What is Degrowth Envisioning a Prosperous Descent - The Permaculture Research Institute

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What is Degrowth? Envisioning a Prosperous Descent

November 17, 2015 by Samuel Alexander & filed underGeneral , Population,Society,Economics

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This is a transcript of my keynote address presented at the `LocalLives, Global Matters' conference in Castlemaine, Victoria, 16-18October 2015. Other keynote speakers included Rob Hopkins, DavidHolmgren, and Helena Norberg-Hodge.

Introduction

Thank you for that introduction, Jacinta, good morning everyone. I wouldlike to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of this land andto recognise that these have always been spaces of teaching, learning,sharing, and conversation. It is a real honour to be part of thisconversation today.


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When I was a boy, if ever I were amongst a group of people congregatingat 9am on a Sunday morning it was because I was at Church. For better orfor worse, I am now a lapsed, or rather, I should say, a collapsedCatholic, although I remain a seeker. But as I look around the worldtoday, especially from my Western perspective, it seems clear enoughthat God, if he is not yet dead, as Friedrich Nietzsche declared, is, atleast, increasingly absent. There seems to be a tension between ourspiritual sensibilities and the cultures and systems within which welive. As the poet-musician, Tom Waits, would shout in the voice of ahusky wolf: `God's away on business.'

But the absence of God should not imply an absence of religious thinkingin our culture or cultures. In fact, I would argue quite the opposite;that our Western religiosity has become ever more intense in recentdecades, and what has happened is that we simply switched idols, nolonger worshipping the God of Christianity, and instead worshipping atthe alter of growth, singing praises to the God of GDP, our saviour, foronly in growth will we find redemption. Our high priests now take thepeculiar form of neoclassical economists, bankers, and nationaltreasurers. Daniel Bell once wrote in his landmark text, The CulturalContradictions of Capitalism: `Economic growth is the secular religionof advancing industrial nations.'

Since the industrial revolution this faith in growth has been

unshakable. Today, however, we find ourselves at a moment in historywhere this faith is beginning to crumble, where the ideological groundbeneath us is beginning to move and opening up before our very eyes isa space, at last, for something new, a space where we are being calledto think and live differently. What I would like to talk about thismorning is something that has been emerging in recent years within theever-widening cracks of capitalism, a new story, of sorts, or a new bookof many different stories.

But I am not here to try to replace the god of growth with a new God. Iwill not pretend to be the next iteration of the high priest, nor am Iabout to pontificate about a new Doctrine or Dogma to which everyonemust subscribe. As the anti-capitalist slogan goes, there may be one No,

but there are many Yeses. So today I am going to talk about one of theyeses, which I hope can enrich the multitude of overlapping yeses wehave all been exposed to this weekend, just as they have enriched me. Toall those who have been part of the collective `yes' this weekend, Ithank you and I salute you.

The vocabulary I am going to focus on today revolves around the emerging`degrowth' movement, which calls for planned economic contraction ofdeveloped or overdeveloped nations. I will get into details soon enough,but the basic case for degrowth is surprisingly simple:

*1.* The existing global economy is already in ecological overshoot,driven by the expansion of high-impact, Western-style consumer

lifestyles and the structures of growth that often lock people intothose lifestyles.

*2.* Great multitudes around the world do not have enough to live withdignity.

*3.* And, we have a population of 7.3 billion that is still growing.

Based on those three simple but extremely challenging premises ecological overshoot, global poverty, and population it follows that


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the richest nations must give up the pursuit of `more' and find ways toflourish on less much less. Less energy, less resources, less waste.And that means less consumerism, less globalisation, and ultimately,less capitalism.

But degrowth is not just a movement in opposition. Perhaps more thananything else degrowth is about embracing the abundance of sufficiency,it is about knowing how much is enough, and creating the necessarycultures, structures, and systems within which the entire community oflife can flourish.

Degrowth is an ugly word, I admit, but it can't be co-opted by bigbusiness without degenerating into Orwellian double-speak, which is anadvantage not to be understated. We know all too well how mainstreampolitics has emptied *`sustainable development'* of any critical bite.If something can mean anything, it means nothing. So degrowth, I feel,can create new spaces for conversation and action, by offering importantinsights into what a transition to a just and sustainable world mightlook like, and how to get there, even if it may not be the best word touse as the basis of a public relations campaign.

