The term itself can be traced back to French Marxists who discussed the concept of ‘decroissance’ in the 1970s. Around the same time, the Club of Rome, a cosmopolitan elite group of technocrats, published a paper ominously titled “The Limits to Growth”, which argued that the Earth’s resources were not enough to sustain the growing population and urged the governments of the world to implement population control methods to prevent civilisational collapse.
The concept itself received international attention when anti-nuclear magazine Silence published a special issue on the topic in 2002. Academic interest in the concept started when the Institute for Economic and Social Studies on Sustainable Degrowth organised a symposium to discuss the possibilities of this idea. The idea spread globally after the establishment of the academic organisation Research and Degrowth, who organised international conferences on the topic in 2008 and have been running them ever since.
The idea itself is simple: human flourishing should not be measured by GDP flourishing but by other factors, including education, health and sustainability. Proponents believe this is possible only by capping resources and redistribution of the wealth. Essentially more environmental laws and regulations of industry and more social welfare is how humans can flourish.
While the intentions are something to be admired, the motivations behind this agenda are flawed and dangerously reckless. It reduces human activity to a natural process, simplifying our relationship with nature as a cycle that can be studied and controlled. The assumption of the parasitic nature of humanity’s relationship with the natural world has long been the premise of the entire environmental movement, condemning the human race as non-productive consumers who do not contribute to the ecological space.
This doomsday prophecy of ‘limited resources’ is something that has been around for a while. The idea first originated from English economist Thomas Robert Malthus, who developed an economic model known as Malthusian economics, which predicted geometric production growth with exponential population growth. However, most people don’t know that Malthus himself was not arguing that there were not enough resources for everyone. In his “Essay on the Principle of Population”, Malthus argued there were not enough resources to maintain the same standard of living for the growing population and would therefore mean the standard of living would decrease due to resource scarcity. In fact, this alarmism would instead be pushed by American biologist Paul R Ehrlich. In his book, The Population Bomb, Paul predicted a catastrophe in which resources and space would run out, which would lead to famine and war over resources. This model would be used to justify population control programmes such as China’s famous One Child Policy and Indira Gahndi’s Path to Socialism, which forced abortions and birth control on women.
What is conveniently ignored is that this model was debunked in a famous 1980 wager between Ehrlich and American economist Julian Simon who predicted the price of metals would fall in 10 years. Julian Simon won the bet because as he articulated in his 1981 book The Ultimate Resource, humans have the potential through innovation to increase the resource supply, decrease consumption in production and find alternatives. He also pointed out the fact that it premised on the whole earth being explored, which has not happened yet, There are still large parts of the Amazon jungle that have yet to be explored. There are still parts of the ocean that are unknown to us. In my opinion, we spend more time and resources exploring outer space than we do our own planet.
So therefore, there is no reason for us to stop exploring and growing. Many of the great discoveries over the last few hundred years have been due to man daring to explore this great Earth that God has given us. The advancements we have developed, such as electricity, running water and digital technologies, show us what we can achieve when we expose the mysteries of the earth. The fact you are probably reading this on your phone is proof of what we have accomplished because humanity figured out different ways to extract and use the resources this planet has to offer to benefit both humans and the earth.
There is one thing I do agree with: GDP and its growth should not be the focus of society. Humans, after all, are not economic units. Trying to improve human health, life expectancy and standards of living should be things to consider, as the health of humanity influences the health of our society and economy, but our focus on these things should come not at the cost of economic growth.
The exploration of this Earth also helps the natural world. As humans discover more of the Earth, they find ways to improve the environment. A good example of this is the nation of Israel. I know some of you will be surprised by this, considering what I wrote about them last time (https://goodoil.news/why-i-am-no-longer-a-zionist/). However, despite their politics, one of their great wonders is their ability to create water in the desert. They managed to turn what was once a desolate desert into one of the most abundant and vibrant areas in the Middle East with a significant crop yield. This was possible through their development of desalination and water purification technology that they could only create by extracting the precious metals in the area. Because they used the metals in the area, Israel was able to produce more water than they needed.
Degrowth is simply another example of the antihuman environmentalism we have seen in the last few years. Just as ancient cultures sacrificed people to the spirits of the Earth, the Cult of Climate Change is attempting to sacrifice people on a new altar. The good news is, the green madness is being resoundly rejected globally: just see what happened in the Netherlands when the bio-Leninist greens were voted out and replaced by a populist farmer’s movement. It must be asked though, if the economy stops growing, where will they get funding from for their antics? I guess they could always shoplift and then cry ‘mental health issues’ when they get arrested.
