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Ryebread wrote

It's ignorant. Let's say that the statistics are right, which is not necessarily the case, we are still 1) consuming way too much for the planet to handle and 2) destroying the planet more than we did years before. It doesn't matter if we destroy the environment less per 'dollar' or less per capita if we are still destroying more and more (or at all). Degrowth, in constrast, offers us a way out of our environment problems and opens up the possibility of a good standard of living (but not wealthier in terms of material) for everyone with less work.

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masque wrote (edited )

Here are my thoughts, assuming that the empirical claims about wealthy countries reducing their environmental impact are true.

It seems like there are two ostensibly competing ideas:

  • We should improve environmental outcomes through technological advancement
  • We should improve environmental outcomes by reducing production

For someone who is only willing to think within a capitalist framework, these really are competing approaches, in the sense that the latter precludes the former. As stated in the article,

Thanks to Covid-19, we have an inkling of how this would feel. A “degrowth recession” wouldn't have the virus’ deaths and sickness, and it wouldn't require us to practice social distancing. But it would have all the economic contractions’ job losses, business closures, mortgage defaults, and other hardships and uncertainties. And it would have them without end—after all, growth can't be allowed to restart. Corporate and government revenue would decrease permanently, and therefore so would innovation and R&D.

I think this is all perfectly true within a capitalist economy; it's well known that capitalism demands constant growth, so degrowth is antithetical to a functioning capitalist system.

But most degrowth advocates (especially on raddle) probably also want to abandon capitalism. In a non-capitalist system, the concerns of "job losses, business closures, mortgage defaults," and so on are not real, meaningful concerns. And the idea that innovation is only possible through monetary investment in a free-market economy is pure ideology.

One additional thing to note: the empirical arguments in this article are essentially all about relative improvements, but ultimately there is some absolute drop in consumption/emission/pollution/etc. required in order for the world to not be totally screwed. It may well be that technological improvement is currently making things better at an appreciable rate, but this improvement could slow down and plateau before achieving an environmentally sustainable society.

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existential1 OP wrote

I think that bit about relative vs absolute really captures my issues with this article. It acts as though there aren't actual hard limits out there, and that the pace of relative improvement (so much as it exists at all) is on-pace to get on positive side of those limits.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

Seemed a lot of effort to read what seems to be a steaming pile of shit, so I didn't get more than a few paragraphs in.

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