The degrowth dilemma
The primary for French green parties started Today: there are 2 rounds, each lasting several days, so we shouldn’t have the end results before end of September. This is somewhat important because the green “group” (there are actually 5 different parties in it) is gradually becoming the main center-left party in the country as the Socialist party continues being a shadow of itself. Just think about it: the only Socialist candidate with any sort of credibility is Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, but her chances of going anywhere are slim to none as the rest of the country either doesn’t really know her, despises her or both. Not to mention a few Parisians.
Note: I actually voted for her in the last election, because what she’s doing with the city is actually not such a bad idea in the long run. But that’s just me being a naive hipster type. More on that later…
Back to the green “group”: although the chances of their chosen candidate making a proper dent in next year’s presidential election are also fairly low, if only because they can’t seem to agree on anything beside a color, the news still mandates some attention given the aforementioned rising profile of ecologist ideas in French society — and beyond. And here is what I find most intriguing/problematic: out of the 5 declared green candidates, 2 espouse the degrowth theory, one that essentially puts into question the very logic of socio-economic growth as a sustainable future.
Not entirely surprisingly, this idea is very popular in France. The problem is:
That logic, for it to ever work, would imply having everyone on board, including the fast-growing regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia. If the fastest growing regions keep on growing while we slow down, it is only a matter of time before their sheer size renders our one-sided efforts pointless. Also, I would be curious to see any Western leader (including the French president) actually promote degrowth in the current climate of global socio-economic tensions. Very few leaders ever actively tried self-sabotaging.
On a more fundamental level, the idea of degrowth is flawed to begin with. I have written about it several times before (and so have far more visible people), but the notion keeps popping up nevertheless. The gist of my position is this: degrowth is merely the latest iteration of fear-based reactionarism when it comes to global social phenomena. A few centuries ago, British economist Thomas Malthus famously prophesized that, for humanity to survive, there had to be a cap on worldwide demography, seeing as we would soon be unable to feed all of it. Turns out we found a way, and that way was the agricultural and industrial revolution.
Theses have been written about this, detailing with significantly more accuracy what I am merely outlining here. But the main takeaway form this episode, as far as I am concerned, is that such reactionary theories (limit population growth, veer away from GDP growth…) tend to overlook a crucial element: time. And, with that, scientific progress. For what got us out of the so-called “Malthusian trap” was innovation, i.e. new ideas that made possible what was up to that point inconceivable. Like fire once was. Or the wheel. Or mastering atomic energy.
Obviously, this is not an exact science: meaning, we could theoretically “blow it”, miss our chance and self-destroy as we prove unable to find solutions against global warming and everything that comes with it. But I contend that
there is a good chance we will find ways to fight this, as we have time and again before. And that these ways will likely result from revolutionary breakthroughs sparked by today’s great minds, likely originating from the very developing regions we in the West fail to realize actually constitute humanity’s future;
we stand a far better chance at solving these challenges if we actually try. And therefore try to go forward, through science, innovation and experimentation, rather than backward to an elusive lost paradise. Call that hipster naivety.