To Prevent Climate Catastrophe, Policymakers Should Look to the Degrowth Movement
An oil refinery in Portugal. Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi.
If the Earth were to warm two degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels—as it is on track to—then ninety-nine percent of the ocean’s coral reefs would die. Fifty percent more people could face water scarcity than currently do. Crop yields would decline, fish losses would increase, and food insecurity levels would rise dramatically.
Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres was right when he labeled climate change an “existential threat.” Because of the severity of the threat we face, we must question all of our previously held assumptions about how we can stop climate change. We must question what is necessary for our flourishing and see what merely benefits a certain class of people while dooming the Earth to environmental catastrophe.
This means questioning the necessity of economic growth.
Whenever growth is mentioned, however, the conversation is dominated by unproductive talk about “green growth.” Green growth, although different organizations (such as the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Co-Development) have different definitions, is generally defined as growth that either minimizes or significantly reduces environmental harm.
The exact definition of green growth, however, is not of the utmost importance. It has become a buzzword that is used to wave away climate anxieties. Install a few more solar panels here, design a more fuel efficient engine there, and our climate will be fine, the narrative goes; there is no need to question the fundamental tenets of our economy. In fact, the need for economic growth is so ingrained into the policy debate that even the Green New Deal, as proposed by our most progressive democratic representatives, such as Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, still assumes that growth is needed.
There is no empirically backed way, however, for the global economy to continue to grow if we want to meet emissions targets. Even in the most wildly optimistic scenarios that climate scientists have modeled, GDP cannot continue to grow as it currently does—around two to three percent year-by-year—if emissions goals are to be met. The only way to do this relies on speculative technologies, the feasibility of which (implied by the “speculative”) is yet to be known. It would be irresponsible to hitch the Earth’s climate woes on technology that might not even work.
Yet of the 116 paths to achieving emissions goals for keeping warming below two degrees Celcius outlined in the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment (AR5) report (the IPCC’s reports are the most comprehensive reports published on climate change, used by scientists and policymakers alike), only fifteen do not rely on speculative technologies to achieve negative emissions. Negative emissions are achieved when there is more carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere than has been added. This technology, called bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), is a controversial idea that would involve capturing carbon from the atmosphere by planting huge numbers of trees, then burning them so as to capture the released carbon at the source (if the trees were to decompose naturally, their sequestered carbon would eventually be released back into the atmosphere). BECCS was initially proposed, however, as a technology that would be used in case climate feedback loops turn out to be more severe than scientists currently anticipate. It was never meant to be used in the manner outlined in the AR5 report, as Michael Obersteiner, one of the progenitors of BECCS, has said himself. Additionally, the land use that BECCS would require is almost unthinkable. In some scenarios, it would require an amount of land two to three times the size of India.
Most of the other scenarios still rely on BECCS, just not to the extent of negative emissions. These scenarios also assume that other innovations in a multitude of areas are achieved, rely on planting massive new forests, and, despite all of that, would still run into high mitigation costs. Other models do not provide any convincing evidence to the contrary. As Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis sum up in a review of the literature, “extant empirical evidence does not support the theory of green growth.”
Instead of relying on speculative technologies, we should instead look to the degrowth movement—a “movement of activists and researchers [that] advocates for societies that prioritize social and ecological well-being instead of corporate profits, over-production and excess consumption.” These activists critique global capitalism and believe that its rampant growth has caused ecological degradation as well as mass exploitation. Instead of pursuing growth, they argue, countries in the global north, which consume and produce the most, should focus on redistributing the massive wealth they already have and providing universal basic services. They advocate for a major scaling back of non-essential industry in order to lessen our collective carbon footprint. Global south nations, meanwhile, would be allowed to pursue economic growth that would place them on an even playing field with global north countries, while still respecting ecological limits.
Depending on where you fall ideologically, this may sound like either common sense or pie-in-the-sky hippie nonsense. Nevertheless, it is worth considering that we cannot continue our current trajectory of economic growth while meeting emissions targets. And failing to meet emissions targets would be disastrous. It would cause higher sea levels, the salination of water tables, heat waves that shatter records and then some, the destruction of pretty much all of the ocean’s coral reefs. Degrowth is less of a pie-in-the-sky idea than letting the future of the planet, and humanity, be determined by technologies that may never be feasible.
While degrowth may also sound improbable, the only barrier is us. Our economic systems are not holy things decided by fate or the gods; they were created by us, and they can be changed by us. This change will not be easy and it may not be probable. But it is necessary. There are no easy solutions.
As a new presidential administration comes into power—one that, unlike the previous administration, ostensibly cares about climate change, and whose inauguration speech spoke of “[a] cry for survival” that is coming “from the planet itself”—policymakers and climate activists should look to the degrowth movement for new ideas on fighting climate change, instead of relying on the same-old self-destructive ideas about growth that got us here in the first place.
Elijah Horn (CC ‘25) is a first-year student at Columbia College. He is from Eastern Pennsylvania and plans to study Creative Writing. His non-literary interests include climate change, economic policy, and media criticism.