Timothée Parrique

Given the gravity of the present situation, we should be very careful about what we think we know about growth. if I’m wrong about degrowth, then you can kick-start the economy back again to continue growing business-as-usual. If Daniel Susskind is wrong, on the other hand, it will cost us the biosphere.

As the ecological situation worsens, we don’t have the luxury of snubbing potential solutions. Let’s not be the ones who died of an illness because the name of the remedy sounded silly.

This paper is closer to a coffee machine conflict than to genuine science. Whatever – most probably ego-driven – issues the authors have with their colleagues, I suggest talking to them might be a better solution than wasting precious research and reading time in a male-as-usual who’s-got-the-biggest-science competition.

Either we democratically plan a downscaling of production and consumption to reduce ecological footprints while securing wellbeing for everyone, or we keep pushing planetary boundaries until nature imposes sufficiency upon us through a lethal mix of resource shortages and climate catastrophes. Degrowth might be a hard sell but it’s still sexier than collapse.

Perhaps the title of this piece is a bit too provocative. Even if Hannah Richie falls within the usual eco-modernist discourse, she is not obsessed with economic growth. This builds a good basis for agreement.

This article perpetuates this counter-productive bashing of alternatives. At a time where plan B are precisely what we lack, this mentality is tragically uneconomical.