makingit_16_pp6-13_globalforum_print 22/07/2014 10:58 Page 12
GLOBAL FORUM
HOT TOPIC ⤠is not just to decouple economic activity from its ecological impact, but to destroy the connection completely. For example, renewable energy production can supply energy at zero variable cost. If the infrastructure required is also produced with renewable energy and recycled materials, then the ecological impact could be zero. The de-growth movement calls for a voluntary contraction of Northern economies via shorter working hours, the redistribution of wealth and income, increased subsistence production and collaborative consumption, and the promotion of non-monetary, commonsbased economic interaction. Some room for economic growth will still be left for Southern economies to develop until the bulk of the global population moves out of poverty. In this vision, the goal is a âsteady stateâ economy, which is both ecologically sustainable and socially equitable: where the physical size of the economy stays within the carrying capacity of planetary boundaries, while at the same time ensuring a fairer distribution of, and access to, all natural and social resources. Post-growth is not just an economic goal â itâs the key to the realization of a just society. The narrative of post-growth does have its problems. An economy that doesnât grow might look rather dull. âSteady stateâ appears to imply a static economy, perhaps even a static society. However, even if the German economy, for example, does not grow, it would still need to produce and sell products and services worth US$3.5trn in purchasing power parity each year in order to maintain its GDP. So post-growth doesnât spell the end of the entrepreneurial spirit or of human
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creativity or personal development â quite the opposite. As John Stuart Mill once noted: â[it] is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting on.â Are green growth and post-growth incommensurably at odds? Some say âyes.â Ralf FĂźcks, president of the green political think-tank, Heinrich-BĂśll-Stiftung, in Germany, argues for renewed optimism about the possibilities of green growth via new technologies, new forms of social innovation, new taxes on resource use, and âgreenâ ordo-liberalism: the German approach to economic questions that sits somewhere between social liberalism and neoliberalism by emphasizing the role of government in ensuring that market actors are able to produce socially and ecologically desirable results. From a post-growth perspective, all of these levers are useful, but they leave out crucial regulatory changes in the financial sector, measures to promote large-scale wealth redistribution, reduced working hours, and encouragement for commonsbased forms of economic activity. Postgrowth advocates like Peter A. Victor and Tim Jackson focus more on these areas because they actively reduce growth or make economic and social systems less growth-dependent. In the green growth paradigm, ideas about sharing and the entire notion of the collaborative economy are missing. But if these social, political and personal innovations became part of the paradigm, as well as technology, then green growth might actually be able to deliver on its
promises, so long as it relinquishes the belief that growth is an end in itself. However, doing this represents a huge challenge to the ways in which societies are currently organized, politics are structured, and patterns of consumption and cooperation are internalized in personal values and behaviour. The social, personal and political implications of degrowth are enormous, which is one of the reasons why green growth exercises such a hold on the conversation.