{"id":3499794,"date":"2024-02-01T12:58:25","date_gmt":"2024-02-01T12:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3499794"},"modified":"2024-02-01T12:58:25","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T12:58:25","slug":"can-degrowth-solve-our-ecological-social-economic-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2024-02-01\/can-degrowth-solve-our-ecological-social-economic-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"Can \u2018degrowth\u2019 solve our ecological, social &#038; economic problems?"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><em>Economist Tim Parrique speaks with co-host Rachel Donald on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast about the economic model known as \u201cdegrowth.\u201d<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>According to the Lund University researcher, degrowth originated in France in 2002 to address the current \u201climitless growth\u201d economic model that stretches the ecological limits of the planet \u2014 the so-called Planetary Boundaries \u2014 unsustainably.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>The degrowth concept seeks to provide sustainable development pathways for low- and middle-income countries while stabilizing quality of life in wealthy nations, via producing and consuming less in the latter.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Recent research indicates that the United States wastes 65% of its economic output on things that do not provide essential or quality-of-life needs, bolstering the argument that the economy could be strongly scaled back to decrease its impact on the environment.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Research published in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41599-023-02210-y\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">finds<\/a>\u00a0that just in the United States, trillions of dollars are wasted on things that do not improve the quality of life for Americans. Podcast guest\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/timotheeparrique.com\/about\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">Timoth\u00e9e Parrique<\/a>, an economist and researcher at the Lund University School of Economics and Management, argues this is strong evidence that the United States (and other wealthy, industrialized nations) could significantly scale back production and consumption, thereby decreasing their impact on the planet\u2019s stretched ecological limits \u2014 the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.mongabay.com\/series\/planetary-boundaries\/\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\">Planetary Boundaries<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 allowing low- and middle-income nations the latitude they need to raise their standards of living.<\/p>\n<p>The concept behind this idea is called \u201cdegrowth,\u201d says Parrique. On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, he explains exactly how and why he believes it\u2019s time to rethink the global economy and consider how this model could be used to address the planetary polycrisis.<\/p>\n<p><em>Listen here:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"iframe-class\" title=\"Embed Player\" src=\"https:\/\/play.libsyn.com\/embed\/episode\/id\/29718998\/height\/128\/theme\/modern\/size\/standard\/thumbnail\/yes\/custom-color\/c3d893\/time-start\/00:00:00\/hide-playlist\/yes\/download\/yes\/font-color\/000000\" width=\"100%\" height=\"128\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Degrowth is generally a misunderstood concept \u2014 previous podcast guest Hannah Ritchie, an author and data scientist at Our World in Data, criticized degrowth in her book <em>Not the End of the World<\/em>, but she was not able to articulate precisely what that meant when\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.mongabay.com\/2024\/01\/its-not-the-end-of-the-world-book-assumptions-omissions-spark-debate\/\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\">asked<\/a>\u00a0by co-host Rachel Donald during the interview. Ritchie argued that economies need to continually develop to raise the standard of living for low- and middle-income nations, but she did not specify which variables of the economy, how, in what way or for how long.<\/p>\n<p>In this interview, Parrique\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/timotheeparrique.com\/a-response-to-hannah-ritchie-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-economic-growth\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">dissects<\/a>\u00a0these questions in more detail, explaining why using only a single metric such as gross domestic product (GDP) doesn\u2019t correlate to fulfilling the basic life necessities people need to thrive, nor allow nature to survive. In fact, GDP can rise as people\u2019s average longevity and well-being fall, while the biosphere suffers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Citation:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>T\u00f8nnessen,\u00a0M. (2023). Wasted GDP in the USA.\u00a0<em>Humanities and Social Sciences Communications<\/em>,\u00a0<em>10<\/em>(1).\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41599-023-02210-y\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">doi:10.1057\/s41599-023-02210-y<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Economist Tim Parrique speaks with co-host Rachel Donald on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast about the economic model known as \u201cdegrowth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3499802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79717,213528],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3499794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-economy-featured"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3499794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3499794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3499794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3499802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3499794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3499794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3499794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}