Before offering a critique of growth and unpacking the notion ofdegrowth, I'd like to offer a few more words on the idea that culturesand civilisations are founded upon Story, because this gets straight to

heart of our turbulent and self-transforming present.

Stories of Civilisation

Charles Eisenstein reminds us that human beings are story-tellingcreatures. This has always been so. We tell each other stories to askand explore the question of what it means to be human, even though weusually discover that the answer lies simply in the questioning itself.Every individual life and every society is an enactment of a storypeople tell themselves about the nature and purpose of their existenceand of the world they live in.

But what happens when we stop believing in our cultural stories andmyths? What happens when the structures of meaning that have shaped, notonly our culture, but also our identities, begin to breakdown?

Over the last two centuries in the West we have been telling ourselvesthat economic growth is the most direct path to prosperity, that thegood life consists in material affluence, and that science andtechnology will be able to solve all our social and environmentalproblems. In recent decades we have even imposed this story on theentire globe, arrogantly declaring the end of history.

As each day passes, however, this story becomes less credible; itsfuture, less plausible. With disarming clarity we see and increasingly

feel that the global economy is destroying the ecological foundations oflife, threatening a catastrophe that in fact is already well underway.The fact that capitalism also produces abhorrent inequalities of wealthraises the questions: for whom do we destroy the planet? And to whatend? We are told to wait for justice, as if in a Kafkaesque novel, butwe are not told how long we must wait.

As if all this were not enough, the assault of growth capitalism strikesdeeper still, to the core of our being. Consumer culture is spreadingwhat can only be described as a spiritual malaise an apathetic sadness


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of the soul as ever-more people discover that material things simplycannot satisfy the universal human craving for meaning.

Tragically, the cause of this malaise is falsely presented as its cure.When we get that new kitchen, and replace the carpet; when we upgradethe car or house and purchase that new watch or dress then, perhaps,we will be happy; then our peers will respect us; then we will be loved.So do not question the status quo; fall quietly in line; and be gratefulfor a life of comfortable unfreedom.

As our culture continues to pursue this uninspired, narrowlymaterialistic conception of the good life, too many people are guilty ofcelebrating a mistaken idea of freedom; a mistaken idea of wealth.

We know, deep down, of course, that something is very wrong with thiscultural narrative; that there must be better, freer, more humane waysto live. But we live in a profit-maximizing corporate world thatconspires to keep knowledge of such alternatives from us. Living simplyand embracing a humble material standard of living is not good forbusiness. Instead, we are told that consumerism is the peak ofcivilisation, that beauty is skin deep, and that there are noalternatives. And over time, as these messages are endlessly repeatedand normalised, too often our imaginations begin to contract and we losethe ability to envision different worlds. We begin to think that the

future must look more or less like the past.

Today I'd like to tell a different story because *the future is notwhat it used to be.*

A brief history of growth scepticism

Fortunately, the dominant story today has surprisingly shallow roots. Itmay look entrenched, but it is more fragile than it seems. Thealternative story, or stories, have far deeper roots, and I'd now inviteyou to join me in putting our hands in the soils of history, to remindourselves that there is so much to learn from the past about how best to

negotiate the future.

In considering a history of growth scepticism one could begin as farback as the indigenous cultures or the ancient philosophers andprophets, ranging from the Buddha, to Socrates, to Diogenes andAristotle, as well as the Greek and Roman Stoics, all of whom argued invarious ways that the well-lived life, and the good economy, do notconsist in the accumulation or production of ever-more material wealth.That is, at some point we should stop pursuing materialistic goals anddo something else with our lives, and these early thinkers argued thatsuch a point might arrive much earlier than we might at first think.This is to be contrasted with a culture that assumes that more mustalways be better.

