may be <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800910004209">dirty</a>. Global redistribution, as degrowthers envisage, will increase aggregate consumption through a well-known "growth through redistribution" effect. Inequality <a href="https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/redistribution-inequality-and-sustainable-growth-reconsidering-evidence">reduces</a> economic growth, hence the opposite will raise growth.
Businesses may substitute more expensive cleaner production techniques for cheaper but more polluting technologies. Governments would also not be able to borrow further to spend on social and basic needs or environmental protection.
<h3>Degrowth is politically infeasible</h3>
Because of the <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.5.1.193">endowment effect</a>, people would be unlikely to vote for politicians who propose lowering their levels of GDP per capita, especially in certain countries, at least if it is to fight climate change. A 2022 poll found that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/17/us/politics/climate-change-manchin-biden.html">only 1%</a> of USA voters listed climate change as the most crucial challenge. And politicians, being generally subject to a <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.5.1.193">status quo bias</a>, would be reluctant to propose such a radical policy. As proponents <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04412-x">acknowledge</a> &ldquo;political parties that have put forward degrowth ideas have received limited support in elections.&rdquo;
<h3>Degrowth is expensive</h3>
Degrowth is not only politically infeasible because voters would not give up their incomes but also because it is a costly way to tackle the ecological crisis. It has been <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43664658">calculated</a> that if the world shrinks GDP per capita by 10% (around US$7,000 billion), it will reduce carbon emissions by about 3.3 gigatons, meaning a cost of US$2,100 per ton of emissions. A recent study published in <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9605864/">Nature</a> put the social cost of carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) at US$185 per ton of emissions. Degrowthers want us to pay more than ten times the price.
<h3>Degrowth policies are disappointing</h3>
A recent inventory of degrowth policies identified <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652622023629#:~:text=The%20study%20outlined%20three%20broad,to%20a%20convivial%2C%20participatory%20society">530</a> proposals associated with the movement. This proliferation is because the degrowth movement is&nbsp; &ldquo;<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652622023629#:~:text=The%20study%20outlined%20three%20broad,to%20a%20convivial%2C%20participatory%20society">multi-faceted</a>". It has become a rally-cry for anyone with a societal and environmental grievance, whether against capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, or utilitarianism.
Because of the confusion this proliferation creates, a recent <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652622023629#:~:text=The%20study%20outlined%20three%20broad,to%20a%20convivial%2C%20participatory%20society">paper</a> prioritized these into an &ldquo;Iceberg model of degrowth policy proposals." At the top of the iceberg, prominent policies are universal basic income, work-time reductions, job guarantees, maximum income caps, non-for-profit cooperation, eco-villages, and housing cooperatives.
None of these are novel and most are, or have already been, implemented - most extensively in market economies. Furthermore, there is no attempt to link these policy proposals to decoupling - how many carbon emissions would they eliminate? How fast? No evidence is provided.
<h3>Degrowth is irresponsible</h3>
The lack of evidence on the carbon reduction that the iceberg model of policies will achieve - and achieve soon, as the matter is pressing - is a concern. We would not imagine subjecting human populations to potentially dangerous experimental drugs without rigorously testing their efficacy. Why embrace the "medicine" prescribed by the degrowth movement? Olivier Simar-Casanova <a href="https://www.ecosceptique.com/60-le-point-sur-la-decroissance/">described</a> this ethical and moral problem with degrowth clearly:
<blockquote>&ldquo;Global warming is a serious issue, and claiming to respond to it with solutions of uncertain carbon efficiency, which we do not know how to implement in practice, is irresponsible.&rdquo;</blockquote>
The dangers of shackling economies without any evidence as to the likely outcome are that it would leave the world much&nbsp;<a href="https://globalprioritiesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/Leopold-Aschenbrenner_Existential-risk-and-growth_.pdf">more exposed</a>&nbsp;and vulnerable to shocks, make the adjustment to a zero-carbon-emitting economy&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162520304157">more costly</a>, and raise the risk of conflict by turning the economy into a&nbsp;<a href="https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-what-we-owe-the-future">zero-sum game</a>.
<h3>Degrowth is hypocritical</h3>
Degrowth is no solution to the ecological crisis because it is, at its roots, hypocritical. As one <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-dangerous-myth-of-degrowth/">commentator</a> put it:
<blockquote>&ldquo;It is one thing to advocate the end of economic growth if you have no actual fear of poverty. If you are struggling to keep yourself warm and fed, on the other hand, the idea of self-denial &ndash; still less of shrinking the economy &ndash; will have rather less appeal. Degrowth is a middle&ndash;class luxury, an indulgence to be conducted from the comfort of your sofa with its electronic foot-raiser [&hellip;] People who express disgust with consumerism have a tendency to disapprove of other people&rsquo;s while overlooking their own.&rdquo;</blockquote>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
Neither degrowth nor the more mainstream green growth approach offer viable solutions for the ecological crisis. Worse, a recent editorial in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00723-1">Nature</a> magazine pointed out that the disagreement between degrowth and green growth &ldquo;is impeding action. It&rsquo;s time for researchers to end their debate. The world needs them to focus on the greater goals of stopping catastrophic environmental destruction and improving well-being.&rdquo;
This is a distraction that cannot be afforded because GDP growth and population growth are, in any case, in decline. We do not need a degrowth experiment to slow it down. We live in the <a href="https://rootsofprogress.org/technological-stagnation">Great Stagnation</a>. Society is gradually <a href="https://academic.oup.com/cje/article/46/1/105/6378308?login=false">ossifying</a>, and with it, its supply of innovative <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x">science</a> and <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/~chadj/IdeaPF.pdf">ideas</a>, which remain, however remotely, our only chance of avoiding the premature curtailment of humanity&rsquo;s potential.
illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability &amp; Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.
<h6>Photo by Afbeelding van&nbsp;<a href="https://pixabay.com/nl/users/anhot-4256108/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=2804437">anhot</a>&nbsp;via&nbsp;<a href="https://pixabay.com/nl/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=2804437">Pixabay</a>​</h6>

