https://socialistincanada.ca/for-a-green-new-deal-without-destructive-growth-jason-hickel-responds-to-michael-pollin-and-noam-chomsky-on-degrowth/
The good news is that this can be done while at the same time accomplishing our goals of ending poverty and improving human well-being. Indeed, this is the core principle of degrowth. Recent research has found that we can ensure good lives for all – for a global population of 10 billion people by 2050 – with 60 per cent less energy than we presently use. Another study found that high-income nations could cut their material use by up to 80 per cent, while still providing for everyone’s needs at a high standard.
How do we get there? Scale down ecologically destructive and socially less necessary production (SUVs, McMansions, industrial beef, food waste, planned obsolescence, advertising, etc); shorten the working week and introduce a public job guarantee, with a living wage, to maintain full employment and mobilize labour for the transition; decommodify public goods, disaccumulate capital, and distribute income more fairly. All of these policies have significant public support. I describe feasible pathways toward this end in Chapter 5 of Less is More (or see here for a post-Keynesian approach). Doing this would enable us to accomplish a rapid transition to renewables, in a matter of years, not decades.
In other words, we cannot reverse ecological breakdown while at the same time pursuing growth; but we can reverse ecological breakdown while at the same time ensuring flourishing lives for all. That’s the story we need to be telling. That is where hope lies.
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