“The answer isn’t degrowth. The answer is abundance,” writes William Rinehart, senior research fellow at The Center for Growth and Opportunity of Utah State University. On its webpage, the organisation advertises itself as “world-class research” providing “real-world solutions,” which is tragically ironic since it published one of the most scientifically ungrounded, starry-eyed pieces I’ve read in […]
Peut-on croître sans polluer ? C’est l’affaire Galilée du XXIe siècle. Quoi de mieux que le rapport du GIEC sur l’atténuation du changement climatique pour éclairer la question du « découplage », cette hypothèse d’une dissociation entre croissance du PIB et émissions de gaz à effet de serre. Direction le Chapitre 2 où une partie est dédiée au sujet (voir : Le découplage […]
Categories
Sufficiency means degrowth
It took me a while but I finally digested the 107 pages of Chapter 5: Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation in the last IPCC report on Mitigation of climate change. This chapter is worth the read if only because it’s the first one fully dedicated to demand-side strategies. What I find remarkable is its conceptual width, […]
Categories
Decoupling in the IPCC AR6 WGIII
It’s the Galileo affair of the 21st century: Has economic growth in developed countries decoupled from environmental pressures? For the last decade, the prevailing (yet unproven) answer was: yes, it has – high-income nations have greened their growth which means that they can now increase their GDP while reducing their emissions. This illusion of a scientific […]
Categories
Degrowth in the IPCC AR6 WGIII
Even after two days of binge reading, I still have trouble believing that the last IPCC report “Mitigation of climate change” is real. The document is packed with powerful statements with radical implications and might represent nothing short of a watershed in the history of climate politics. There is so much to talk about and […]
I miss critiques of degrowth. A few years back, a single online search for the term would unleash a stream of fury. But no more. In fact, I cannot remember the last time I stumbled upon a well-argued critique. Why degrowth is wrong by Adam Lee is definitely not one of them – not even close (I […]
Categories
Degrowth in the IPCC AR6 WGII
This is historical. For the first time since its original report in 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has talked about degrowth. The term is mentioned 15 times (plus 12 mentions in the bibliography) in the 3,675-page report of the second working group “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability,” which was released on February 28th, 2022. […]
En tant que spécialiste de la décroissance, j’ai suivi avec attention le débat organisé par le Club de l’Économie du journal Le Monde entre Bruno Le Maire et Delphine Batho sur le thème « La transition environnementale est-elle compatible avec la croissance économique ? ». Quelle belle opportunité de répondre aux propos de Bruno Le Maire afin de clarifier ce […]
Categories
Sabotaging GDP
This is the transcript of a speech I gave online at the “Calculation otherwise” session of the 2022 Transmediale in Berlin: “This is Not Anarchy, This is Chaos.” The recording of the speech can be found here. We live in a simulated world. I don’t mean this in a Matrix style, like we’re being raised by […]
I love sci-fi and it’s very tempting to jump in feet first to discuss the growth-is-forever-possible-if-we-live-in-the-matrix argument from Noah Smith’s latest piece The Metaverse and (near-)infinite economic growth. But I won’t do that now. Instead, I want to respond to the – less amusing and yet extremely important – twofold claim that (a) growth is currently becoming green […]