Postgrowth – No to a Return to Normal
Miriam Meissner, May 2020
Postgrowth: In open letters, scientists, artists, and actors are calling for the economy to be oriented toward sustainability. To achieve this, policymakers would have to start taking action.
*This article was originally published in German in the newspaper Der Freitag.
It’s obvious: Once the economy has shut down, once this rupture has already occurred—that’s also where the opportunity lies to restart it in a different way. The debate on how this should happen has begun. In the recently published global manifesto Degrowth: New Roots for the Economy, more than 1,000 scientists, experts, artists, and activists call for a radical transformation that moves beyond the growth paradigm. In an open letter published in Le Monde, more than 200 prominent figures and scholars—including Juliette Binoche, Robert De Niro, Joaquin Phoenix, Penélope Cruz, and Madonna—urge us not to return to “normal,” but instead to “fundamentally transform” our consumer society and economy. A study by the polling firm Ipsos shows that 65 percent of people worldwide (57 percent of Germans) would be willing to prioritize climate protection over economic recovery. Socially and culturally, the time for sustainable economic transformation is long overdue. Unfortunately, however, current economic policy lags far behind this spirit of the times.
For example, the CDU Economic Council recommends “extending the timeline for climate policy targets” in order to get the German economy back on track. In doing so, it not only ignores the most urgent scientific warnings but also demonstrates its inability to rethink and reshape the economic future. Economic policy is currently focused on one thing above all else: restoring the past. From the booming auto industry to intensive agriculture, everything is supposed to continue as it did before the COVID-19 pandemic. Otherwise, Germany faces the threat of “deindustrialization,” according to the CDU Economic Council. Unfortunately, this also means that the council members’ thinking remains stuck in the age of industrialization.
Deindustrialization began in most Western countries as early as the 1970s and has little to do with the coronavirus. What actually lies ahead for us is the task of reinventing our economy while simultaneously making it sustainable. This is a task for the century. It is about nothing less than emancipating our economic system from outdated theories, values, and habits.
Sustainable green growth: unlikely
Now there’s always the argument that Germany should invest in digitalization and green technology. While this is true, it’s also too narrow a view. A technological upgrade isn’t enough. To adapt our economy to the risks and needs of our time—and not the other way around—scientific findings must set the overall course, just as they did with the coronavirus.
This applies in particular to climate change and species extinction. In 2019, the European Environmental Bureau published an important report on this topic. It examines Europe’s sustainability strategy, known as “green growth.” Green growth assumes that economies can decouple their growing gross domestic product from its negative environmental impacts. Technological innovation is supposed to achieve this: recycling, solar energy, electric motors, and CO2 capture. However, the report reaches the following “overwhelmingly clear and sobering” conclusion: “Not only is there no empirical evidence for the decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures on the scale that would be necessary to avert an ecological collapse, but—and this is perhaps even more important—such decoupling also seems unlikely in the future.”
In short, our current sustainability strategy is largely on the wrong track. To avert an impending ecological collapse, there is no way around it: we must change course as quickly as possible and develop an economic model that does not rely on continuous economic growth.
The obsession with growth isn’t that old
That sounds difficult, and it is. Currently, everything—from common business models to collective pension plans—is geared toward perpetual growth. We’re used to celebrating growth. To avoid burying our heads in the sand at the mere thought of potential difficulties, it helps to keep two facts in mind:
First, our society’s focus on growth is a relatively recent phenomenon—a postwar construct. Originally, gross domestic product (GDP) was not intended as an indicator of prosperity, but rather as an accounting tool that allowed nations to compare their economies with one another. This, in turn, facilitated the coordination of multilateral financial flows as well as the balance of power during the Cold War.
Economically speaking, we managed just fine for a long time without this obsession with growth. The odds are therefore good that we’ll be able to continue to conceive of and pursue our well-being in a growth-agnostic way in the future as well. Countries like New Zealand, Iceland, and Scotland are leading the way here. Under the Wellbeing Economy Governments initiative, they decided in 2019 to prioritize the environment, equity, and quality of life over GDP.