The relevance of these early thinkers to the limits to growth debatelies in the centrality they placed on the question: *`How much is enough?'*

He who knows he has enough is rich,

Lao-Tzu

which suggests to me that those who have enough, but who do not know it,are poor. We could call this the philosophical challenge to the growth


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economy. It challenges us to specify what types of growth we want andwhat we might want them for. After all, as Henry David Thoreau put it in1854: *`Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.'*

Growth scepticism in its macroeconomic form really begins however withThomas Malthus and John Stuart Mill. Writing in 1798, Malthus famouslyargued in his Essay on the Principle of Population that population wouldgrow faster the rate of food production, ultimately leading to what hascome to be known as a *`Malthusian catastrophe'* that is, masspopulation die-off. The major flaw in this prediction was that Malthusdidn't build technological development into his theory and thus grosslyunderestimated the ability of food production to keep up with populationgrowth. Today the epithet neo-Malthusian is used to mock limits togrowth theorists who are said to predict catastrophe based on falsepremises.

Despite the fact that Malthus presented a flawed theory, the challengeof population growth has not been solved and remains central to thelimits to growth perspective. Currently the world's population is at 7.3billion, with the latest research indicating that we are likely to reach9.5 billion around mid-century and 11 billion by 2100. I think everyonewho casually dismisses Malthus should be given a Petri dish with a swabof bacteria and watch as the colony grows until it consumes all theavailable nutrients or is poisoned by its own waste. In that light, I

ask you to imagine a world of 11 billion people, on our one and onlyplanet, all aspiring to the Western way of life, and consider for amoment whether Malthus may yet get the last, tragic laugh. From adistance, I worry that Earth would look very much like that Petri dish.

If Malthus was the first collapse theorist in the *`limits to growth'*school, John Stuart Mill, writing in 1848, was the first theorist topositively advocate for a post-growth economy. In his Principles ofPolitical Economy, he argued that there would come a time when aneconomy has sufficiently provided for the material foundations of a goodlife for all, at which point, we should adopt what he called a`stationary state' economy. We should do this, he argued, both forenvironmental and social reasons. Mill insisted that a stationary state

in terms of resource consumption need not imply and stationary state inhuman culture or technological development. In other words, we don'tneed to grow quantitatively to develop qualitatively.

Of course, the most famous expression of growth scepticism burst ontothe scene in 1972, with the Club of Rome's publication of Limits toGrowth. This book used computer modelling to explore various scenarios,arguing that if population, industrial output, and pollution, kepttrending ever-upward, there could come a time in the 21st century whenthe ecosystems of Earth would collapse under the weight ofoverconsumption, leading to swift declines in industrial output, foodproduction, and thus population. Other scenarios were also exploredwhere collapse was avoided through the use of appropriate technology and

the stabilisation of population, resource consumption, and wastestreams. Last year my colleague, Dr Graham Turner, published an updateof the Limit to Growth scenarios, showing in his calm, objective,evidenced-based way, that civilisation as we know it is closely alignedwith the collapse scenario. This is not happy news, but better we knowthis.

I will briefly mention one other key figure in this history of growthscepticism, Herman Daly. Herman Daly coined the phrase `steady stateeconomics' to refer to an economy with stable energy and resource


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demands. Daly deserves recognition for doing more than anyone else toground economics in physics. But one of the weaknesses of Daly's theoryis that he didn't emphasis the fact that on an already overburdenedplanet, the richest nations can't merely `stop growing' and maintain asteady state. Given the extent of ecological overshoot, the richestnations actually need to contract the energy and resource demands oftheir economies, and this is why I think the degrowth school of thoughtadds some necessary clarity. It points out the elephant in the room,which is that overgrown societies need to initiate a process of plannedcontraction. Note at once that degrowth, being planned economiccontraction, must be distinguished from recession, which is unplannedcontraction.

Obviously, degrowth could only ever be a transitional phase one wouldnot want to be in a permanent state of degrowth. The aim would be totransition through a phase of degrowth to a post-growth or steady stateeconomy that operated within the sustainable carrying capacity of theplanet on stable energy and resource demands.

One of the most compelling justifications for degrowth is as a responseto climate change and the looming energy scarcity. There is and hasalways been close connection between energy and economy, and if we aregoing to give up fossil fuels, as we must, then it follows that we aregoing to have to run out societies on less energy. Renewable energy

cannot fully replace fossil fuels. And if we have significantly lessenergy, that means we have significantly less production andconsumption. Degrowth is one way to conceive of managing the energydescent future.

