In my 1973 book Poverty and Progress: An Ecological Perspective on Economic Development, I described the major innovations from the beginning of agriculture to the Industrial Revolution as “ways of escape for societies caught in the ecological predicament of population growth and resource scarcity.” Human societies have repeatedly been forced to make more intensive use of the environment to meet their growing needs. That use has been an important part of what we call economic development.
Change has not always been welcome. Early farmers were shorter and in poorer health than their hunter-gatherer ancestors, and worked long, hard hours. Conditions were dire in the early Industrial Revolution in Britain; we were forced to mine coal as wood supplies dwindled. My children will have to choose between artificial meat, insects, and vegetarianism, live in houses made from wood substitutes, and be unable to enjoy the countryside because of the sweltering heat. “One of the enduring truths of history,” writes economic historian Jack Fisher, “is that as societies become richer, the pleasures that were well within their reach when they were poorer no longer become available.”
Richard Wilkinson, North Yorkshire, England
The dreams of the Global South to become an El Dorado through the Western economic model have come to a harsh realization. In these countries, the very foundations of survival – resources like water, fertile land, and a predictable climate – are being threatened by the Western globalized industrial project. This includes the Green Revolution, celebrated in the Washington Post’s June 23 editorial, which has had serious ecological and social repercussions in India and African countries where it has been implemented. Similarly, the “new green energy infrastructure and new clean technologies” mentioned in the editorial require the rapid expansion of lithium extraction and export from the Global South to the Global North, causing serious problems for local communities and nature in countries like Bolivia and Chile. It is time to question the naive vision of a win-win world for “growth and innovation.” It is precisely that model of eternal expansion that has brought us face to face with environmental destruction. A serious and respectful discussion of degrowth is the only way out of the labyrinth we have built for ourselves.
Nadia Iokhanisova, Brno, Czech Republic
A series of recent editorials in the Washington Post argue that population and economic growth are essential to improving the quality of life, and that innovation and ingenuity have overcome ecological constraints in the past. This may have been true during the early industrial revolution. But technology has not been able to overcome our rapid approach to the 1.5°C climate threshold, nor has it been able to halt the decline of marine and terrestrial fish stocks.
The latest big technological innovation driving economic growth is artificial intelligence. But the amount of electricity required to run AI servers is astronomical. ChatGPT alone consumes more than 500,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per day, equivalent to the consumption of about 17,000 US households. AI’s power demand is growing so fast that economic analysts predict it could “drive a natural gas boom” at a time when we most need a break from older fuel sources. Not all technological innovations are good for the world. Innovations that only benefit investors in that technology at the expense of society and the planet do not contribute positively to our overall well-being.
The Post editorial notes that the planet wouldn’t reach its net-zero carbon emissions goal even if per capita economic growth dropped to zero between now and 2050. The implication is “why bother?”, but zero economic growth would get us much closer to the goal than our current trajectory. And a 5 percent contraction in growth over that period would get us closer to the 2050 target.
Financial advisors encourage us to live within our means. This also applies to society as a whole. Industry leaders don’t need to sell us things we don’t need for economic growth at the expense of our home planet. We only have a limited time to innovate to solve problems. There is an absolute limit to the number of people this planet can accommodate, and the amount of industrial and economic activity it can withstand. We are fast approaching that limit, and we need to slow down, not speed up.
The Washington Post recently mocked the “Cassandra streak that worries about humanity exhausting the carrying capacity of the planet.”
The original Cassandra was a Trojan princess and seer. After 10 years of war, the besieging Greek army had apparently left behind a large wooden horse, which the Trojans interpreted as a parting gift. Cassandra warned them in the sternest terms possible not to bring the horse inside the city gates. But the Trojans, relieved that the war was over, thought Cassandra had gone mad. They brought the horse into the city and hid the Greek soldiers. Cassandra was right. Troy was fallen.
it is, Humanity will reach the limits of the planet, but someday. I can pick up the Washington Post any day now and read about disappearing aquifers and drying rivers, or mass migrations and regional conflicts made worse by competition for dwindling resources, suggesting that the limits are near.
Letting your guard down in the face of an existential threat is just as bad as making a big fuss. Remember, the boy in the storybook was right when he cried wolf at the end.
Gary Norton, Charlottesville
The Washington Post’s June 23 editorial, “Degrowth is Madness,” has the right headline but the wrong content. It is not true that “significant degrowth is necessary to reduce emissions to safe levels.” The U.S. economy has more than doubled in real terms since 1990, yet greenhouse gas emissions have remained stable or fallen. From 1990 to 2021, greenhouse gas emissions per dollar of goods and services produced by the U.S. economy actually fell by 53 percent.
The United States is not alone. About 30 countries, including developing nations like Nigeria and the Dominican Republic, achieved significant economic growth while reducing their carbon footprint between 2005 and 2020. Renewable energy, energy efficiency, building a circular economy, and reducing waste all contribute to breaking the link between “economic gain” and “environmental harm.” We can enable economic growth while respecting the planet’s limits that are essential for survival.
The author is Director of Environmental Affairs at the Banking Information Center.
Degrowth advocates are not crazy, nor do they claim that ending or reversing growth will save the planet. Rather, they simply look at how centuries of population and economic growth have affected the prospects for healthy ecosystems and the long-term survival of civilization itself. And they ask whether humanity really needs growth. more This or something at this point in our expansion different?
Shouldn’t we be happy that falling birth rates might bring a relatively early end to population growth? Can we find ways to reduce poverty by reducing inequalities of wealth and income, rather than blindly increasing gross domestic product, which the editorial acknowledges is not a measure of individual well-being?
Robert Engelman, Takoma Park
The author is a senior research fellow at the Population Research Institute and former director of the Worldwatch Institute.
The real issue is not the size of the pie, but its composition: we need more of the things that increase happiness, like health care, knowledge, and music, and less of the things that decrease it, like pollution and the depletion of natural resources.
James K. Boyce, Amherst, Massachusetts
The author is the author of “Economics for Humanity and the Planet.”
The editorial board responded as follows:
Many thoughtful letters criticizing or praising our editorial address an important question: how much human activity can the Earth support? This question has dogged humanity throughout the Anthropocene, our continued exploitation of settled ecosystems.
Innovation may not save us from the climate crisis the way it has saved us from other challenges, such as mass starvation. But as Wilkinson points out, from the invention of agriculture to the Industrial Revolution, innovation has always been “the escape route for societies caught in the ecological predicament of population growth and resource scarcity.” Slowing economic growth slows the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that cause climate change. But getting to zero (or negative) emissions will require more innovation, and innovation will be harder in a world where growth cannot support it.
“The real problem is not the size of the pie, but its composition,” Boyce writes. To be sure, growth is not inherently destructive. Sure, growth means more (and hopefully cleaner) cars and refrigerators, but also better vaccines, less polluting industrial processes, public transport, and lower carbon emissions. According to the World Bank, in 1981, 42% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty; today, that percentage is 9%. Without economic growth, this improvement would not have happened.
We received some interesting responses from letter writers and will return to these issues in another editorial in the near future.