Dark Jester is political scholar with an interest in foreign interference. Traditional conservative. Came out of a family that fled communism and improved themselves thanks to capitalism but would consider himself a distributionist. This article was first published HERE
The concept itself received international attention when anti-nuclear magazine Silence published a special issue on the topic in 2002. Academic interest in the concept started when the Institute for Economic and Social Studies on Sustainable Degrowth organised a symposium to discuss the possibilities of this idea. The idea spread globally after the establishment of the academic organisation Research and Degrowth, who organised international conferences on the topic in 2008 and have been running them ever since.
The idea itself is simple: human flourishing should not be measured by GDP flourishing but by other factors, including education, health and sustainability. Proponents believe this is possible only by capping resources and redistribution of the wealth. Essentially more environmental laws and regulations of industry and more social welfare is how humans can flourish.
While the intentions are something to be admired, the motivations behind this agenda are flawed and dangerously reckless. It reduces human activity to a natural process, simplifying our relationship with nature as a cycle that can be studied and controlled. The assumption of the parasitic nature of humanity’s relationship with the natural world has long been the premise of the entire environmental movement, condemning the human race as non-productive consumers who do not contribute to the ecological space.
This doomsday prophecy of ‘limited resources’ is something that has been around for a while. The idea first originated from English economist Thomas Robert Malthus, who developed an economic model known as Malthusian economics, which predicted geometric production growth with exponential population growth. However, most people don’t know that Malthus himself was not arguing that there were not enough resources for everyone. In his “Essay on the Principle of Population”, Malthus argued there were not enough resources to maintain the same standard of living for the growing population and would therefore mean the standard of living would decrease due to resource scarcity. In fact, this alarmism would instead be pushed by American biologist Paul R Ehrlich. In his book, The Population Bomb, Paul predicted a catastrophe in which resources and space would run out, which would lead to famine and war over resources. This model would be used to justify population control programmes such as China’s famous One Child Policy and Indira Gahndi’s Path to Socialism, which forced abortions and birth control on women.
What is conveniently ignored is that this model was debunked in a famous 1980 wager between Ehrlich and American economist Julian Simon who predicted the price of metals would fall in 10 years. Julian Simon won the bet because as he articulated in his 1981 book The Ultimate Resource, humans have the potential through innovation to increase the resource supply, decrease consumption in production and find alternatives. He also pointed out the fact that it premised on the whole earth being explored, which has not happened yet, There are still large parts of the Amazon jungle that have yet to be explored. There are still parts of the ocean that are unknown to us. In my opinion, we spend more time and resources exploring outer space than we do our own planet.
So therefore, there is no reason for us to stop exploring and growing. Many of the great discoveries over the last few hundred years have been due to man daring to explore this great Earth that God has given us. The advancements we have developed, such as electricity, running water and digital technologies, show us what we can achieve when we expose the mysteries of the earth. The fact you are probably reading this on your phone is proof of what we have accomplished because humanity figured out different ways to extract and use the resources this planet has to offer to benefit both humans and the earth.
There is one thing I do agree with: GDP and its growth should not be the focus of society. Humans, after all, are not economic units. Trying to improve human health, life expectancy and standards of living should be things to consider, as the health of humanity influences the health of our society and economy, but our focus on these things should come not at the cost of economic growth.
The exploration of this Earth also helps the natural world. As humans discover more of the Earth, they find ways to improve the environment. A good example of this is the nation of Israel. I know some of you will be surprised by this, considering what I wrote about them last time (https://goodoil.news/why-i-am-no-longer-a-zionist/). However, despite their politics, one of their great wonders is their ability to create water in the desert. They managed to turn what was once a desolate desert into one of the most abundant and vibrant areas in the Middle East with a significant crop yield. This was possible through their development of desalination and water purification technology that they could only create by extracting the precious metals in the area. Because they used the metals in the area, Israel was able to produce more water than they needed.
Degrowth is simply another example of the antihuman environmentalism we have seen in the last few years. Just as ancient cultures sacrificed people to the spirits of the Earth, the Cult of Climate Change is attempting to sacrifice people on a new altar. The good news is, the green madness is being resoundly rejected globally: just see what happened in the Netherlands when the bio-Leninist greens were voted out and replaced by a populist farmer’s movement. It must be asked though, if the economy stops growing, where will they get funding from for their antics? I guess they could always shoplift and then cry ‘mental health issues’ when they get arrested.
Dark Jester is political scholar with an interest in foreign interference. Traditional conservative. Came out of a family that fled communism and improved themselves thanks to capitalism but would consider himself a distributionist. This article was first published HERE
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