The poorest nations, of course, will need to develop their economiccapacities in some form, at least to attain some dignified materialstandard of living, but eventually they too will need to transition to asteady state or post-growth economy. Note, however, that degrowth adoptsa particular position on poverty alleviation. Within capitalism, thesolution to poverty is through growth. We must grow the economic pie. Arising tide lifts all boats. The degrowth school argues that a risingtide will sink all boats, from which it follows that the primary method

of poverty alleviation must be a redistribution of wealth and power, notgrowth.

My argument will be that this basic vision of contraction andconvergence represents the most coherent response to the overlappingcrises we face today. And this is significant, I feel, because unless wehave a clear vision of where we want to go, we are unlikely to get there.

Deconstructing the debate

Despite the long history of growth scepticism, arguments suggesting thatthere might be *`limits to growth'* have been, and remain, notoriously

controversial.

Economists of neoclassical inclination tend to argue that these limitsto growth theorists just don't understand economics plain and simple.In response, the limits to growth school argues that neoclassicaleconomists don't understand the limits of their own models.

The controversy arises primarily in relation to the concept of GDP.Growth advocates argue that there is no reason why we cannot*`decouple'* GDP growth from environmental impact in such a way that


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avoids any perceived limits to growth. Science, technology, and freemarkets will help us achieve this.

These growth advocates might acknowledge that current forms of GDPgrowth are not sustainable, but nevertheless argue that what we need is*`green growth'* in GDP; that is, growth based in qualitativeimprovement not quantitative expansion. According to this view, allnations on the planet should continue to pursue growth in GDP, whileaiming to `decouple' that growth from environmental impact. This is thedominant conception of sustainability, as recently reiterated throughthe United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which didn't even usethe phrase *`sustainable growth'*, it merely called for *`sustainedgrowth'*.

I'd now like to explain why this idea of `decoupling' growth fromimpact, while theoretically coherent as far as it goes, is dangerouslyflawed when grounded in reality.

The arithmetic of growth

The most powerful way to debunk the growth model of progress is toconsider what might happen if we actually got what we were aiming for interms of GDP growth. When we read United Nations reports, or government

reports, or hear the promises of politicians on the left and the right,it seems that the basic vision of global development is that the richnations keep growing in terms of GDP and, in accordance with justice,over coming decades the poorest attain a similar standard of living, alldone in a way that is magically sustainable.

But Tim Jackson, among others, have done the arithmetic of growth, andeven on quite modest assumptions expose the flaw at the heart of thegrowth model that is, the apparent failure to understand theexponential function. Let me explain.

If the developed nations say the OECD nations grew by 2% over comingdecades and by 2050 the global population had achieved a similar

standard of living, the global economy would be 15 times larger than itis today. If it grew at 3% from then on it would be 30 times larger thanthe current economy by 2073, and 60 times larger by the time this century.

Very quickly, you see, the exponential function makes a mockery of thegrowth model. Note also that if we ask governments around the world,`would you rather 4% growth than 3%?' they'd all say yes, withoutexception, making this arithmetic of growth all the more absurd.

Let's remind ourselves that the global economy is already in grossecological overshoot; that we're already devastating the planet andbiodiversity; and if we succeed on achieving the trajectory the world isaiming for by 2050 the economy would be 15 times larger than it is

today. I wouldn't much like to think what would happen to the planet ifthe economy was twice as large as it is today, or four times as large,let alone 15, 30 or 60 times larger over coming decades.

This type of basic arithmetic of growth gives me confidence that thegrowth model has absolutely no future. At some stage we need to ask: howmuch is enough? How much is too much?

Absolute decoupling isn't even happening


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At this point, mainstream economists will accuse degrowth advocates ofmisunderstanding the potential of technology, markets, and efficiencygains to *decouple* economic growth from environmental impact. Butthere is no misunderstanding here. Everyone knows that we could produceand consume more efficiently than we do today. The problem is thatefficiency without sufficiency is lost.

Despite decades of extraordinary technological advancement and hugeefficiency improvements, the energy and resource demands of the globaleconomy are still increasing. This is because within a growth-orientatedeconomy, efficiency gains tend to be reinvested in more consumption andmore growth, rather than in reducing impact.