Seven reasons why degrowth is no solution to the ecological crisis

Climate technologies are ideas that are turned into innovations that will reduce and even eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and help us adapt to a changing climate. A climate technology revolution entails the invention and deployment of radically new — breakthrough — technologies to accomplish this, and not over the long run, but as soon as possible.

Climate technologies are ideas that are turned into innovations that will reduce and even eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and help us adapt to a changing climate. A climate technology revolution entails the invention and deployment of radically new — breakthrough — technologies to accomplish this, and not over the long run, but as soon as possible.
We <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/clima/eu-action/climate-strategies-targets/progress-made-cutting-emissions_en">have</a>, and can make even more progress in reducing CO2 emissions, by <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.23.2.53">incrementally</a> improving and rolling out existing technologies. This is also largely the gist of the IPCC <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/">Sixth Assessment Report</a> (AR6). The report contains an extensive discussion of the need for a systemic approach to innovation, invoking the concept of innovation systems to ensure the broadest adoption of emission reduction technologies.
However, the AR6 report also stresses that “aggressive action” is needed to limit global warming and that the window of opportunity to do so “is rapidly closing, and with it the opportunity to prevent the worst impacts of global warming.” The report thus stresses the necessity for moving beyond technologies that will only reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but that will remove existing GHG stocks from the atmosphere. In particular, the report calls for further development of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies, stating that “The deployment of CDR to counterbalance hard-to-abate residual emissions is unavoidable if net zero CO2 or GHG emissions are to be achieved” (IPCC AR6 2022: p.63).
While it does not state it explicitly, the IPCC AR6 is in essence a call for a climate technology revolution. Given the urgency of the matter — that we seem <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/15c-degree-goal-extremely-unlikely-ipcc/a-42154601">unlikely</a> to limit global warming to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels — and the dangers of crossing climate <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0">tipping</a> points — the incentives to engineer the climate is indeed stacking up, as <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.23.2.53">Scott Barrett</a> in 2009 thought they would eventually do.
<blockquote>The question is: how can we ignite a climate technology revolution?</blockquote>
The current global approach, predominantly, is to view climate change as requiring an aggregate effort. Hence the UN’s <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901120304706">Conference of Parties (COPs)</a> approach using global climate conferences to galvanize support and commitment from national states through “Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDCs). Linked to this is the innovation system approach that attempts to percolate incremental technological innovations throughout the global economy, including various (unsynchronized) efforts at incentivizing further R&amp;D in climate technologies through carbon price increases. Take for example the European Union’s <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/clima/eu-action/eu-emissions-trading-system-eu-ets_nl">Emissions Trading Scheme</a> or the US’s <a href="https://arpa-e.energy.gov/">ARPA-E</a> innovation financing scheme.
While the aggregate effort approach is very necessary, and cannot be dispensed with, it suffers two potentially fatal flaws. First, it is very time-consuming. It is not the optimal way to best address a challenge where time is a critical factor. <a href="https://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf">Svante Arrhenius</a> warned in 1896 that human-induced carbon emissions would cause global warming; it took a century before the world adopted the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. Second, it is not very effective, being subject to coordination and governance failures, for a variety of reasons that Nobel Laureate <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26189419">Jean Tirole</a> amongst others, stressed. Given a system of world governance based on nation-states with its roots in the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41887235">1648</a> Westphalian system, the collective action problem posed by climate change may be insurmountable. Indeed, <a href="https://www.scottbarrett.org/climate-change">Scott Barrett</a> has rightly pointed out that “Climate change is probably the most difficult collective action problem in human history.” Unsurprisingly, following COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03088-z">Nature</a> magazine reflected the exasperation of scientists with the heading “COP architects furious at lack of climate justice at pivotal summit.”
