Four-Day Weekends and Tiny Houses

Not Geography Geography Lesson 11

Can De-Growth Save The World?

This week we are going to discuss de-growth and 'downshifting', which is quite current,and has been tipped as the best solution to combat climate change. I think it's a really interesting concept, and hopefully you will too! So here we go..! 

Gotta Grow

Growth is the foundation on which our modern society is built; it is often the thing on which elections are won or lost, it is the engine which runs our modern world. Our global economy has been growing at 2.5% per year since 1800. And all this basically means that we are getting more stuff (money, energy, miles per gallon, TVs, fish fingers...) out than we are putting in. Investment is the key to growth, and when your investment comes back bigger than it was before, then everyone is happy and you can invest again with even more. One of the most obvious examples of this, is that when you whittle all the numbers down you come out with an investment lifetime of 40 years - roughly the working lifetime in the developed world, and you realise that pensions of all things, are the investments which make the world go round. 

And all this sounds like a great idea. You put in some money over a few years, and after a bit you get it back out plus some extra, and you can retire to Benidorm and drink sangria by a pool of screaming kids until you kick the bucket looking like Iggy Pop on a bad day. 

But is it really?

It's Not All Good In The World Of Growth

Whilst growth has allowed us to live very comfortable and pleasant lives, with nice houses and cars and iPads and roast dinners every Sunday, the natural systems on which we rely for these things have been bearing the brunt of our lavish lifestyles. We all know how the greenhouse gas emissions we are pumping out, and the forests we are cutting down, and the waste we are dumping into the oceans, are all destroying the planet we call home. We know that if we don't stop doing those things, we are heading straight into a slow painful doomsday. But what we don't often think about, is how our unhealthy reliance on making more and more stuff is directly contributing to that process. And what is growth? Making more and more stuff. 

It seems simple, just stop making the stuff. But how do we make less stuff but still grow? How can a problem made by stuff, be fixed with more stuff? Even a sausage could realise that it can't be. Even a raw sausage. 

De-Growth: Why?

By this logic we just need less stuff, which means we won't grow like we have been doing, but we also might still be around as a species in a thousand years time. A Canadian economist called Peter Victor has created a v complex model of potential futures, depending on how we choose to grow (or not grow), and he found that if societies begin to de-grow now, and are stable by 2030, then the social, economic and environmental benefits would be brill. Happy days.

Unfortunately, it is not that easy because people do not like the idea of having less stuff, and you can't just take it from them. Not even when you want to, like selfie sticks. So you have to convince people to throw away their iPads and go for a walk or something instead... and here's how!

Downshifting and Elective Simplicity

There are quite a few ways to enable de-growth, but the main one is reducing working hours, and sharing out the work that is being done more equally. In short, do less work, less frequently. But the money! Well yes that means earning less money generally, but it also means having more free time to do stuff. In fact, there are lots of studies which have shown that past a certain point, wealth definitely does not equal happiness or improve well-being. So why make yourself miserable working 60 hours a week, destroy the planet, and have no time? As my lecturer (!) put it, why do more?

In fact, the Netherlands already has a policy of reducing working hours, and I have been to Amsterdam and they all looked super happy so... Additional methods to de-grow include a universal minimum wage, de-centralising banks, buying local products, and investing in community livelihoods through facilities like parks. And people are actually doing these things already, and reaping the benefits. Elective Simplicity is a movement which emphasises doing less and enjoying more, and includes things like living in tiny houses (which are hella cute and I would 10/10 recommend Googling them). 

This whole things sounds very idealistic, very leftie, and very alien in our current world. It is definitely bonkers to imagine a world where we all live in tiny houses, with no big TVs or three cars, and we don't invest in pensions, and only work 3 days a week. But I don't think that it is necessarily a bad world, and a large proportion of environmental, social and economic scientists seem to be coming to that same conclusion. Maybe that is just what we will have to do if we don't want be toast by 3000. On the plus side though, fewer 7:00am get-ups, and you can make a cuppa, use the loo, and hoover at the same time in a Tiny House!