This is the defining, critical flaw in growth economics: the falseassumption that all economies across the globe can continue growingwhile radically reducing environmental impact to a sustainable level. Asthe arithmetic of growth shows, the extent of decoupling required issimply too great. As we try unsuccessfully to *green* capitalism, wesee the face of Gaia vanishing.

Critique of GDP

We should also acknowledge the limitations of GDP as a measure of socialprogress. GDP is a measure of the total monetary value of the goods andservices produced in an economy over a given period. But GDP makes nodistinction between expenditure that would seem to genuinely contributeto social wellbeing and expenditure that does not.

To provide some examples: if there is a terrible oil spill or naturaldisaster, this is good news in terms of GDP because a huge amount ofmoney will need to be spent cleaning it up. If more marriages breakdown, forcing couples of hire divorce lawyers, and who then live apartrequiring more houses to be built and more furniture to fill thesehouses, this is good for GDP. If we cut down more of our old growthforests and turn them into McMansions, this is good for GDP. If people

are driven to purchase extra security alarms or put bars on theirwindows due to increased crime, or if more people are put onanti-depressants or diet pills, this is all good for GDP. If we allworked 20 more hours per week this would add to GDP.

The point is that GDP is an incredibly crude measure of social progress.It is mis-measuring our lives. Today, growth of the economy in terms ofGDP is immediately called *èconomic growth'* irrespective of whetherthe benefits outweigh the costs. But growth of something that happens tobe called the economy should only be called *èconomic growth'* if thebenefits outweigh the costs. If growth of the economy has more coststhan benefits, then that should be called *ùneconomic growth'*. We areliving in an age of uneconomic growth, but this reality is totally

missed by societies that assume that more GDP is always better than less.

Note that this diagnosis of uneconomic growth also opens up space forthe notion of *èconomic degrowth'* that is, contraction of theeconomy in terms of GDP where the benefits of doing so outweigh thecosts. Just as an overworked employee could increase wellbeing byworking less and being materially poorer, so too is it possible thatover-developed nations might also contract in beneficial ways.


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What is degrowth?

When one first hears calls for degrowth, it is easy to think that thisnew economic vision must be about hardship and deprivation; that itmeans going back to the stone age, resigning ourselves to a stagnantculture, or being anti-progress. Not so.

Degrowth would liberate us from the burden of pursuing material excess.We simply don't need so much stuff certainly not if it comes at thecost of planetary health, social justice, and personal wellbeing.Consumerism is a gross failure of imagination, a debilitating addictionthat degrades nature and doesn't even satisfy the human need for ameaningful existence.

Degrowth, by contrast, would involve embracing what has been termed the*`simpler way'* producing and consuming less. This would be a way oflife based on modest material and energy needs but nevertheless rich inother dimensions a life of frugal abundance. It is about creating aneconomy based on sufficiency, knowing how much is enough to live well,and discovering that enough is plenty.

The lifestyle implications of degrowth and sufficiency are far moreradical than the *light green* forms of sustainable consumption thatare widely discussed today. Turning off the lights, taking shorter

showers, and recycling are all necessary parts of what sustainabilitywill require of us, but these measures are far from enough.

But this does not mean we must live a life of painful sacrifice. Most ofour basic needs can be met in quite simple and low-impact ways, whilemaintaining a high quality of life.

What would life be like in a degrowth society?

In a degrowth society we would aspire to localise our economies as farand as appropriately as possible. This would assist with reducingcarbon-intensive global trade, while also building community and

resilience in the face of an uncertain and turbulent future. We mustride our bikes more and fly less.

Through forms of direct or participatory democracy we would organise oureconomies to ensure that everyone's basic needs are met, and thenredirect our energies away from economic expansion. This would be arelatively low-energy mode of living that ran primarily on renewableenergy systems.

As noted earlier, renewable energy cannot sustain an energy-intensiveglobal society of high-end consumers. A degrowth society embraces thenecessity of *energy descent*.

We would tend to reduce our working hours in the formal economy inexchange for more home-production and leisure. We would have lessincome, but more freedom. Thus, in our simplicity, we would be rich.