To ignite a climate technology revolution, we may need to complement the aggregate effort approach by a single best effort public good approach. This is a global public good that can be provided by a single country or group of countries (e.g., the EU). The concept of a single best effort can be <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199211890.001.0001/acprof-9780199211890-chapter-2">illustrated</a> with the example of a meteorite on a collision course with Earth. It is not necessary for every nation-state to try and come up with a technology to avert disaster. If the technologically most advanced country, or even the most advanced private firms, assume the responsibility to develop a technology that can divert the meteorite, it will provide a global public service — indeed a massive positive externality — to the whole world. The development of mRNA vaccines against the SARS-COV 2 virus is another <a href="https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/the_meaning_of_moonshot_lessons_in_leadership_to_last_a_lifetime">example</a>, where the single best efforts of only a few firms generated a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w">breakthrough</a> technology in a record time, and saved hundreds of millions of lives.
Single best efforts can, through utilising <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02093-7">moonshot</a> and <a href="https://marianamazzucato.com/books/mission-economy">mission</a>-orientation approaches, and being complimented by <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/04/05/67057/when-science-fiction-inspires-real-technology/">science fiction prototyping</a>, ignite a climate technology revolution. Note that such an approach is not suitable for all types of carbon emission-reducing and adaptation technologies, because many would need local adjustment and knowledge better suited to a decentralized approach. It is better suited for those technologies with general application — e.g. CDR or <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01243-0">solar geoengineering</a>.
Governments and private firms can lead single best efforts for such radical technologies. For example, the government of <a href="https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/english/moonshot/top.html">Japan</a> launched several moonshot targets. And the richest entrepreneur in 2022, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/business/elon-musk-worlds-richest.html">Elon Musk</a>, has built his entire private business empire on radical technological revolutions. The <a href="https://www.xprize.org/home">X-Prize Foundation</a> has just recently issued the largest <a href="https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/why-innovation-prizes-fail/">incentive prize</a> in history — offering US$100 million for carbon removal technology that can be scaled.
The challenges are, once the development of technologies are underway to successfully engineer and manage the climate, to ensure that its use and <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-017-0170-3">diffusion</a> are appropriately <a href="https://theglobalobservatory.org/2021/11/is-the-global-climate-governance-system-working/">governed</a>, including better gauging, as well as measuring and minimizing the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/risks-rewards-possible-ramifications-geoengineering-earths-climate-180971666/">risk and rewards</a> of geoengineering and its <a href="https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/geoengineering-and-environmental-ethics-80061230/">ethical</a> dimensions. Although important and difficult, as the situations regarding <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/28/can-we-stop-robots-outsmarting-humanity-artificial-intelligence-singularity">artificial intelligence</a>, or that of the equitable distribution of COVID-19 <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/06/18/vaccines-as-the-new-oil">vaccines</a> illustrate, this may still be less of a challenge than the collective action problem.
The IPCC has consistently since its inception in 1988 delivered reports stressing “the evidence is clear.” As a result, the world is moving in the right direction, but at a glacial pace. It may be time to heat up the race.
This article is also published on the <a href="https://medium.com/climate-conscious/how-can-we-ignite-a-climate-technology-revolution-bf2909aefd9f">author&#x27;s blog</a>. Energy Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Energy &amp; Sustainability writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.

Wim Naudé

Wim Naudé

Economic growth on a finite planet: should SDG 8 be rescued?

Recent publications

Readers also like

Want to know more about illuminem Voices?