We Have 15 Years To Save The World
Degrowth Is Our Only Hope
Growth, and the relentless pursuit of it, has pushed us to the brink of total ecological collapse.
We’ve been gas lit for centuries. Capitalism has instilled in us that growth is good. That it is responsible for bettering human lives. This is hogwash.
Jason Hickel’s illuminating book is a damning indictment of our selfishness. It’ll infuriate you. Short version: we’ve raped the earth to stay employed, build houses, eat plentifully and grow our bank accounts. We are all complicit. Every free-market champion needs to read this. As does every tree-hugging hippy. And everyone in between.
We must stop growing for growth’s sake.
Our planet literally cannot take any more of it. We produce more stuff every year so we can grow our profits so we can employ more people who will spend more money on more stuff. This is a cataclysmic death spiral. We’ve killed off more species than any natural event since the dawn of time. And now, we are about to kill each other. It’s ignorant, selfish, apocalyptic and irreversible. Heed Hickel’s warning. And then shout about it.
As things stand, the world will get hotter by 2 degrees Celsius by 2035. That will unleash hell. Even if we stick to the agreed Paris Agreements targets, we’ll still breach 1.5 degrees Celsius. It’s assisted suicide. Oh and the agreed targets are purely voluntary and not enforceable by law.
Why do we still do this? Because while we, the affluent global North, luxuriate ourselves on the exploitation of the Global South’s human and natural resources, those poorer nations are being ravaged. Racism, gender inequality, climate change and wealth inequality all stem from our dogmatic adherence to “growth”. Don’t buy it? Check out Hickel’s evidence. Learn how capitalism incentivises creating artificial scarcity. How it thrives on exploiting human capital. Why generations of violence and propriety have perpetrated unimaginable inequality. How capitalism literally invented “othering”. Why humanity’s hubris in considering itself above and separate from ecology has enabled us to plunder nature for material gain.
This isn’t a happy story. It isn’t even a tragic one. It’s simply a matter-of-fact rendition of how we are on course to kill the only planet in the universe that supports life. No biggie. But it isn’t pure doom saying either — Hickel’s book is an actionable toolkit to talk us off the ledge.
Pick this up and devour it. It’s our only hope.