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So why now? Would it have been better to stop growing in Roman or medial times, for example? Or stop only in a 100 years? Degrowth seems to me like a vision of

So why now? Would it have been better to stop growing in Roman or medial times, for example? Or stop only in a 100 years? Degrowth seems to me like a vision of the future that assumes that humans should remain slaves of their environment and not become masters of it. If humans are to become the dominant species in the universe, degrowth will not help.

sprucevoid 4y ago
> So why now? From my reading of degrowth works the answer is: because now the global resource use induced by growth have accumulated enourmous negative externality costs, costs that will nedlessly increase further unless counteracted by degrowth policy. Food shortages, deadly heatwaves, property destruction. Direct dire costs to human health and welfare and rippling secondary effects. For example how would a scenario with hundreds of millions of climate refugees play out on top of current global political tensions? I see the degrowth view not as "we should never ever have growth again" but rather the current modes of growth have very tangible imminent (on an astronomical timescale) negative effects that we must deal with right now. If we fail to step up to the current challenge of provisioning health and welfare for beings on this planet how likely are we to manage an all universe encompassing expansion without it ending in catastrophe on the largest scale? You could see the climate change challenge, and the degrowth plan to tackle it, as a necessary step to get our house in order, before expanding out. Us attempting to expand into and shaping the universe is quite a task - so much could go right or wrong. I think Toby Ord's The Precipice[0] has a very useful framework for thinking about such risks. [0] https://theprecipice.com/ https://theprecipice.com/
- RandomLensman 4y ago
  Fair enough on the intermediate step possibility. However, it is often sold more like a return to simpler lifestyles for forever - or maybe the proponents I encountered just happen to lean that way. As far as dire scenarios are concerned, I struggle with them as usually the realities play out differently. Arguably in part because people do consider such scenarios.
  - sprucevoid 4y ago
    > a return to simpler lifestyles for forever Seems to me it is often portrayed that way by opponents strawmanning it or by media simply very lossily compressing it into a few sentences/seconds chunks. But I'm not sure how many of the proponents really have that view. Even in cases where degrowth writers have "simple life forever!" type phrasings my impression is that that's not really the focus of their work and they're not really strongly wedded to such a vision for the long term. Their core focus is the imminent (as in 100 years) negative externalities, not the long future after that. I think Jason Hickel is an interesting case. I've learned a lot from reading both his work and that of his critics. His "What does degrowth mean? A few points of clarification" is a good intro to his thinking[0]. I think very little there is really incompatible with expansion into space in the longer term. [0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2020.1812222 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2020.1...
RalfWausE 4y ago
Why should we want to become the "dominant species in the universe" and not be statisfied with a good life within our means?
- RandomLensman 4y ago
  Why would you settle for less as species if you could get it?
  - RalfWausE 4y ago
    Humility? Prove that we as a species are intelligent by not living beyond our means?
- zenon 4y ago
  Life within the current means of humanity is not good.
  - throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
    Is it currently at its peak? if not when was the peak quality of life of humanity?
- jiriknesl 4y ago
  People are not hobbits. Or maybe some are, but others are not and they shouldn't be forced to live like ones.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Direct thermal forcing is at about 100mW/m^2. This gives us about a century to stop increasing energy usage and albedo. This is precisely where we were when people first started raising alarm bells about greenhouse gases. The thermal emissivity of the night side of earth is only one of many limits we are running head first into. Almost all scarce resources, many abundant ones, and even abstract concepts like the growth of classical computation are all hitting limits where they only scale linearly or worse with energy input. Growing into the solar system is largely irrelevant because it's a constant increase vs an exponential and will not be meaningfully coupled to earth's economy without energy expendature on earth proportional to trade volume. And there's no compelling reason to hinge everything on the assumption that the second law of thermodynamics and speed of light are both false so nothing outside the solar system is relevant to those living inside it unless we overturn one or both first. All of this to avoid reexamining the blind faith assumption that we have to give an exponentially growing share of the pie to those who have the biggest share. Growth is only necessary for survival of the 99.99% if every year they give 2% of their wealth to the 0.01%
- RandomLensman 4y ago
  Once we build and make stuff truly not on earth it will decouple. The trade never reaches earth then, so overall human economy expands but not earth's (or only a little, ie high value trade, maybe even take some high waste energy processes off earth if energy from dropping product back is less). The human economy could be much larger but not all parts of the human sphere would necessarily trade with each other materially. Edit: "materially" in the sense of stuff. Some data from a nearby star could still be highly valuable, but exchanging stuff over lightyears might rarely be efficient.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    So then earth still has to degrow even for the short duration before the carrying capacity of the solar system gets exhausted. The presence or absence of a growing economy elsewhere is irrelevant. You ask why now? The answer is because we've already overshot the ability to do everything we do sustainably with the resources available. We need to get off the treadmill now and hope like hell technology and the available buffers are enough to limit the harm to 'merely' hundreds of millions dying.
Gatsky 4y ago
I think part of the answer could be that the global population is older and wealthier than it ever has been. This has certain effects on our collective psychology.
- RandomLensman 4y ago
  Interesting angle - higher risk aversion as a driver.