For, secondly, GDP says nothing about the quality or equitable distribution of our economic output. It does not record whether our prosperity consists of food, healthcare, and education, or of cigarettes, cars, and plastic knickknacks. It does not care who gets how much of the collective prosperity pie. The main thing is that the pie is big.
GDP is also indifferent to the fact that the main driver of our current growth in prosperity—fossil fuels—is destroying the very foundations of our shared existence. This ultimately spells the end of all economic output. “No jobs on a dead planet” is a common slogan in the climate movement. That sounds trite. But since politicians of all stripes continue to try to subordinate the laws of nature to their economic goals (see Michael Jäger in Der Freitag), they don’t seem to have truly grasped this connection yet.
After all, GDP does not account for any value we create outside the market. When I clean my house, take care of my children, and cook meals for us, I create value that is not reflected in GDP. If, on the other hand, I hire cleaning staff and childcare providers and then order a pizza for us, that certainly counts toward GDP.
If GDP growth says so little about our actual quality of life, why are policymakers willing to risk lives and ecosystems for its sake—for example, by ending a COVID-19 lockdown prematurely or by relaxing environmental targets that are already too lax?
The Pope is moving faster!
It is high time that industrialized nations free themselves from this dangerous logic. This also means saying goodbye to outdated economic theories that have their origins in the era of early industrialization—with Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. It is striking that even these economists did not consider endless growth to be possible; instead, they believed that a stationary economy would eventually be achieved.
Women political economists have long been working on alternative, growth-independent economic models, such as the “Doughnut Economy” or the “Economy for the Common Good.” Unfortunately, these and other proposals continue to be dismissed by the political establishment as “unrealistic” and “unfeasible.” At this point, at the very latest, the question arises: on what basis do we actually want to assess and shape the future?
If we measure models of the future against the parameters of the present, we will never achieve true emancipation. Had the women’s movement adapted its demands for equality to the bourgeois moral ideals of its time, women would still not have the right to vote or to work today.
If we evaluate the potential of a future economy based on today’s economic standards—consumer-oriented, growth-driven, and market-liberal—then we will not achieve an economic transformation, but at best only a successor model. Yet that is not enough to effectively avert looming environmental and health crises. On the contrary, it makes us increasingly vulnerable.
Political economists have long been working on alternative, growth-independent economic models, such as the “Doughnut Economy” or the “Economy for the Common Good.” Unfortunately, these and other proposals continue to be dismissed by the political establishment as “unrealistic” and “unfeasible.” At this point, at the very latest, the question arises: on what basis do we actually want to assess and shape the future?
If we measure models of the future against the parameters of the present, we will never achieve true emancipation. Had the women’s movement adapted its demands for equality to the bourgeois moral ideals of its time, women would still not have the right to vote or to work today.
If we evaluate the potential of a future economy based on today’s economic standards—consumer-oriented, growth-driven, and market-liberal—then we will not achieve an economic transformation, but at best only a successor model. Yet that is not enough to effectively avert looming environmental and health crises. On the contrary, it makes us increasingly vulnerable.
It is not for nothing that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) advocates for “rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented change in all areas of society.” It is not for nothing that the UN Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) recommends a “shift away from the current limited paradigm of economic growth.” In politics and public debate, however, these and other urgent calls from the scientific community are barely being heard. In this context, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte likes to quote Helmut Schmidt: “Anyone who has visions should see a doctor.” With this attitude, however, politics deprives itself of its own core competence—shaping the future of society—and degenerates into a mere (crisis) manager.
Incidentally, the Pope is currently demonstrating more scientific insight and political imagination than most elected officials. In his Easter message to social movements, he not only advocated for considering an unconditional basic income but also wrote that “technocratic paradigms (whether state-centered or market-driven) are insufficient to address this crisis as well as all other major problems facing humanity.” Instead, our civilization must “slow down, take stock, and renew itself—with its competitive, individualistic nature, its frenetic pace of production and consumption, its extravagant luxury, and its disproportionate profits for the few.”
If even the Pope is now calling for renewal, then politics is lagging far behind the spirit of the times.
