A critique of degrowth | Climate &

Capitalism
https://climateandcapitalism.com/2022/01/05/a-critique-of-degrowth/

An ecosocialist perspective in the context of a global

Green New Deal

Ecosocialist responses to “degrowth” analysis and

proposals have ranged from full support to total rejection.
The author of the following critical commentary is an
emeritus professor of biology at Howard University, and co-
author of The Earth is Not for Sale (World Scientific, 2019).
We encourage respectful responses in the comments, and
hope to publish other views in future.
by David Schwartzman

The positive contributions of the degrowth proponents

should be recognized, in particular, their rethinking of
economic growth under capitalism, critiquing its
measure, the GNP/GDP, as well as pointing to capitalism’s
unsustainable use of natural resources, in particular fossil
fuels in its production of commodities for profit
generation regardless of their impact on the health of
people and the environment. Further, they wisely critique
eco-modernists who claim that simply substituting the
right technology into the present political economy of
capitalism will be sufficient to meet human and nature’s
needs.

But the degrowth solutions offered are highly flawed and

their brand is not likely to be welcomed by the global
working class, even as it attracts sections of the
professional class.[1] Degrowth proponents commonly fail
to unpack the qualitative aspects of economic growth,
lumping all in one basket; i.e., sustainable/addressing
essential needs of humans and nature versus
unsustainable, leaving the majority of humanity in
poverty or worse. Degrowthers point to the relatively
privileged status of workers in the global North compared
to those in the global South as a big part of the problem,
instead of recognizing that the transnational working
class will not only benefit from growth of sectors that
meet its needs in both the global North and South but
must be the leading force to defeat fossil capital.[1, 2, 3]

A common claim in the degrowth discourse is that

“perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to
environmental calamity.”[4] This assertion fails to
deconstruct the qualitative aspects of growth, what is
growing, what should degrow, under what energy
regime? While of course there are obvious limits to the
growth of the global physical infrastructure, why can’t
knowledge and culture continue to grow for a long time
into the future in a globally sustainable and just physical
and political economy?

In addition, leading degrowthers say ’The global material

and energy “throughput” has to degrow, starting with
those nations that are ecologically indebted to the rest.
Energy and material throughput have to degrow because
the materials extracted from the earth cause huge damage
to ecosystems and to the people that depend on them.’ [5].
In contrast: With respect to material throughput, we
argue that it should increase globally in an ecosocialist
transition as a culmination of a Green New Deal:

“In an ecosocialist transition, as at least we envision it, the

plan would not be simply for degrowth, but for a
complete phasing out of the Military-Industrial Complex
(MIC). The disappearance of MIC would liberate vast
quantities of materials, especially metals, for the creation
of a global wind and solar power infrastructure.”[6]

Leading degrowthers advocate a global reduction in

energy consumption,[5, 7, 8] which is a prescription for
mass death for most of humanity, because it will condemn
them to a state of energy poverty even worse than
present, as well as prevent the creation of the wind/solar
power capacity necessary for climate adaptation and
mitigation. This scenario would make it virtually
impossible to meet the 1.5 deg C global warming target,
hence increasing the potential for climate catastrophe
with horrors much worse than we now witness.

And finally they advocate for the goal of a “satisfactory”

quality of life for most of humanity living in the global
South, in contrast to a higher standard for many in the
global North, instead of demanding and mapping out a
path to the highest state-of-the-science life
expectancy/quality of life achievable for all children in
their lifetime.[9, 10]

This critique of degrowth has important implications to

the agenda and strategy of a Global Green New Deal
(GGND). In this context, while degrowthers wisely argue
for reducing energy consumption in energy wasteful U.S.,
in a transition to renewable energy, they once again claim
that globally energy use should go down by a significant
level over the coming decades.[8, 11, 12] If increasingly
informed by an ecosocialist agenda, a GGND will entail
sustainable economic growth, the creation of a wind/solar
energy infrastructure replacing fossil fuels, restoration of
natural ecosystems, agro-ecologies, green infrastructure
etc.