Wherever possible, we would grow our own organic food, water our gardensfrom water tanks, and turn our neighbourhoods into edible landscapes asthe Cubans have done in Havana. As my friend Adam Grubb so delightfullydeclares, we should *`eat the suburbs'*, while supplementing urbanagriculture with food from local farmers' markets.


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More broadly, we must turn our homes and communities into places ofsustainable production, not unsustainable consumption. This involvesincreasing self-sufficiency and reskilling ourselves and our communitiesto regain practical knowledge that is on the cusp of being lost.

We would become radical recyclers and do-it-yourself experts. This wouldpartly be driven by the fact that we would simply be living in an era ofrelative scarcity, with reduced discretionary income.

But human beings find creative projects fulfilling, and the challenge ofbuilding the new world within the shell of the old promises to beimmensely meaningful, even if it will also entail times of trial. Theapparent scarcity of goods can also be greatly reduced by scaling up thesharing economy and the non-monetary economy, which would also enrichour communities.

We do not need to purchase so many new clothes. Let us mend or exchangethe clothes we have, buy second-hand, or make our own. In a degrowthsociety, the fashion and marketing industries would quickly wither away.A new aesthetic of sufficiency would develop, where we creatively re-useand refashion the vast existing stock of clothing and materials, andexplore less impactful ways of producing new clothes.

Degrowth sees ugliness in the clothes dryer and elegance in the

clothesline. As it was written

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Leonardo da Vinci

One day, we might even live in cob houses that we build ourselves, butover the next few critical decades the fact is that most of us will beliving within the poorly designed urban infrastructure that alreadyexists. We are hardly going to knock it all down and start again.Instead, we must *`retrofit the suburbs'*, as David Holmgren argues.This would involve doing everything we can to make our homes moreenergy-efficient, more productive, and probably more densely inhabited.

We need to redesign our communities based on permaculture principles,nourishing the earth that nourishes us.

This is not the eco-future that we are shown in glossy design magazinesfeaturing million-dollar *green homes* that are prohibitivelyexpensive. Degrowth offers a more humble and I would say morerealistic vision of a sustainable future.

In short, degrowth means living lives of frugality, moderation andmaterial sufficiency but lives that are rich in theirnon-materialistic dimensions.

Making the change

A degrowth transition to a steady state economy could happen in avariety of ways. But the nature of this alternative vision suggests thatthe changes will need to be driven *`from below'*, rather than imposedfrom the *`top down'*.

What I have said has highlighted a few of the personal and householdaspects of a degrowth society based on sufficiency. Meanwhile, the*`transition towns'* movement shows how whole communities can engage


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with the idea.

But it is critical to acknowledge the social and structural constraintsthat currently make it much more difficult than it needs to be to adopta lifestyle of sustainable consumption. For example, it is hard to driveless in the absence of safe bike lanes and good public transport; it ishard find a work-life balance if access to basic housing burdens us withexcessive debt; and it is hard to re-imagine the good life if we areconstantly bombarded with advertisements insisting that nice stuff isthe key to happiness. As has already been discussed in this conference,the very idea of having a monetary system based on interest-bearing debtalso clashes directly

Actions at the personal and household levels will never be enough, ontheir own, to achieve a degrowth economy. We need to create newstructures and systems that promote, rather than inhibit, the simplerway of life, even if we have to build these new systems ourselves, atthe community level. But these wider changes will never emerge until wehave a culture that demands them. So first and foremost, the revolutionthat is needed is a revolution in consciousness, which will drive changefrom the grassroots.

I do not present these ideas under the illusion that they will bereadily accepted. The ideology of growth clearly has a firm grip on our

society and beyond. Rather, I hold up degrowth up as the most coherentframework for understanding the global predicament and signifying theonly desirable way out of it.

Degrowth is utopian!

One of the responses I often get when talking about degrowth is thatthis vision is hopelessly utopian. Let me outline four brief responsesto that common and to some extent understandable objection:

First, I would turn this objection on its head and argue that degrowthis not utopian; limitless growth on a finite planet is utopian. When one

understands the exponential function, it becomes clear that it is thegrowth model that is a fantasy; it is the growth model that is not beingrealistic in a biophysical sense. Degrowth, I contend, is aboutrecognising realities not transcending realities.

