Image Source: Kamiel Choi

Degrowth is a bit of a buzzword these days. Some of the press is bad, like the WIRED article titled “Why Degrowth Is the Worst Idea on the Planet.” Some of the press is good. Bestselling books like Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto by Kohei Saito and Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel make that case. And like all hot button ideas these days, degrowth is fervently debated on X.

What is degrowth?

Degrowth, in the most limited sense, questions economic ‘growth’—an ever-expanding GDP, for example—as the goal of economic policy. In modern day politics, economic growth is considered not only to be a net good, but a hallmark of a healthy society. In fact, this is one of the few issues both presidential candidates Harris and Trump can agree on. Trump said this explicitly in the 2024 debate, promising a “bigger, better and stronger” and Harris got more specific with her highlight on growing the “clean energy economy”. In a political climate so polarized, “growth is good” is something most everyone seems to agree on. 

The idea of degrowth has been around since the 1970s, when French economist André Gorz coined the term while studying economic policy specifically—but until now, it hasn’t gained much traction in a culture that leads with ‘growth is good’. With existential climate apocalypse looming, so too are questions about the status quo.

Public vs personal approaches

As concern about climate change comes more into the mainstream, people trying to live with less impact on the environment often adopt terms like “degrowth” from academia to describe lifestyle choices that they are promoting. Zero-waste, slow living, communes, intentional communities, anti-consumerism, right-to-repair, ‘live local, think global’ and de-influencing are all social and personal approaches to the degrowth movement, focusing primarily on individual choices that shift families and communities away from relying on a system of infinite economic growth to a low consumption model of living. While most have good intentions, they can seem a little out of touch. Think vegan food influencers and TikToks telling you to get rid of your washing machine. 

The other camp is far closer to Gorz’s original technical usage of the term: the public policy of degrowth. Proponents of this interpretation push for economic and social policies for degrowth, such as moving away from GDP as an indicator of prosperity, and redirecting efforts from sustainable development in the global North to sustainable degrowth, such as prioritizing winterization of existing structures over building new LEED-certified buildings.

In contrast to their vegan, anti-consumer counterparts, policy degrowth advocates usually focus on national and international investment and subsidies systems over individual consumer choice. Some like Jason Hickel do advocate for a complete overhaul of the global economy, but most take a more moderate approach, asking that governments stop using a booming economy as an indicator of wellbeing and instead focus on human needs.

Why are people so mad? 

The majority of the people who take to the Internet to complain about degrowth are responding to political degrowth supporters, but are spreading their message using the imagery of personal degrowth advocates. In a society where growth is not only good, but essential for survival, any push back against that is experienced as threatening. For many contemporary economists, who have dedicated their studies and often their careers to the advancement of growth, degrowth is a dangerous movement that threatens to crash the economy and spread some quasi-Marxist, socialist, global new world order where no one is allowed to eat meat or own a car. 

Pragmatic environmentalists also oppose degrowth because, however valuable it might be, they see the total overhaul of the economy as dead-in-the-water in the current political landscape. Instead, they argue that harnessing the power of economic growth and incentives—such as design competitions or cheap solar panel production—will save the planet from all its climate change woes.

Feminist opposition to degrowth is lesser known but also important.  The current ‘washing machine debates’ give a snapshot of how conversations about individual degrowth are shaped by personal privilege. The washing machine transformed the lives of women starting in the 1950s. They along with other time-saving appliances allowed women to work outside the home, while still fulfilling traditional roles as wife and mother. There is an implicit belief underlying critiques of personal degrowth that only those who have forgotten the struggles of past generations would choose to give up these technologies that shape the world today.

A similar debate concerns how people with disabilities who rely on systems for medicine and adaptive technology would cope without these. The vast system of international shipping that fuels the global economy also delivers ingredients for the manufacture of life-saving medication, like insulin. Aspects of consumption like plastic straws and disposable paper towels are a convenience product many enjoy, but can play a huge role in a disabled person’s day to day life. Unequivocally, the type of personal degrowth choices that are promoted are at odds with technologies that empower disabled people to have agency in their own lives. 

These two critiques of degrowth get tangled in the current debates, clouding both the meaning of degrowth as a term, and sending these two different communities sailing past each other, fighting a strawman army of their own making. 

Why should people care?

While people on the internet have a lot of thoughts about degrowth, the theory may seem out of touch with the current struggles and needs of people on the ground. Political degrowth is an abstract idea being debated in even more abstract terms, where thinkers throw around acronyms like GDP and ILO. Even the personal degrowth of pristine, zero-waste households plastered over the internet that are used to sell metal straws and reusable coffee cups seem out of touch for most middle class consumers.  Why should anyone with a job, bills, family to worry about, care about degrowth?

One reason is that, for better and for worse, economic policy shapes the lives of everyone. Conversations around tax rates, development, sustainable or otherwise, inflation reduction, and budgeting all start with an implicit assumption that growth is good; growth will bring more people health, wealth and happiness. 

How do we go forward?

Popular eco-friendly ideas like sustainable development, buy-less, and the Green New Deal are often seen as a panacea to the problem of climate change. This thinking is understandable. Human suffering, particularly at the hands of the natural world, is scary. An uncertain future is scary. And people respond with the hope that if we just find the right solution, the silver bullet, weed out the bad apples, and then we will be okay. 

In focusing on washing machines and other conveniences, we fight amongst ourselves, stuck in a cycle of judging, justifying and defending. The degrowth debates, in their chaos, remind us that it is easy to talk about big ideas on the Internet, it is easy to make sweeping generalizations about how people should live, and it is easy to be distracted by tech bros on X. What it is hard to do is think critically, imagine a better world and fight to create it, present with the now.

As Andre Gorz reminds us, “theory always runs the risk of blinding us to the shifting complexities of the real world. [Instead, we should] live completely at one with the present, mindful above all of the wealth of our shared life”.