“Degrowth, a Proposal for a Decent Life within Planetary Limits” by Aljoša Slameršak, co-founder of Policy Lab, examines degrowth through three key premises that link the concept of planetary boundaries to the political vision of a to the political vision of a decent life for all.
First, the premise of biophysical limits challenges strategies that require continuous growth in material and energy use. The relevance of this premise is reinforced by research showing that certain planetary boundaries have already been have already been exceeded, undermining the reproductive capacity of ecosystems and reducing their their beneficial effects on society. The author presents the argument of ecological economists, who see the root causes of ecological crises in the universal application of market logic to all goods and services. logic to all goods and services, even if they have fundamentally different characteristics of (re)production. The essay continues with a degrowth rejection of the discourse of eco-modernism. Technological solutions are capable of mitigating ecological crises, but they cannot resolve them. because the crises stem from inadequate economic relations between nature and society.
Second, the premise of an egalitarian economy can be used to refute a causal link between between growth and prosperity. Building on the first premise, the author shows that biophysical limits impose a limits constrain the material preconditions of well-being. The author argues that social equality is more important for well-being than growth or material abundance. Furthermore, temporal analyses of social inequality show that economic growth in developed countries since the neoliberal turn has coincided with growing inequality and stagnation of well-being for the majority of people.
Finally, the premise of holistic economics emphasises the crucial role of reproductive labour and reproductive ecological services, which are commonly overlooked by the existing economic system due to its strict focus on monetary exchange. The author argues that the creation of paid services often coincides with the destruction and exploitation of the reproductive part of the economy. A holistic analysis of benefits and costs therefore casts further doubt on the causality between growth and well-being.
The full essay is available here.
