The world today continues to measure the prosperity of countries through Gross Domestic Product (GDP). If this indicator rises, it is considered that the economy grows and that everything is going well. If it goes down, alarms go off. That is why for many degrowth is almost sacrilegious, the current that defends that to solve the climate crisis and other serious environmental problems of the planet there is no choice but to stop the machines that move the economy and decrease. However, something is changing, last week a conference was held with some of the main voices of degrowth in the very headquarters of the European Parliament in Brussels, an appointment attended by Ursula von der Leyen herself, president of the European Commission. In this meeting, one of the interventions that aroused more interest was that of Timothée Parrique (Versailles, France, 34 years old), researcher at the University of Lund (Sweden) and author of the book Ralentir ou périr. L'économie de la décroissance (Stop or die. The economics of degrowth), which used his presentation to charge against the idea of green growth in Europe, the current strategy that tries to reduce CO₂ emissions while increasing GDP. "The pace of emission reductions in Europe is light years away from what is needed," says the French economist.
Question. Is the fact that degrowth is being debated in the seat of the European Parliament a sign that the fear of this concept is being lost?
Answer. This is a remarkable step forward. The concept is quickly popularized, it is something of this moment. Since 2008, there have been more than 700 scientific articles on degrowth and numerous books. However, it should be noted that the title of the conference was 'Beyond Growth', a more vague and less controversial approach than degrowth.
Q. It ensures that degrowth means reducing production and consumption to reduce the ecological footprint, taking into account social justice and well-being. How is this achieved?
A. It is on this question that many researchers are working at the moment. To achieve this, a panoply of interventions at different levels needs to be mobilized: there are more than 380 instruments in the degrowth literature.
Q. Can you give an example of these instruments?
A. If we use a fossil energy quota system, after a while this will shrink the amount available and it will be more difficult to produce and consume the goods and services that demand more fossil fuels. One way to achieve sobriety is to close air routes where a train alternative is available. This is what we have tried in France, although the final result is very distorted, but the logic is solid. Another example is limiting advertising. If all advertising of aircraft or products that are more intense in fossil energies is eliminated, an incentive to consume is eliminated and consumption is reduced. When all the instruments are added together, that is, the prohibition of advertising, the closure of some national air lines, the quotas to fossil energy, what we have studied as economists specializing in macro is that the aggregate result of all these changes would be a reduction in production and consumption. But this reduction would be selective.
Q. Why is it a mistake to measure prosperity in terms of GDP growth?
A. Today we are still determined to accumulate GDP points despite the fact that this indicator ignores the most essential things, starting with nature. True prosperity is not stacking banknotes, but good health, access to essential goods and services, democratic participation, friendly coexistence and resilience of ecosystems without which no society could truly function. Measuring prosperity in GDP points is as absurd as measuring happiness in miles. We must move from a logic of maximization to one of satisfaction. The goal: to improve our ability to meet everyone's needs without ever exceeding our ecological ceilings.
Q. Doesn't degrowth impoverish us?
A. To begin with, economic growth is not a measure of wealth, but of economic turmoil. And it also measures an economic upheaval that is not necessarily going to enrich everyone. In the last decade, of every 100 euros of additional national income in France, only eight reach the pockets of the poorest 50% of citizens. With degrowth, we can reduce the total national income of an economy while enriching the poorest half of the population if wealth is redistributed. But, in addition, getting rich or impoverished is not just a matter of euros. We do not defend degrowth because, if we continue in this unsustainable race we will impoverish ourselves in ecosystem services, in droughts, in heat waves ...
Q. But reducing consumption and production means more unemployment.
A. Imagine that everything produced in Spain is divided by two, then there would be two options: lay off half of the employees or reduce everyone's working hours. In one case, half of the country's working population would be unemployed, in the other, everyone would keep their job while finding more free time. The reduction of working hours is one of the instruments of degrowth to avoid unemployment. Of course, other instruments would then be needed to prevent certain wages from becoming insufficient for the cost of living. On this, there has been much talk of universal basic services, autonomy allowances, employment guarantees..., instruments of this type to control prices and transfers of some goods and services to non-profit companies, in sectors such as health or real estate, to achieve the same quality of life, but with less. It is here that we see that degrowth calls for a change of the system.
