Why I Do Not Support Degrowth: Postscript

As I made clear in a recent post, I am not in favor of "degrowth." The benefits of modernity have been vast, the world remains a place where most people need more rather than less in the way of material comfort, and if anything, we will need more wealth and technology, not less, in order to combat and reverse climate change, along with our other problems, environmental and otherwise.

None of this, however, is to deny that there is much that we would be better off without. I am well aware that our diets are not so healthy for us (let alone the planet) as they might be. I am not convinced that personal transport has no part to play in our future, but there is much that is wrong with our car culture, our consumer culture, our advertising culture.

However, I find myself remembering Uncle Ben's famous words to Peter Parker: "With great power, comes great responsibility."

That piece of wisdom is, I think, indisputable--but society lives by the opposite principle, each and every day, in each and every way. Those who have all the power declaim responsibility for anything; while those who have no power are held responsible for everything. White collar criminality on a global, genuinely supervillain scale is shrugged off, while a bank teller who cannot account for a five-dollar bill finds her low-paying job at risk, and very possibly her life destroyed.

Thus does it go with neoliberal environmentalists. They condemn the environmental impact of animal product consumption--rather than the producers of these goods, who have taken so little interest in alleviating or eliminating that impact (let alone thinking of the stressful lives that drive them to stress eat so much of them, generally chosen for them by those who set the terms of work and the mechanisms of support for the disadvantaged, people far richer and more powerful than they). They condemn motorists for driving gas-guzzling cars--rather than condemning the business interests that fight against sane urban planning and the provision of walkable cities and decent public transport, while on top of that, holding back alternatives to the internal combustion engine and insisting on selling more and more vehicle per consumer. They condemn consumers for shopping so much--rather than condemning the corporations that opt for built-in obsolescence and throwaway goods rather than their refusal to produce durable, low-maintenance goods that non-specialists can cost-effectively repair themselves. Condemn consumers for responding to pointless product differentiation, advertising and the innumerable pressures business places on them to buy new goods when the old ones are still working--rather than the businesses that engage in those practices.

At every point, they condemn those who had the least say in the matter for their choices--while letting those who had far, far more say off the hook. I have discussed where this comes from in the past enough times and in enough ways to feel no need to enlarge on it here, but I do not think the essential point can be overstated enough. What we need is not to deprive the millions and billions of comfort and choice, but rather to give them real choices--the choice of more leisure rather than more things, the choice of a walk or transit instead of a car, the choice to not keep buying throwaway items--while taking sustainability into account when determining the production methods by how which industry meet their needs, as they and not an elite telling them "You don't need that!" in the tone haves have always used with have-nots, determine them.