"Degrowth" is a tough sell

We need positive language to work toward positive outcomes

The seeds of Big-seeded Biscuitroot (Lomatium macrocarpum), a traditional First Food of western North America. Photo taken in eastern Oregon, Aug. 15, 2022.

March 14^th was “Earth Overshoot Day” for the United States. What that means is that, if every country in the world consumed at the rate of the US, the limit of the planet’s annual regeneration of resources would run out on that date. (At this website, you can see which countries overshoot and which don’t.)

I don’t know how they calculate their dates, and I’m sure folks could quibble over methodology, but we can be confident that it represents a legitimate warning about the status quo and its danger to people and planet. We need to use less. Far far less.

Personally, I would argue the solution is about systemic change not individual choices. If each person had a share to work with—that is, if the ownership of the resources of the planet were divvied up among everyone and our own decisions to forgo on any particular resource meant that resource would be preserved in place—then it would be all about individual choices.

But it’s not.

If an individual drives less, stops watering their lawn, or turns down the thermostat, then that water, fuel or power is not “saved.” Besides only being a drop in the bucket, it’s a drop that’s gobbled up by the machine some other way. There are other reasons to do these things, of course, such as getting more exercise, saving money on bills, and the value of being attentive to one’s own life. In the big picture, though, what we need is a two-pronged systemic approach. First, for example, a city could set up an effective public transportation system, provide drought-tolerant plants for yards, and sponsor the insulation of every home. Now we’re talking buckets, not drops. But the second part is the challenge: how to ensure that this savings is not just eaten up elsewhere.

That’s where the concept of “degrowth” comes in. The idea is that the functioning of society must be fundamentally reworked to not just use less, but to also set aside the savings. Take the case of freshwater, for example, the vast majority of which is squandered by industry, including industrialized agriculture, not consumers. Only about 20% of the farmed land in the US is devoted to food we eat directly. The remainder is for livestock feed (by far the most), exports, idle/fallow land, ethanol/biofuel, and non-food crops like cotton. About 40% of the food grown is wasted annually. Bottom line, the purpose of our agricultural system is not to grow nutritious, healthy food for the population (though some individual farmers are driven by that motivation); it’s to make money. This has to change, so that the footprint of agriculture is much much smaller.

Globally, various schemes have been proposed to put certain percentages of land into conservation, etc., and I’m not going to get into all of that here. Whole blogs, books, and organizations exist that exhaustively explore the topic. For a thorough but readable outline of degrowth principles go to this article and scroll halfway down to “The Five Fundamentals of Degrowth.”

Among those who support the broad strokes of degrowth—as in decreased production and consumption—are many activists and down-to-earth folks who also have a strong critique of materialism, capitalism, industrialism, or civilization as a whole. These folks include anarcho-primitivists, with whom my own perspective largely aligns. Many are doing what they can to educate and to develop new practices at the community level. (I once ran a bike-based urban-farming CSA in Portland, Oregon.)

In my opinion, though, the term “degrowth” is itself an obstacle to its implementation.

We instinctively consider “growth” to be good. Plants grow. Animals grow. Babies grow. With learning, knowledge grows. In healthy relationships, love grows. We appreciate the growth of so many things. So calling for “degrowth” is dissonant right out the door.

The mistake, now long past correcting I’m afraid, was in using “growth” to describe the enlargening size or complexity of non-living things like industries, economies and technologies. Such things don’t grow like a flower or fondness; it’s more accurate to say they expand, spread, increase, multiply, burgeon, or metastasize. (Yes I consulted a thesaurus.)

True “growth” is about maturing, communing, and deepening, in a process that eventually ends with returning. It’s about the realizing (as in, making real) of inherent potential to whatever degree is granted by circumstance, which is to say, within the bounds of natural limits.

Conversely, the “growth” of industries, economies and technologies has tended toward withering (of living things), alienating (from the more-than-human world), and diminishing (of quality of life), in a process that irrationally grasps for immortality. It’s about the manufacturing of infinite, abstracted wealth under the delusion that material resources are infinite. I’d call it bullshit except that cow excrement has real value as a fertilizer of soil and a mode of dispersal for seeds. Bullshit literally plays a valuable role in growth of the true kind.

As a side note, the term “degrowth” is trumpeted by elite organizations like the World Economic Forum. An increasing number of regular folks are suspicious about the WEF and similar institutions and not without reason. (Here’s a lefty critique.) Do we trust the billionaire class to bail out the boat that’s sinking under the weight of their own wealth? Can we take their concerns about carbon emissions seriously when so many of them arrive at their gatherings by private jet? Can capitalism, even of the so-called “stake-holder” stripe, be the driver of the change we need? I’m highly skeptical. While I don’t currently rank the WEF very high on my personal own list of concerns (perhaps naively), other people place it at or near the top, so it’s best to differentiate ourselves by using other language that reflects our contrasting goals and methodologies, including the need for collective buy-in and participation, not top-down dictates.

Do I have an alternative label to propose? Not off the top of my head of course, no. But there’s at least a couple different directions to go. One is to use positive framing—like “simplify” or “free up” and the other is to apply “de-” to something negative: “de-complicate” or “de-stress.” A bit clumsy, but then so is “degrowth” tbh. I’m just tossing these out there as a brainstorming exercise.

What these suggestions emphasize, though, is that for an increasing number of people in the most consumptive societies, life has become more complex and anxiety-inducing. Almost nobody likes giving up most of their waking hours for work that’s empty for them. Or sitting in traffic or wrangling with impersonal bureaucracies or having a credit score. Or struggling to cover rent, utilities, gas, insurance, healthcare, education and food. These are among the many costs that end up outweighing the enjoyment of the promised benefits, which themselves seem to be perpetually shrinking.

“Make America Great Again” has appeal for a reason. It directly speaks to a desire held by many for a time when life didn’t seem so hard. Yes, that time is largely mythological, and no, it was never anything but an empty slogan that’s impossible to fulfill, but it strikes a chord of dissatisfaction which is entirely real. What’s “great” about longer hours at lower pay? Higher prices for cheaper goods? More hassle for less quality time?

Who wouldn’t want a simpler life that frees up time for what’s personally fulfilling? Who doesn’t wish they could de-complicate or de-stress their existence? Rather than talking about what people need to “give up,” accentuate what they will gain. I feel like some proponents of degrowth, sincere as they are, might be unconsciously insulated from some commonly-held concerns by their class privilege.

How is all this simplification and de-stressing going to happen? Well, I would propose that the only way forward is by demonetizing the necessities of life. Food, shelter, clothing, etc. must be free-of-charge for everyone, no means testing. That means knee-capping capitalism for sure. But we need everyone off the treadmill so that a) we stop doing stupid things (like ecocide and the FIRE sectors) and b) we can start doing beneficial things, like re-localize our agriculture, de-automobile our cities, and renew our communities (both human and more-than-human). Notice that I said our. Society can no longer be theirs. This might sound Utopian, but our demands must start with what is necessary, not just with what we think we can get. It’s about time that they do some giving up.

“Make America Easier”? Okay, that’s a joke, but a half serious one. Who doesn’t want life to be easier?

Next week’s post will be recollections and lessons from my own efforts to relocalize agriculture, when I was an urban farmer in Portland, Oregon, in the 2000s. Subscribe if you’re not already so you don’t miss it.