In another sense, however, the charge of utopianism should perhaps beembraced, not as an indictment, but as a defence. Without the beliefthat a different world is possible, there can be no hope for our speciesor our civilisation. We need to have a coherent vision about where weneed to go; we need to have a sense of what is being asked of us in anage of overlapping crises. If we do not have some compass in that regardthen we can only proceed aimlessly and without direction. Degrowthprovides us with a compass.

Thirdly, the term utopia, of course, means `no place', and in this senseI would again accept the charge of degrowth as being utopian. Granted,there is and has never been a degrowth economy of any significant size.Nevertheless, fragments of the degrowth alternative, or matrix ofdegrowth alternatives, already exist. It would require anotherpresentation to review these prefigurative examples, but when one looksat grassroots movements based on permaculture, voluntary simplicity,transition towns, local food initiatives, local currencies, workercooperatives, the Occupy Movement, and ecovillages, one can see glimpses


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of degrowth in action. So while a degrowth economy, as such, does notyet exist, elements of degrowth are already bubbling under the surfaceof the existing economy, waiting for some spark perhaps a crisis,perhaps a revolution in consciousness that will expand its reach asthe growth economy meets its inevitable demise in coming years or decades.

Fourthly, I would argue degrowth should not be dismissed as utopian in apejorative sense because it is in our own interests both long-term andshort-term. Degrowth, therefore, does not rely on altruism. If wereimagine the good life beyond consumer culture we will discover that wecan consume less but live more. By choosing to do without thesuperfluous material wealth we will be rewarded with more time, morefreedom, more community, more health, more connection with nature, moremeaning, and more justice. In short, degrowth is predicated on a newform of flourishing, where paradoxically we decrease our materialstandards of living but actually increase our quality of life. In thissense I would advocate for degrowth even if social justice andenvironmental concerns were left to one side.

Conclusion

Uncivilising ourselves from our destructive civilisation and buildingsomething new is the great, undefined, creative challenge we face in

coming years and decades which is a challenge both of opposition andrenewal. This process of uncivilising ourselves implies a revolutionaryagenda. We cannot merely tinker with the systems and cultures of globalcapitalism and hope that things will magically improve. Those systemsand cultures are not the symptoms but the causes of our overlappingsocial, economic, and environmental crises, so ultimately those systemsand cultures must be replaced with fundamentally different forms ofhuman interaction and organisation, driven and animated by differentvalues, hopes, and myths.

As citizens of the cosmos, inhabiting this beautiful, unique, fragileplanet which is trembling under the weight of our economic recklessness,it is our duty and indeed our destiny to embrace life beyond growth

before it embraces us. The end of growth is coming one way or another,due to environmental limits. Better the transition comes by design thandisaster. And yet the momentum of two centuries of *`development'*suggests that changing direction is both necessary and seeminglyimpossible. In fact, it has been said that in the Anthropocene it iseasier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

But if we listen carefully we can hear that there is a collectiverumbling in the world today. It is spreading in all directions, whichmeans it is both coming your way and emanating from you. Currentlydormant, our repressed hopes are all embers ready to ignite, awaiting arush of oxygen that will flare our utopian ambitions. Breathe deeply,they say, and demand the impossible. Let us stoke the fire of ecological

democracy that is burning in our eyes, not because we think we willsucceed in producing a just and sustainable world, but because if we donot try, something noble in our hearts and spirits will be lost. As JohnHolloway writes: `We need no promise of a happy ending to justify ourrejection of a world we believe to be wrong'.

The creative task of managing our civilisational descent dauntingthough it is promises to be both meaningful and fulfilling, providedwe are prepared to let go of dominant conceptions of the good life andbegin telling ourselves new stories of prosperity based on the


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unfashionable values of sufficiency, frugality, mindfulness, appropriatetechnology, self-governance, permaculture, and local economy.

We should explore alternatives not because we are ecologically compelledto live differently although we are but because we are human anddeserve the opportunity to flourish in dignity, within sustainablebounds. This does not mean regressing to something prior to consumerism;rather, it means drawing on the wisdom of ages to advance beyondconsumerism, in order to produce something better, freer, and morehumane even if it will also be more humble. This revolution, no doubt,will require all the wisdom, creativity, and compassion we can muster.But impossible things have happened before. And if we fail, may we failwith dignity.

