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> 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 extern

> 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...

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...