Blog • 18.06.2019
Given the strategic indeterminacy of the degrowth movement that has been discussed in earlier articles within this series, we will consider the role that policy may play within the broader scope of a degrowth transformation and as one important focus within a plurality of movements. Specifically, working to move the focus of policy towards instruments that shift the rules of the competitive env...
Blog • 17.07.2019
In the spring of 2019, the Finnish degrowth network (kohtuusliike) undertook an election campaign. The aim of the campaign was to break the silence around degrowth ideas in political discourse. We were also curious to see how much support calls to limit production and consumption could generate within the ‘system’. We wrote a short manifesto outlining policy principles which we c...
Blog • 03.06.2019
School climate strikers in Edinburgh demanded unity and action. My decision to attend and support the Edinburgh School Strike, like my arrival, was late. As I left Waverley Station I listened intently for the sound of protest but the city gave up only its regular sounds; the beat and grind of petrol and diesel engines busy pumping out their invisible death, the whoosh of air b...
Blog • 20.05.2019
Among the proposals of how to address the climate crisis, calls for a Green New Deal (GND) have recently gained a lot of traction. Riccardo Mastini's article laid out much of the content of current GND proposals as well as criticism from the degrowth perspective. While critical scrutiny is absolutely crucial to ensure that ideas for change truly live up to their goals it is also importa...
Blog • 13.05.2019
Against the background of a looming ecological collapse and extreme socio-economic inequality, growth-critical scholars and activists debate various eco-social policies that can facilitate transitions towards genuinely environmentally sustainable and socially equitable societies. Such policies include work sharing, time-banks, job guarantees, complementary currencies and minimum income schemes....
Blog • 07.05.2019
Since 2018, a coalition of grassroots environmental groups and progressive politicians in the United States have brought into the public debate the idea of a Green New Deal. The plan is inspired not only by Roosevelt’s New Deal, but also by the subsequent wartime mobilization in response to a large-scale threat. The difference is that this time around the threat is not represented by the Axis p...
Blog • 29.04.2019
Growth-critical authors and advocates of a post-growth society are often criticized on the grounds that some of their arguments appear open to appropriation by authoritarian nationalist and nativist racist forces. As such objections are often made in a polemical and overly generalised manner, often ultimately aiming to delegitimize growth-critical ideas as a whole, those being criticised often ...
Blog • 23.04.2019
Two loose movements have emerged on either side of the Atlantic with the aim of transforming the economy. In the U.S. –the new economy movement and in Europe - the degrowth movement . Both originated as critiques of the current political-economic system, and gained momentum after the financial crisis, since flourishing into nascent social movements composed of practitioners, academics, and act...
Blog • 15.04.2019
At the recent World Economic Forum (WEF), a gathering of business and political leaders in Davos, it was noteworthy that WEF Director, Klaus Schwab, attempted to integrate ‘time’ into his diagnosis of the ecological crisis. "Shorter terms of office cut time horizons for decision-makers. The urgent scientific message on climate change finds it hard to cut through the news cycle." Schwab’s...
Blog • 01.04.2019
The Support Group of the International Conferences on Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity met in Villarceaux, outside Paris, at the end of January. It was decided that the 7th International Degrowth Conference will take place in Manchester at the beginning of September 2020. The Manchester local organising committee sent a very strong application titled "Building Alt...
Blog • 08.04.2019
A review of Giorgos Kallis’ new book Although the number of publications about degrowth has been exploding in the last decade – with hundreds of articles as well as dozens of edited volumes and special issues already published – until now there had not been a single academic monograph systematically outlining what degrowth is all about. Of course, the broad contours of the concept of degrowth...
Blog • 20.03.2019
On March 15th 2019 a global climate strike organized by Fridays for Future took place in over 100 countries around the world, mobilizing over 1 million students to the streets. We asked 3 people from Vienna involved in different streams of the Austrian climate justice movement to share their perspectives on the event. 1) Organization and planning of the Strike by Colleen Schneider In Janu...
