Library

By: Iñigo Capellán-Pérez, Margarita Mediavilla, Ignacio de Blas, Carmen Duce

Achieving ambitious reductions in greenhouse gases (GHG) is particularly challenging for transportation due to the technical limitations of replacing oil-based fuels. We apply the integrated assessment model MEDEAS-World to study four global transportation decarbonization strategies for 2050. The results show that a massive replacement of oil-fueled individual vehicles to electric ones alone ...

By: Daniel Horen Greenford

This video is based on findings from our recent study: Greenford, D. H., Crownshaw, T., Lesk, C., Stadler, K., & Matthews, H. D. (2020). Shifting economic activity to services has limited potential to reduce global environmental impacts due to the household consumption of labour. Environmental Research Letters, 15(6), 064019.

By: Crelis Rammelt, Willem Hoogendijk, Francis Merson.

In the early 17th century, the bubonic plague is said to have played a crucial role in popping the tulip bubble in the Netherlands. Today, the coronavirus (COVID-19) is leading not only to a health crisis, but also an economic one. The outbreak is sparking realistic fears of a deep global downturn. Our globalised, just-in-time,

By: Alexandre Milovanoff, Daniel I. Posen, Heather L. MacLean

Climate change mitigation strategies are often technology-oriented, and electric vehicles (EVs) are a good example of something believed to be a silver bullet. Here we show that current US policies are insufficient to remain within a sectoral CO2 emission budget for light-duty vehicles, consistent with preventing more than 2 °C global warming, creating a mitigation gap of up to 19 GtCO2 (28...

By: Ragnheiður Bogadóttir

Blue Growth is promoted as an important strategy for future food security, and sustainable harvesting of marine resources. This paper aims to identify dominating ideologies and strategies of Blue Growth in the Faroe Islands, mainly regarding salmon farming and industrial capture fisheries, and to investigate how these ideologies materialize in the social metabolism of Faroese society. The a...

By: Zoe W. Brent, Mads Barbesgaard, Castren Pedersen

This article explores the politics behind the promise of ‘blue growth’. Reframing it as a ‘blue fix’, we argue that the blue growth discourse facilitates new opportunities for capital accumulation, while claiming that this accumulation is compatible with social and ecological aims as well. The blue fix is made up of three underlying sub-fixes. First of all, the conservation fix quenches the...

By: The degrowth.info editorial team.

Degrowth advocates for a general slowdown and large emissions reductions, minus the pandemic and social distress.

By: Carla Sbert

Containing an in-depth study of the emerging theory and core of ecological law, this book insightfully proposes a 'lens of ecological law' through which the disparity between current laws and ecological law can be assessed. The lens consists of three principles: ecocentrism, ecological primacy and ecological justice. These principles are used within the book to explore and analyse the challenge...

By: Thomas Roulet, Joel Bothello

"As we continue to grapple with climate change, we can expect consumers, rather than politicians, to increasingly drive degrowth by changing their consumption patterns. Firms should think in an innovative way about this consumer-driven degrowth as an opportunity, instead of resisting or dismissing the demands of this small but growing movement. Businesses that successfully do so will emerge mor...

By: Dani Rodrik

No one should expect the pandemic to alter – much less reverse – tendencies that were evident before the crisis. Neoliberalism will continue its slow death, populist autocrats will become even more authoritarian, and the left will continue to struggle to devise a program that appeals to a majority of voters.

By: Federico Savini

In the 1980s, cities were defined as the ‘growth machines’ of the economy (Molotch, 1976). Today, urban economists epitomize them as economic ‘triumphs’ (Glaeser, 2011). Cities, intended as dense and mixed forms of urban living organized in agglomerations of economic activities, are presented as the solution to many of contemporary socio-ecological problems. They are viewed

By: Joel Millward-Hopkins, Julia K. Steinberger, Narasimha D. Rao, Yannick Oswald

It is increasingly clear that averting ecological breakdown will require drastic changes to contemporary human society and the global economy embedded within it. On the other hand, the basic material needs of billions of people across the planet remain unmet. Here, we develop a simple, bottom-up model to estimate a practical minimal threshold for the final energy consumption required to provi...

By: Donnie Maclurcan, Crystal Arnold

Donnie Maclurcan Ph.D. and Crystal Arnold from the Post Growth Institute (http://postgrowth.org) explore how the coronavirus is affecting both global and local economies, and what you can do to help to ensure we manage this moment wisely. Short presentations are followed by questions and answers.

By: Timothée Parrique, Gabriel Trettel Silva, Andre Cieplinski

Standard session (discussion following three presentations) Work time reduction in a degrowth context: for the North or for all? Currently, most of the calls for work time reduction in a degrowth context focus on the global North and disregard the global South. I argue that advocating for work time reduction as a shared interest between North and South socio-environmental movements could ...

By: Clive L. Spash

Popular authors and international organizations recommend transformation to a ‘new economy’. However, this is misleadingly interpreted as radical or revolutionary. Two problematic positions are revealed: being pro-growth while seeking to change the current form of capitalism (e.g. Ha-Joon Chang), and being anti-growth on environmental grounds but promoting growth for poverty alleviation and due...

By: Sarah Hafner, Aled Jones, Annela Anger-Kraavi, Irene Monasterolo

Well-known academic and non-academic institutions call for a new approach in economics able to capture features of modern economies including, but not limited to, complexity, non-equilibrium and uncertainty. In this paper, we provide a systematic review of ecological macroeconomic models that are suitable for the investigation of low-carbon energy transitions and assess them based on the feat...

By: Brototi Roy, Giorgos Kallis, Sofia Avila, Ksenija Hanaček

Research by ecological economists on degrowth is a flourishing field. Existing research has focused on limits to (green) growth and on economic alternatives for prospering without growth. Future research, we argue here, should pay more attention to, and be written, from the “margins” – that is from the point of view of those marginalized in the growth economy. We conduct a comprehensive systema...

By: Nathan Barlow

There’s lots of talk recently about the wealth of Jeff Bezos. There are maps comparing his wealth to entire countries, a “You are Jeff Bezos” game where you can spend his money on different things – like paying their fair-share of taxes, and a graphic that puts his wealth in perspective.

By: Nathan Barlow

Degrowth imagines a radically different future, which is why so many have connected to its message. But it is a future which seems very distant from today’s political, economic and social system. So what does it mean, in practical terms, to organize towards a degrowth future in a highly commodified and competitive present?

By: Iana Nesterova

Abstract: Recent years have seen a revival in growth scepticism, yet degrowth in relation to the macroeconomic level has received almost exclusive attention. This resulted in a lack of literature on how post-growth and specifically degrowth visions of economy could be implemented, including from the perspective of firms and other organisations. This paper focuses on degrowth literature and fiel...