A common right-wing refrain to climate change activism is that properly addressing the scale of the problem would require economic rewiring to such an extent that rich nations would stagnate while poorer ones never escaped poverty. Therefore, it is suggested, we should ride out the worst of the heatwaves and forest fires until a grand technological solution arrives.

Leaving aside the extraordinary risks involved in adopting such a position, it is simply incorrect. The argument ignores distribution. It swallows wholesale the most immovable ideological fixation of our time – growth – presuming that where we do not artificially inflate any and all sectors of the economy as avidly and relentlessly as possible, irreversible decline will follow.

In reality, it is this ideological fixation itself which has generated a potentially irreversible climate change. Where do deforestation, soil depletion, overfishing, and mass extinction come from? Intensive resource use – and where does this come from? Not population per se, since population tells us nothing about the way that land and resources are used. Intensive resource use comes from capitalism because capitalism eats up ecologies to keep driving the profit necessary for rising aggregate profits. Stagnant profits mean companies cannot meet debt obligations and go bankrupt.

Jason Hickel emphasises in Less is More (2020) how, under capitalism, global GDP needs to rise by at least 2-3% per year to maintain rising aggregate profits. In a global economy which is already voluminous, this 2-3% per year obviously corresponds to an ever-larger pool of resources.

Therefore, if we are tethered to an economic system which demands economic growth at the cost of all else, we are also tethered to a ceaseless (compound) expansion of resource use, and resources, just like physical space, are limited. Even if we could roll out renewable energy quickly enough to offset much remaining fossil fuel burning, capitalism would continue relentlessly eating up the ecological resources named above to drive a profit – thus rendering ‘green growth’ an oxymoron.  

A swift way out of this quandary would be degrowth. This involves pursuing economic growth in productive, targeted arenas of the economy such as care, local food production, renewable energy infrastructure, and essential services, while reducing the size of other sectors. Some economic rewiring is needed here, but this is strictly necessary. You cannot in good conscience advocate a ceaseless and undifferentiated GDP growth for all where future generations will have to live in the parched world that results.

Peoples in the Global South benefit in a degrowth schema thanks to redistribution. Since 1990, 81% of growth in material use is due to increased consumption in rich nations. Once we degrow sectors driven by needless material acquisition, inbuilt obsolescence, and constant advertising, we take the steam out of a system of accumulation predicated on extracting raw materials from poor countries and allow these countries to develop their own economies. We also create the opportunity for true development aid between governments.

Much of the problem is simply that the notion that ceaseless GDP growth is the only route to peace and prosperity for all is so deeply rooted. Hickel uses the case study of Costa Rica in his book to refute this. Costa Rica’s life expectancy grew remarkably in the 1980s when its GDP per capita was not growing at all. How? Because it invested heavily in universal public goods. It focussed on building up not only public sanitation systems but more signally public healthcare and education systems. What matters is where resources are directed.

Costa Rica is not an obscure example but a demonstrative one. Simon Szreter has shown that the sharp rise in urban life expectancies in late-nineteenth century Britain stemmed from basic public health interventions such as separating sewage from drinking water. Raw industrial capitalism is typically seen to cause a decrease in life expectancy wherever it rears its head. Economic growth needs to be directed towards productive public ends to be worthwhile – outside of this, there should be a critical discussion of what sorts of growth are ecologically as well as socially necessary.

It is worth pointing out that UN reports, too, have found that countries can and often have seen life expectancy and health outcomes strengthen while GDP stalls or even declines. Countries such as Iran, Togo, and Venezuela achieved this due to public health measures, vaccinations, and cheaper access to global health technologies, without needing high levels of per capita wealth. Ceaseless economic growth, far from being a holy grail for human advancement, is an ideology invented and promulgated by wealthy individuals and corporations to keep their profit margins up while poor peoples stagnate. This state of affairs should and can be reversed.