Library

By: Amber Martin-Woodhead

Minimalism is an increasingly popular lifestyle movement in western economies (predominantly in the USA, Japan and Europe) that involves voluntarily reducing consumption and limiting one’s possessions to a bare minimum. This is with the intention of making space for the ‘important’ (potentially immaterial) things that are seen to add meaning and value to one’s life. Drawing on interviews with m...

By: Jefim Vogel

Presentation [part of the standard session "Resources and Energy"] Paris obligations make the inevitability of consumption reductions for affluent societies undeniable if we combine 3 non-radical demands: 1) equal per-capita allocation of the global carbon budget, 2) accounting for carbon footprints of imports/exports, 3) non-reliance on yet unproven technologies. Presenters: Jefim Vogel ...

By: Damaris Castro

Presentation [Part of the standard session "Practicing Degrowth"] We investigate how individuals think about ‘having enough’ and ‘wanting more’ in the contemporary society on a financial, material and leisure level. Furthermore, we analyze how this relates to people’s relative preference for income versus leisure. Results are based on a Flemish survey (N=1118). Presenters: Damaris Castro ...

By: Damaris Castro, Johannes Brossmann, Tobias Froese, Gibran Vita

Standard session (discussion following 4 presentations)  A sufficiency assessment: do people think they have enough? Video We investigate how individuals think about ‘having enough’ and ‘wanting more’ in the contemporary society on a financial, material and leisure level. Furthermore, we analyze how this relates to people’s relative preference for income versus leisure. Result...

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: Michael Löwy

Should the ecological left aim to reduce all consumption, or to radically transform the prevalent type of consumption?  

By: Michael Deflorian, Karoline Kalke

Presentation [part of the standard session "Limits, Ethics, Unsustainability and Change"] Critical views of consumerism are widely shared among degrowthers. However, there is a risk of overlooking a particular affective dimension of consumption: the ‘entropic feeling’. The latter is triggered when we surpass the biophysical limits of our human body and come to enjoy the pleasures of dense en...

By: Steffen Lange, Tilman Santarius, Johanna Pohl

This article investigates the effect of digitalization on energy consumption. Using an analytical model, we investigate four effects: (1) direct effects from the production, usage and disposal of information and communication technologies (ICT), (2) energy efficiency increases from digitalization, (3) economic growth from increases in labor and energy productivities and (4) sectoral change/te...

By: John Barrett, Diana Ivanova, Dominik Wiedenhofer, Biljana Macura, Max W. Callaghan, Felix Creutzig

Around two-thirds of global GHG emissions are directly and indirectly linked to household consumption, with a global average of about 6 tCO2eq/cap. Changes in consumption patterns to low-carbon alternatives therefore present a great and urgently required potential for emission reductions. In this paper, we synthesize emission mitigation potentials across the consumption domains of food, hou...

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: Adrian Haßler, Chandni Dwarkasing, Elli Reckmann, Filka Sekulova, Francois Schneider, Irene Iniesta-Arandia, Larry Edwards, Laura Machler, Matthias Schmelzer, Manuel Grebenjak, Magdalena Heuwieser, Nuria Blázquez Sánchez, Rose Bridger, Sara Mingorría

In July 2019, the Stay Grounded Network met in Barcelona to discuss how to counter the massive growth in the aviation sector. A new movement for degrowing aviation and fostering climate justice was born. The results of the conference and further discussions fed into this report, outlining numerous measures to reduce air travel in a just way. (Excerpt)

By: Andreas Siemoneit

Worldwide, economic growth is a prominent political goal, despite its severe conflicts with ecological sustainability. Contributing to the debate on economic ‘growth imperatives’, this article explores the thesis that both firms and consumers frequently acquire goods that increase their efficiency (productivity). For firms, efficiency is accepted as a main investment motive, but for consumers i...

By: Oliver Richters, Andreas Siemoneit

Economic growth remains a prominent political goal, despite its conflicts with ecological sustainability. Are growth policies only a question of political or individual will, or do ‘growth imperatives’ make them inescapable? We structure the debate along two dimensions: (a) degree of coerciveness between free will and coercion, and (b) agents affected. With carefully derived micro level definit...

By: Cle-Anne Gabriel, Carol Bond

Post-growth societies seek socio-ecological transformations towards a just and sustainable redistribution and reduced consumption of natural capital. There is no one universally just and ecologically sustainable way of fulfilling these redistribution and consumption objectives; it depends on the criteria used and their underlying ethical teleology. We suggest three distribution criteria, borrow...

By: Giacomo D'Alisa, Gabriel Weber, Ignazio Cabras, Maria Calaf-Forn, Ignasi Puig-Ventosa

This paper investigates the introduction of unit-pricing (UP) schemes in waste management with regard to grassroots initiatives promoting bottom-up participatory processes in local communities, addressing several issues concerning environmental justice and degrowth. As waste service charges and fees increase in proportion of waste generated in presence of UP schemes, the paper explores and eval...

By: George Martine, Jose Eustaquio Alves

Scientists warn that human activity in the Anthropocene is causing the transgression of several planetary boundaries. The population/environment/development equation has become insoluble. This paper reviews the trajectory of climate change and discusses the shortcomings of ongoing efforts to address it. It analyzes the current crisis in global governance, fostered by widespread disenchantment w...

By: Arminda Sousa Deusdado

Episódio do magazine semanal Biosfera, que marca a agenda ambiental portuguesa "Vivemos a era da obsessão do crescimento económico infinito. Mas o planeta já está em sobrecarga. Aonde iremos buscar os minerais, água, solo e energia para sustentar uma sociedade que quer sempre mais? A ideologia do decrescimento apresenta-se como alternativa e quer reformular a economia de forma a não explorar...

By: Ulrich Brand

Conferencia de la Plenaria del Jueves por Ulrich Brand: "Cómo el capitalismo afirma su hegemonía: El modo de vida imperial como promesa de riqueza imposible"

By: Edgar Ocampo Téllez

Esta presentación explica los desafíos de un modelo energético sostenible en México (2050).