Degrowthers fail to recognize the critical difference

between the high efficiency capture of the solar flux
generating wind/solar power and the fossil fuel energy
supply because of their lack of understanding of
thermodynamics, in particular the entropy concept in
their appropriation of Georgescu-Roegen’s (G-R) fallacious
so-called 4th law, which conflates open and closed
systems with respect to energy and mass transfers; the
Earth’s surface is not closed but rather open to energy
going in and out. It should be noted that G-R’s 4th law was
rejected over thirty years ago even by leading ecological
economics scholars who recognized that incoming solar
radiation could be the energy supply of global civilization.
[13] A sufficient global solar/wind energy supply, greater
than the present global consumption level, can eliminate
energy poverty raising the global life expectancy to the
world’s highest level, while creating the capacity for
climate mitigation and adaptation. Further, this
renewable energy supply can facilitate the virtual end of
extractive mining by recycling and industrial ecologies.
[14]
Real zero, not “net zero,” is the only potential path to
meeting the 1.5 deg C warming target set by the IPCC, in a
progressively unfolding ecosocialist GND by building
capacity of the transnational working class and its allies
(indigenous communities, ecofeminist women’s
movements and all oppressed people around the world)
to undermine the imperial agenda of the MIC and defeat
militarized fossil capital and its political instruments in
governments. At the same time “green” capital must be
challenged by building a global regulatory regime
necessary for environmental, worker and community
protection.

Extractivism is a very real challenge that must be

confronted in a wind/solar transition terminating fossil
fuels, to create a truly just process which protects the
rights and health of indigenous people around the world,
along with the workforce and communities affected.
There are significant future opportunities to limit mining
in this transition, namely recycling the huge supplies of
metals now embedded in the fossil fuel and military
infrastructures, substituting common elements for rare
ones (e.g., batteries using NaS, Fe/air etc.), enhancing
public transit instead of relying on manufacturing
hundreds of millions of electric cars. There are now
significant energy savings in recycling metals instead of
mining their ores:
 “recycled aluminum metal (e.g., in the form of cans),
which can be simply cleaned and re-melted, saving 94% of
the energy that would be required to produce the
aluminum from ore…The largest energy savings achieved
by recycling are generally for metals, which are often easy
to recycle and otherwise typically need to be produced by
energy-intensive mining and processing of ore. For
example, energy savings from beryllium recycling are
80%, lead 75%, iron and steel 72%, and cadmium 50%.”[15]

As the renewable energy supplies grow globally using this

energy to recycle would sharply reduce greenhouse
emissions as well as mining. These opportunities
reinforce the need for a renewable energy transition
increasingly informed by an ecosocialist agenda,
especially global demilitarization and social governance
of production and consumption.

In our recently published paper modeling a real zero

transition, we conclude that with the complete
termination of coal/natural gas consumption in 10 years,
and conventional oil in 20 years, a global wind/solar
energy capacity using present technologies can be
generated that is sufficient to end energy poverty in the
global South, and provide for effective climate mitigation
and adaptation.[14]  Rapid restoration of natural
ecosystems and shift to agroecologies/regenerative
agriculture are imperative and will contribute to climate
mitigation but will be limited by future warming up to the
1.5 deg C target because of reduction in the capacity and
saturation of the soil carbon pool. Hence, Direct Air
Capture of carbon dioxide and permanent storage in the
crust will be likely needed to meet this warming goal.

In a provocative dialogue confronting the existential

challenges that humanity now faces, John Bellamy Foster
says. “that we need a socialist democratically planned
economy that emphasizes low-energy solutions and
decreases waste and destruction; that the world has to
move toward equal per capita levels of energy use,
somewhere around the level of Italy today (allowing poor
countries to catch up.)”[16]

I agree with this advice, if “low-energy solutions” means

meeting human and nature’s real needs with the
minimum energy necessary. Further, our own estimate of
the necessary per capita energy use for terminating global
energy poverty is very close to Italy’s present primary
energy consumption per capita level, approximately 3 to
3.4 kW per capita, with the latter level computed from the
pre-pandemic energy data of 2019, noting the 10 percent
decline in 2020.[3, 14, 17] Note that Italy is ranked 6 for life
expectancy of countries of the world.[18] Assuming a
population level of 9 billion and an increase in the energy
efficiency factor of 30%, we project a global primary
energy consumption level goal for 2050 corresponding to
a power level of 19 TW, the same as present. However,
incremental energy supplies will be required for climate
mitigation and adaptation as well as meeting other
challenges that will increase this goal to no more than 1.5
times the present level, i.e., 29 TW. [14]