Let us declare, in chorus, that providing *`enough, for everyone,forever'* is the defining objective of a just and sustainable world, aworld that we should try to build by working together in freeassociation. And let us show that material sufficiency in a free societyprovides the conditions for an infinite variety of meaningful, happy,and fulfilling lives.

Thus our defining challenge is to seek out and embody the `middle way'between over-consumption and under-consumption, where basic materialneeds are sufficiently met but where attention is then redirected away

from superfluous material pursuits, in search of non-materialisticsources of satisfaction and meaning. Those sources are abundant inexhaustible if only we knew it. It is time to abandon affluence andturn to the realm of the spirit to satisfy our hunger for infinity.

It is painfully clear, of course, that governments around the world arenot interested in moving *`beyond growth'* or questioning consumerculture, and there are few signs of things changing at the top. Empire,we can be sure, will not contemplate it's own self-annihilation; norwill it lie down like a lamb at the mere request of the environmentalmovement. Empire will struggle for existence all the way down.

It follows that the revolution that is needed must emerge *`from

below'*, driven into existence by diverse, inspired, and imaginativesocial movements that seek to produce a post-capitalist society. We mustendeavour to live the alternative worlds into existence, here and now,and show them to be good, while at the same time recognising that theGreat Transition that is needed will likely come only at the end of arough road after or during a series of crises. Can we turn the crisesof our times into opportunities for civilisational renewal? That is thequestion, the challenge, posed by our turbulent moment in history.

There is one way forward: the creation of flesh and blood examples of low-consumption, high quality alternatives to the mainstream pattern of life. This we can see happening already on the counter-cultural fringes. And nothing no amount of argument or

research will take the place of such living proof. What people must see is that ecologically sane, socially responsible living is good living; that simplicity, thrift and reciprocity make for an existence that is free.

In the words of Theodore Roszak

Everything else follows from the reaffirmation of life; in the absenceof such reaffirmation, all else is lost. Our task, therefore, is toexpose and better understand the myths that dominate our destructive and


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self-transforming present, and to envision what life would be like, orcould be like, if we were to liberate ourselves from today's myths andstep into new myths. We search for grounded hope between nave optimismand despair. Without vision and defiant positivity, we will perish.

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

Buckminster Fuller

This approach to social transformation essentially expresses the ideathat examples are powerful, that examples can send ripples throughculture further than we might ever think possible, creating culturalcurrents, that can turn into subcultures, that sometimes explode intosocial movements and which, on very rare occasions, can spark arevolution in consciousness that changes the world. In an age when itcan sometimes seem like there is no alternative to the carbon-intensive,consumer way of life, being exposed to a real-world example of a new wayof living and being has the potential to expand and radicalise theecological imagination, and in those moments when we are able to breakthrough the crust of conventional thinking we see, all at once, that theworld as it is, is not how the world has to be.

`Let the record show that we chose to thrive in simplicity rather than

perish in affluence.'*

Thank you.

*quoting Mark A. Burch** Republished with Permission from:http://simplicitycollective.com/what-is-degrowth-envisioning-a-prosperous-descent

Samuel Alexander isa lecturer with the Office for Environmental Programs and researchfellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI), Universityof Melbourne. He also co-directs the Simplicity Institute.

Samuel has just published his second book of collected essays,Sufficiency Economy: Enough, for Everyone, Forever. This is thecompanion volume to Prosperous Descent: Crisis as Opportunity in an Ageof Limits, published earlier this year.

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The paperback of Sufficiency Economy is available here. For those unable to pay or whowould like an electronic version, the pdf is available on a `pay whatyou want' basis here


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%2C+for+Everyone%2C+Forever>.

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The paperback of Prosperous Descent is available here. The pdf of this book is alsoavailable on a `pay what you want' basis here.

Editor Note:

Samuel is very knowledgeable and has written quite a number of wellconstructed articles. Please take this opportunity to review his booksand support his endeavours, by either purchasing the paperback version'sor his generous option to pay what you want PDF version's.

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