The reaction reflects a growing intellectual trend: “degrowth.” Degrowth advocates are a vocal critic of the tendency to prioritise economic growth above all else. They argue that it would be better to move an increasingly unhappy society away from materialism and towards environmental sustainability.
We share some of their concerns. But, with all due respect, we remain reluctant to agree that degrowth is the way to address them. As we said in another editorial, the numbers show that curbing economic growth will not produce a safer or more sustainable world. Even if economic growth in rich countries were to stop, the world would still be 38 billion tonnes short of its carbon emissions target. And asking poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to halt development in the name of fighting climate change would be a form of environmental imperialism.
For more than 200 years, pessimists have warned that rapid population growth would bring about the downfall of civilization. Yet unprecedented population growth has coincided with unprecedented economic development, which has lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty. Diseases such as hunger and infant mortality have become rarer, thanks to the human ingenuity that characterizes growing societies.
“You can’t keep growing in a finite space,” one reader wrote. Still others argued that a society that values economic growth above justice and morality has lost its way. We recognize the challenge of fighting economic inequality and giving everyone opportunity and purpose, even as wealth increases across society. But degrowth risks having the opposite effect: the rich will stay rich while the standard of living for everyone else will decline.
Degrowth pessimism is based on the idea that economic production is inherently exploitative. In this view, growth necessarily requires more exploitation. But history has proven time and again that economics defies pessimistic predictions. Electricity, the Internet, penicillin, agricultural breakthroughs, and other advances have allowed us to achieve more with fewer resources, improving people’s standards of living and freeing them from the constant struggle to survive. Increased productivity can lead the world in a direction that is benign for the physical and social environment. Growth means less pollution, more forests, and improved health.
We don’t know exactly how many people the Earth can support. But economic and social development across the planet inevitably leads to fewer children. That’s why our concern is not about rapid population growth, but the opposite: how to maintain economic vitality when the number of people working — the people who think, experiment, invent, and invest — stops growing or even declines. Any sensible society will prepare.
We agree with our readers that paying women to have children can reinforce patriarchal norms. As one reader pointed out, “politicians are using women’s bodies as a political tool in the fight over abortion care.” Moreover, so-called pro-natal policies implemented in many countries have largely failed to boost birth rates.
Pro-natalist policies should not be aimed at people who wish not to have children. No amount of government assistance can fully offset the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to raise a child. Rather, pro-natalist policies should target the still-large number of women who say they want children but cannot afford the cost. It’s still worthwhile to enable women to make that choice, even if birth rates don’t soar in response.
American values of individual autonomy and choice mean that childfree lives should be respected. But freedom also has an inverse meaning: women who want more children shouldn’t be assumed to be suffering from a false sense of purpose. As one reader put it, “Everyone should have the right to choose if, when, and how many children they want. That’s a fundamental principle of reproductive justice.”
We agree. Society needs to make it easier to have children, but we also need to prepare for a time when we can no longer thrive on population growth, as many of us already are. Humanity needs to do more while keeping the population the same or even declining. Otherwise the world will get the future that degrowth advocates want, and we’re convinced people won’t like it.