sprucevoid 4y ago

> So why now? From my reading of degrowth works the answer is: because now the global resource use induced by growth have accumulated enourmous negative externality costs, costs that will nedlessly increase further unless counteracted by degrowth policy. Food shortages, deadly heatwaves, property destruction. Direct dire costs to human health and welfare and rippling secondary effects. For example how would a scenario with hundreds of millions of climate refugees play out on top of current global political tensions? I see the degrowth view not as "we should never ever have growth again" but rather the current modes of growth have very tangible imminent (on an astronomical timescale) negative effects that we must deal with right now. If we fail to step up to the current challenge of provisioning health and welfare for beings on this planet how likely are we to manage an all universe encompassing expansion without it ending in catastrophe on the largest scale? You could see the climate change challenge, and the degrowth plan to tackle it, as a necessary step to get our house in order, before expanding out. Us attempting to expand into and shaping the universe is quite a task - so much could go right or wrong. I think Toby Ord's The Precipice[0] has a very useful framework for thinking about such risks. [0] https://theprecipice.com/ https://theprecipice.com/

RandomLensman 4y ago
Fair enough on the intermediate step possibility. However, it is often sold more like a return to simpler lifestyles for forever - or maybe the proponents I encountered just happen to lean that way. As far as dire scenarios are concerned, I struggle with them as usually the realities play out differently. Arguably in part because people do consider such scenarios.
- sprucevoid 4y ago
  > a return to simpler lifestyles for forever Seems to me it is often portrayed that way by opponents strawmanning it or by media simply very lossily compressing it into a few sentences/seconds chunks. But I'm not sure how many of the proponents really have that view. Even in cases where degrowth writers have "simple life forever!" type phrasings my impression is that that's not really the focus of their work and they're not really strongly wedded to such a vision for the long term. Their core focus is the imminent (as in 100 years) negative externalities, not the long future after that. I think Jason Hickel is an interesting case. I've learned a lot from reading both his work and that of his critics. His "What does degrowth mean? A few points of clarification" is a good intro to his thinking[0]. I think very little there is really incompatible with expansion into space in the longer term. [0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2020.1812222 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2020.1...

RalfWausE 4y ago

Why should we want to become the "dominant species in the universe" and not be statisfied with a good life within our means?

RandomLensman 4y ago
Why would you settle for less as species if you could get it?
- RalfWausE 4y ago
  Humility? Prove that we as a species are intelligent by not living beyond our means?
zenon 4y ago
Life within the current means of humanity is not good.
- throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
  Is it currently at its peak? if not when was the peak quality of life of humanity?
jiriknesl 4y ago
People are not hobbits. Or maybe some are, but others are not and they shouldn't be forced to live like ones.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

Direct thermal forcing is at about 100mW/m^2. This gives us about a century to stop increasing energy usage and albedo. This is precisely where we were when people first started raising alarm bells about greenhouse gases. The thermal emissivity of the night side of earth is only one of many limits we are running head first into. Almost all scarce resources, many abundant ones, and even abstract concepts like the growth of classical computation are all hitting limits where they only scale linearly or worse with energy input. Growing into the solar system is largely irrelevant because it's a constant increase vs an exponential and will not be meaningfully coupled to earth's economy without energy expendature on earth proportional to trade volume. And there's no compelling reason to hinge everything on the assumption that the second law of thermodynamics and speed of light are both false so nothing outside the solar system is relevant to those living inside it unless we overturn one or both first. All of this to avoid reexamining the blind faith assumption that we have to give an exponentially growing share of the pie to those who have the biggest share. Growth is only necessary for survival of the 99.99% if every year they give 2% of their wealth to the 0.01%

RandomLensman 4y ago
Once we build and make stuff truly not on earth it will decouple. The trade never reaches earth then, so overall human economy expands but not earth's (or only a little, ie high value trade, maybe even take some high waste energy processes off earth if energy from dropping product back is less). The human economy could be much larger but not all parts of the human sphere would necessarily trade with each other materially. Edit: "materially" in the sense of stuff. Some data from a nearby star could still be highly valuable, but exchanging stuff over lightyears might rarely be efficient.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  So then earth still has to degrow even for the short duration before the carrying capacity of the solar system gets exhausted. The presence or absence of a growing economy elsewhere is irrelevant. You ask why now? The answer is because we've already overshot the ability to do everything we do sustainably with the resources available. We need to get off the treadmill now and hope like hell technology and the available buffers are enough to limit the harm to 'merely' hundreds of millions dying.

Gatsky 4y ago

I think part of the answer could be that the global population is older and wealthier than it ever has been. This has certain effects on our collective psychology.

RandomLensman 4y ago
Interesting angle - higher risk aversion as a driver.