In the introduction, Jason Hickel sets the stage. Warning readers new to the climate crisis to "brace yourself" (p. 4), Hickel describes how human activity has disrupted the ecosystem, leading to mass extinction and food shortages, which - combined with extreme weather making some parts of the world unliveable - will lead to world destabilizing human migration. He quotes a UN scientist: "We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide." (p. 8)
Despite knowing exactly what is causing the climate breakdown, "[t]he past half-century is littered with milestones of inaction." (p. 17) Once you're completely freaked out, Hickel jumps into how, fundamentally, we got to this point because of capitalism, the purpose of which is "not primarily to meet specific human needs, or to improve social outcomes. Rather, the purpose is to extract and accumulate an ever-rising quantity of profit." (p. 19) To ensure ever-increasing global GDP (gross domestic product), "production increases, the global economy churns through more energy, resources and waste... overshooting what scientists have defined as safe planetary boundaries." (p. 19-20)
The whole first half of the book is dedicated to describing all the evils of capitalism since its inception and how they came to be, including artificial scarcity and how poverty is a feature, not a bug, that ensures the existence of a labor class. These chapters were particularly eye-opening for me because the author tied together many political issues that seem unrelated but aren't, e.g., it's capitalism from which we need to protect the environment, it's only under capitalism that the unpaid labor of women goes unrecognized, it's because of capitalism that we have to fight against a for-profit healthcare industry and the privatization of public education.
"[A]re we really content to accept an economy where nearly a quarter of total output goes into the pockets of millionaires?... [We have a choice] between living in a more equitable society, on the one hand, and risking ecological catastrophe on the other." (p. 198) The climate emergency is ultimately about inequality, as it is "being driven almost entirely by excess growth in high-income countries, and in particular by excess accumulation among the very rich, while the consequences hurt the global South, and the poor, disproportionately." (p. 20) "Most global South countries will need to increase resource use in order to meet human needs, while high-income countries will need to dramatically reduce resource use to get back within sustainable levels." (p. 110)
Meanwhile, extreme weather events in the U.S. and Europe rightfully make headlines, but "they pale in comparison to... the storms that have decimated so much of the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, and the droughts in Central America, East Africa and the Middle East that have pushed people into hunger and forced them to flee their homes." (p. 116) In 2010, "around 400,000 people died... due to crises related to climate breakdown - mostly hunger and communicable diseases. No fewer than 98% of these deaths occurred in the [global] South." (p. 117) Yet, "the global North (which represents only 19% of the global population) have contributed 92% of overshoot emissions" that caused that climate breakdown. (p. 115)
In chapter 3, Hickel pushes back hard on the "climate capitalism" philosophy described in Tom Steyer's Cheaper, Faster, Better by making clear that a "growth-obsessed economy powered by clean energy will still tip us into ecological disaster." (p. 21) "[O]n a global scale, growth in energy demand is swamping growth in renewable capacity. All that new clean energy isn't replacing dirty energies, it's being added on top of them." (p. 106)
What's needed, then is degrowth, which Hickel defines as "a planned reduction of excess energy and resource use to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a safe, just and equitable way... while at the same time ending poverty, improving human well-being, and ensuring good lives for all." (p. 29) As it turns out, a high GDP is not necessary for a nation's people to have long and happy lives; studies show "exactly what works: reduce inequality, invest in universal public goods [like healthcare and education], and distribute income and opportunity more fairly" (p. 185), all of which line up with degrowth.
Contrary to the word itself, "degrowth" means deciding which industries need to continue to grow (e.g., clean energy, public healthcare, regenerative agriculture), and which sectors need to be significantly reduced (basically anything directly related to fossil fuels, like airlines, and also those that use a lot of resources, like fast fashion). It's not a recession, which is "what happens when a growth-dependent economy stops growing... It is about shifting to a different kind of economy altogether - an economy that doesn't need growth in the first place." (p. 207) Relatedly, degrowth involves a change in collective mindset, like doing away with "advertising strategies intended to manipulate our emotions and make us feel that what we have is inadequate." (p. 29) Ultimately, "[w]e need to change the way we see the world, and our place within it." (p. 34)
So, what would degrowth look like?
- Government policies would incentivize targeted investment in green energy innovation.
- The transition to clean energy could be funded by redirecting trillions of dollars from fossil fuel subsidies to solar panels, batteries and wind turbines. (p. 200)
- Instead of GDP, new holistic measures of progress would account for "housing, jobs, education, health and happiness." (p. 203)
- To reduce consumption, "right to repair" laws and legislation requiring companies to honor mandatory extended warranties could end the practice of planned obsolescence (when products are purposely created to need replacement after a relatively short period of time).
- A wealth tax would reign in the disproportionately large ecological damage caused by luxury lifestyles while at the same time reducing inequality, which in itself "reduces competitive consumption across the rest of society." (p. 229)
- We could further reduce consumption by moving away from ownership, e.g., by promoting public transportation instead of cars and having repositories of shared items (like libraries of things) instead of everyone owning their own seldom-used items.
- We could reduce the ecological impact of the agriculture industry by reducing food waste and beef consumption.
- Governments would need to carefully manage the shift in labor; work weeks can be shortened, living wages can be instated, and workers in shrinking industries can be trained to work in growing industries.
- Even debt cancellation would be a "vital step towards a more sustainable economy." (p. 238)
I now see the green energy growth part of Tom Steyer's position as an immediate need, but not a final solution and only a stepping stone to degrowth. I do, however, still agree with Tom Steyer that climate activism needs better marketing. I fear that just the word "degrowth" will trigger people to think of "recession", turning them off from learning more and likely causing them to misunderstand the whole movement. Hickel hints at an alternative name when he says, "Degrowth calls for abundance in order to render growth unnecessary." (p. 236) Might re-branding degrowth as something like "an abundance economy" win over more believers?
In the last chapter, Hickel turns his attention to hope. Studies show that "across ecosystems... it takes an average of only sixty-six years for a forest to recover 90% of its old-growth biomass, completely naturally." (p. 253) If we take immediate action towards degrowth, we could see the living world recover in our lifetimes. He reminds us that our human ancestors lived sustainably, integrated with - not separate from - nature, and that many Indigenous peoples still do. From them, we can "learn to see ourselves once again as part of a broader community of living beings" (p. 273), no longer in a position to exploit the ecosystem, but to enrich it. (p. 263)
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