This is a brief response to Tim Thornton’s recent article for JAPE (94, Summer 2024/2025), ‘Beyond green growth, degrowth, post-growth and growth agnosticism’. I am not intending to go into the arguments he uses in detail but instead to explain the green growth and degrowth positions as I see them. I find his account of it confusing and somewhat misleading — and feel there is a point in setting the record straight.
An important starting point is Tim Thornton’s definition of ‘economic growth’. This is the usual economist’s definition of growth as growth in GDP. In other words, a growth in the monetary value of transactions in an economy. Leading on from that he reviews various positions on the relationship between economic growth and environmental sustainability. He ends up with a position he refers to as a ‘contingent’ position. Though he eschews any identification with the ‘green growth’ position, his argument is totally consistent with what green growthers have been saying for decades. Whether or not economic growth causes environmental damage depends on the context. For example, whether we are using fossil fuels or renewables to power up our energy system. To explain this argument, I will resort to an example. Let us say that $120 of GDP is being spent. We could spend it on petrol for a 4WD car or on a massage session. Clearly the environmental impacts of these two alternatives are radically different but the contribution to GDP is identical. Hence, green growthers argue, let us have an economy that concentrates on less damaging monetary expenditures. That way we can have economic growth while environmental impact declines. As green growthers and Tim Thornton, say, the means to steer the economy in this direction is regulations and incentives created through correct policy choices combined with a shift in values in the community at large. While growth in past decades may have been correlated with environmental impact, this does not have to be the case in the future — after these new policy settings have been implemented.
Tim Thornton is correct in saying that the degrowth position rejects this argument. But his account of the degrowth position is quite misleading. He suggests that many de-growthers, if not all, are simply arguing that the way to move policy is to cut economic growth and thereby ensure less environmental impact. Strangely he does not mention a single measure that de-growthers have advocated to cut economic growth per se.
My take on the degrowth position is as follows. Degrowth is a broad church. Consequently, as I will suggest, de-growthers differ on many issues. But what holds the movement together are the following points.
As Nelson and Liegey point out in their ‘Introduction to Degrowth’, degrowth is ‘both a qualitative and a quantitative concept’ (Nelson and Liegey 2020:2). By qualitative, they mean that the degrowth strategy is to implement a change directed at improving the quality of life. For example, ‘conviviality, autonomy and enjoyment of life, along with establishing principles consistent with ecofeminism and social and [...]
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