Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

by Jason Hickel

The problem with the Limits to Growth report is that it focused only on the finite nature of the resources that we need to keep the economy running. This way of thinking about limits is vulnerable to those who point out that if we can find new reserves, or substitute new resources for old, and if we develop methods of improving the yields of renewable resources, then we don’t have to worry about those limits. Sure, this process of substitution and intensification can only go so far – at some point we’ll reach an absolute limit – but for all we know that could be a long way off. But this isn’t how ecology actually works. The problem with economic growth isn’t just that we might run out of resources at some point. The problem is that it progressively degrades the integrity of ecosystems. As onshore oil reserves run dry we can switch to offshore reserves, but both sources contribute to climate breakdown. We might be able to substitute one metal for another, but ramping up the mining of any metal is going to poison rivers and ruin habitats. And we might be able to intensify our extraction from the land by pumping it full of chemicals, but not without triggering soil depletion and pollinator collapse. The process of substitution and intensification might get us around resource limits for a while, but it still drives ecological breakdown. That’s the problem.