“How degrowth will save the world”. This book describes how we might move away from a constantly growing economy, to one that is decelerating, without harming the people who live in it, and in fact, improving their lives along the way.
To get us there, the “upper class 1%” will suffer; they won’t be able to consume at the current multiplier they enjoy. But they too will benefit from a healthier way of life, and a society that is more inclusive.
The main benefactor will be our planet, and our ancestors, who’ll inherit a world that narrowly escaped an ecological disaster.
A possible path forward would be the following:
- end planned obsolences (stop creating purposefully fragile objects),
- cut advertising (stop nudging people to buy things they don’t need),
- shift from ownership to usership,
- end food waster, and
- scale down ecologically destructive industries (and have the remaining industries scale down working hours to make room for the newly unemployed).
My gripe with this book is that the author calls on capitalism as the culprit. IMO, the culprit is poorly insulated governments who aren’t able to enact resilient policies that’d make this degrowth possible. We need better political infrastructure, not an end to capitalism.
4/5.