Growth is killing us

I explain degrowth economics and our current sadness (do you feel it too?)

Small CSA. I’m going to post more frequently here because this newsletter is getting some sweet traction. But they’ll be shorter posts. And only if I have something to share that I feel reflects where a bunch of you/us are at. I’m also going to do some more stuff for paid subscribers - intimate content where I share VMs, videos and include you in projects I’m working on. For example, I’ll be inviting this closer community to have a say in who I bring on to my Wild podcast, as well as where I put my charity $$$s in the coming six months (which will be fun!). There will also be a few exclusive offers (that sounds dead wanky) along the way.

If you’d like to be part of this more intimate community it costs $5 a month (standard Substack fee.) Let’s just say it straight, hey.

These paid subscriptions enable me to set aside time to write to you and for me to do my pro bono and charity work. I’m not a salesperson. Totally up to you if you want to pay. Or perhaps you’d like to gift a friend…

But to my rant for the week…

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So there’s this vibe I’m picking up …

…after watching the world really struggle this week, while personally meeting with resistance and bad behaviour and seeing sadnesses in all kinds of corners.

We seem to be going the wrong way. And we want to go back. But don’t know how. Or have lost the courage to learn how.

We seem to be asking the wrong questions. And getting so terribly… sad…when we are being met with the wrong answers.

Which reminds me of a wonderful question Wendell Berry advises we ask at all times:

I quote it at the end of this week’s podcast chat with Dr Jason Hickel. It really is the only question to ask at this juncture in history.

Now, Jason is the leading voice in the degrowth economics movement. You can listen to our (admittedly, pretty intense) chat here. And by way of the quickest of primers: Degrowth economics is an economic theory that argues we must quit basing our progress and prosperity on growth, or GDP, and instead base it on the wellbeing of humans and the planet.

I have to confess I’m really happy with how Jason and I were able to outline a case together for something I have been drip-feeding into my various social outpourings for years now. It’s pretty much the answer to Berry’s “only question we have the right to ask” question:

THE EARTH REQUIRES US TO CONSUME LESS. WAY LESS. Period.

How much less? Whatever it takes to stay within the nine planetary boundaries (which I explain in last week’s emittance). It’s not hard (Jason and I talk tangible examples in our chat). It brings domino-ing joy and boons. It’s the silver bullet!

That said, I do outline some caveats at the end of the interview in the bit where I share my “take homes”.

So what stops us from “doing'“ it, from consuming way less already? Ah, well that would be our system’s myopic obsession with, yep, growth. We have let ourselves be convinced we have to GROW, at all costs, to, um…be happy? To succeed? To survive?

No one can actually answer what growth-at-all-costs is meant to achieve because we just do growth. No questions asked. But growth as an end point does not make any logical sense. We can’t hug or love or learn or actually grow ourselves from a bunch of accumulated stuff and incremental metrics on a page (which is all growth is in the end).

Indeed, all studies point to growth being the thing that causes us the most misery, polarisation, war, mass distraction, sadness and our ultimate demise.

It’s insane.

We’re going the Wrong Way! We Want To Go Back!

Economist Paul Krugman recently wrote about how a lot of “solutions” to big problems we face today are going the wrong way. He pins the problem on the conservative forces:

"When confronted with problems that could easily be alleviated through cooperative action, the radical right-wingers...turn instead to bizarre nonsolutions that appeal to their antisocial ideology."

Examples:

• Following the deadly Texas power outages, the Republican governor set out to secure the power grid with … Bitcoin mining. WTF? Oh yes. Bitcoin’s huge electricity consumption shall expand the state’s generation capacity, thusly fixing everything. Apparently.

But that is insanity. It’s wrong way, go back! More (dirty) power use is not going to fix a (dirty) power shortage on any planet I know of.

• American conservatives, rather than working with scientists, fought viciously to block measures to curb the spread of Covid. And instead threw everything at promoting weird-ass treatments, which cost more than vaccines, were proven to be ineffective and in some cases dangerous.

Madness. Why not just support the scientists to prevent the spread of the disease in the first place?

• Conservatives block gun controls and instead set out to solve the school shootings epidemic…by giving teachers guns.

Which leaving aside the fact that we all know fixing a problem with the thing that causes said problem in the first place is the definition of insanity, such an approach forces teachers to become the frontline operatives in this war.

I see the same stubborn, dangerous “Wrong Way” logic dictating Australia’s conservative, recalcitrant government behaviour:

• Scott Morrison’s LNP set up a Covid recovery taskforce and stacked it with fossil fuel stakeholders. They - of course - refused a sustainable “green recovery” path, as per most of the rest of the world. They ignored the evidence that shows climate degradation will only worsen pandemic risk. They instead declared a “gas-fired recovery” and opened up gas pipelines and more mines. (For some very current irony, just yesterday former Fortescue Metals Group chief executive Nev Power, who headed this taskforce, received a suspended jail sentence for “disrespectful” breaching of Covid regulations. Mad times produce a lot of irony!) We have since received the condemnation of much of the OECD and the UN and Australia became the laughing stock at the latest COP, awarded the “colossal fossil” award for our lack of climate policy.

• Scott Morrison reluctantly agreed to do an apology to victims of sexual assault in Parliament and didn’t invite the women who…were sexually assaulted in Parliament.

• Our ScoMo bleats about keeping government out of things right as our education, health and emergency services are desperately required.

• All the evidence points to there being more jobs in renewable energy than fossil fuels - four times as many. The evidence also shows there are way more financial opportunities in wind and solar, no more so than in Australia. Yet the LNP fight tooth and nail to preserve FFs because of “jobs and (yep) growth” (even though there are only about 60,000 jobs in FFs in Australia, a dip in the ocean). So basically they fight for the opposite of what they say they are. And lie to us. You might like this 7am podcast where The Australia Institute’s Richard Dennis breaks down Scott Morrison’s economic lies. It’s artful.

• The list is actually quite endless…I won’t go on (but feel very free to add your favourite Wrong Way moments as gifted to us by the current government in the comments below).

So what’s going on? Why are the Powers That Be going the wrong way and ostensibly choosing the paths that lead to our existential demise?

Paul Krugman argues that it’s an ideological rejection of cooperation that drives it. And suggests there’s some sort of Hobbesian nihilism at play, too.

I certainly think these “male, pale and stale” power structures have become - as a form of reflexive self-defence - so wedded to the individualist notion of “survival of the fittest” that they’ll argue for a race to the bottom rather than acknowledge that maybe some social cohesion and intervention could help us all out. They’d rather take us all down than concede defeat. They’d rather bold-face lie, destroy, consume more more more, and lock in “growth” as the only solution than pivot to a fresher, better way and be the awesome leaders who can take us fairer lands.

It is sad.

All I can advise, friends, is that we don’t fall for the “growth is king” line any longer. Take a listen to my chat with Jason. Discuss it with your friends. Get a bit wild with how we could do things differently. And then, as the election looms, look out for candidates with policy platforms that might just look a bit de-growthy, or at least logical.

This tune might get you in the mood.

But I’ll leave final thoughts to my old mate** His Holiness the Dalai Lama:

Until next week,

Stay wild and kind,

Sarah xx

** Old mate is probably being a bit familiar; I was the Australian ambassador for His Holiness for three years and his wisdoms certainly came to feel friendly and familiar.