Degrowth

1. Degrowth often confuses correlation for causation and overextrapolates from the past.
2. Degrowth doesn’t acknowledge that redistribution can drive growth.
3. Degrowth adopts unjustified assumptions from orthodox economics.

This approach has not gone well historically. The French government imposed carbon taxes without offering adequate substitutes for citizens (such as affordable electric vehicless or sufficient public transportation options); as a result, living costs increased for lower-income households who spent larger shares of their budgets on energy, and eventually widespread social unrest resulted.

The truth is that a narrow emphasis on reducing consumption is deeply rooted in orthodox economics. An orthodox economics perspective would claim that we must decrease consumption to decrease emissions. This outlook tries to predict the future by holding variables in the present constant. It assumes that resources and worker productivity are always being maximized and also that energy unit costs will not decrease.

Those are false assumptions: resource utilization, productivity, and energy costs change a great deal.

4. Degrowth doesn’t have an adequate theory of political transformation.

Sounds libs.