Getting rich or impoverished is not just a matter of euros. We do not defend degrowth because, if we continue in this unsustainable race we will impoverish ourselves in ecosystem services, in droughts, in heat waves ...
Q. Do you think we can talk about degrowth in a society in which we aspire to change our mobile phone every year?
A. Consumers should not be blamed. I'm not sure there would be many people willing to sacrifice much of their life time to earn a salary that would allow them to buy a phone every year if it weren't for advertising or planned obsolescence. The solution is structural: we must change the system and invent an economy of sufficiency. We must deconstruct the commercial and consumerist logic that consists of always selling more to maximize profits on the side of companies and always earning more to maximize purchases on the side of consumers.
The researcher from the University of Lund (Sweden), in a shared apartment where he spends seasons in the French capital. Samuel Aranda
Q. What is a sufficiency economy?
A. In Quebec they speak of voluntary simplicity, in the United Kingdom of alternative hedonism, in France of happy sobriety... There is a whole philosophy behind it. The idea is that we can live well without having to fall into a consumerist or materialistic drift. It is a bit of the evil of infinity that [Émile] Durkheim said, which is to always find ourselves dissatisfied with the things we have and to want to undertake all the time to have more, knowing that in reality this is something that makes us miserable. An economy of sufficiency, or well-being, is an economy that gives value to what allows us to live well with what we have without needing more.
Q. Doesn't having to change the whole system slow down the fight against the climate emergency too much?
A. It is not only faster, but also more efficient. We must realise that the European strategy followed today for green growth does not work, the transition has not begun. On the other hand, if we go back to the example of aviation, today we have two alternatives if we want to reduce emissions: invest in research and development to try to get, for example, an aircraft that runs on hydrogen, or make fewer planes fly, the degrowth approach. If you choose to reduce flights, there emissions go down immediately. If you opt for innovation, that means that you will work for years to invent a prototype of hydrogen that may one day become a patent that may one day become a product that may one day become economically viable and perhaps one day replace thermal aircraft to perhaps one day end up replacing current technology. Green growth strategies are extremely slow because they are based on market mechanisms and these are not at all organized today to allow sobriety.
Q. Why do you think that CO₂ emissions and GDP cannot be decoupled to continue growing with fewer emissions?
A. Sustainability is not just about CO₂. For economic growth to be truly sustainable, we should completely decouple production and consumption (not only in relative terms) from all environmental pressures (not just CO₂) wherever they occur (taking into account imported impacts) at a sufficiently rapid pace to avoid ecological collapse and maintaining it over time to avoid recoupling. This truly green economic growth has never existed and I have not seen any convincing evidence that it can materialise.
Q. Not everyone bears equal responsibility for the climate crisis. Who should decrease?
A. When looking at the planetary scale, the richest 10%, about 700 million people, are responsible for half of global emissions. Degrowth must be on this side. In the European Union it is the same, there are huge divergences, the emissions of the richest 10% of people are equal to those of the poorest 50%. Here, too, a minority is going to be touched.
Q. To what extent should we decrease?
A. The aim is not to bring the ecological footprint down to zero, which would be impossible. The aim is to return to a threshold at which the economy can function sustainably. Degrowth is like going on a diet, for a few years you have to produce and consume less. Today Spain is an obese country from the biophysical point of view, like France, the United States, Australia. But once we reach a certain economic metabolism, there is no need to continue to decrease and we reach a stationary economy.
"Degrowth is like going on a diet, for a few years you have to produce and consume less. Today Spain is an obese country from the biophysical point of view"
Q. Some experts consider the term 'degrowth' too scary.
A. The strength of the term is its clarity. Show a 1.5°C trajectory curve to a 12-year-old and ask if it looks more like a degrowth, "green growth" or a "circular economy". Then we can add adjectives, sustainable, fair, prosperous... But the idea is there: produce and consume less. Some think the term scares people, but with the scientific data on the degradation of life by our economic activities, it is the word "growth" that should scare us.
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