Foster goes on:

“Thus, Hickel’s work (along with that of Andreas Malm

and others) is referred to in the leaked Part 3 of the IPCC’s
Sixth Assessment as pointing to the possibility for low-
energy strategies, seen as the main hope now of staying
below a 1.5°C increase in global average temperature, and
as providing arguments with respect to the
unsustainability of capitalism.”[19]

and,

“The only real hope in the years immediately ahead, the

leaked ‘Mitigation Report’ suggests, is low- energy
strategies, which can reduce energy use by 40 percent,
while at the same time improving the human
condition.”[20]

However, rather than a 40 percent reduction, achieving

global equity at Italy’s present primary energy
consumption level as Foster advocates will result in
“improving the human condition” by eliminating global
energy poverty in the next few decades of this century,
while meeting the 1.5 deg C warming target will require
more energy capacity than present as discussed
previously.

Since GDP has been effectively critiqued by degrowthers

as a measure of a sustainable economy, while recognizing
the great negative impacts of high GDP economies
dominated by fossil capital, the GDP level by itself is not
necessarily an indicator of unwelcome economic growth.
Qualitative analysis is needed. Are the components of the
economy responsible for the GDP contributing to
economic growth that is needed for addressing human
and nature’s needs or are they promoting the increasing
threat of climate catastrophe and ecosystem collapse?
Nevertheless, it is essential to recognize that decoupling
economic growth from bad outcomes under capital
reproduction in GGND will only be partially realized
unless a robust ecosocialist transition is achieved. Hence
it is no surprise that decoupling in capitalist economies
has been so far at best very modest.[21]

There are several examples of degrowth low-energy

mitigation scenarios.[22] They are characterized by low
GDP, no negative emissions technologies other than
enhancing soil carbon stores, and global reduction in
energy consumption. We argue that if implemented they
would leave the global South with energy poverty, and the
world with an insufficient global energy capacity for
climate mitigation and adaptation, risking breaching the
1.5 deg C warming target. In contrast, our scenario would
entail a moderate to high GDP, creating high global
wind/solar power capacity, and once sufficient wind/solar
power is in place the likely implementation of direct air
capture of carbon dioxide/permanent storage in the crust.
[14]

Foster clearly identifies responsibility for the ecological

debt.

“Moreover, the burden in our time has to be put primarily

on the rich countries, since they are the ones that have
used up most of the global carbon budget, have higher per
capita wealth, the highest per capita energy consumption,
the highest carbon footprints per capita, and also
monopolize much of the technology. The core capitalist
system in the Global North is primarily responsible for
most of the increases in carbon dioxide accumulated in
the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. Today, the
bulk of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions are
concentrated in a few hundred global corporations and
military spending. All of this underscores that the rich
capitalist countries at the center of the world system owe
an ecological debt to the rest of the world.”[23]

An ecosocialist GGND has the potential of facilitating a

path to electrified solar communism in the 21st century,[24,
6, 25] the Solarcommunicene. [26] Foster and Clark have
named the post-Capitalinian (world dominated by capital
reproduction) age the Communian.[27]

Notes

[1] Matt Huber 2021, Lifestyle Environmentalism Will

Never Win Over Workers,
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/08/lifestyle-
environmentalism-will-never-win-over-workers.

[2] Matt Huber 2021, Climate Doom Won’t Save the Planet,
https://www.jacobinmag.com/ 2021/07/working-class-
vision-climate-change-green-new-deal.

[3] Peter Schwartzman and David Schwartzman 2019, The

Earth is Not for Sale: A Path Out of Fossil Capitalism to the
Other World That is Still Possible. Singapore: World
Scientific.

[4] George Monbiot 2019, The Problem Is Capitalism,

https://www.monbiot.com /2019/04/30/ the-problem-is-
capitalism.

[5] Giorgos Kallis 2019, Socialism Without Growth.

Capitalism Nature Socialism 30 (3): p.192.

[6] p.42, David Schwartzman and Salvatore Engel Di

Mauro 2019, A Response to Giorgios Kallis’ Notions of
Socialism and Growth, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 30 (3):
40-51.
[7] Giorgos Kallis 2019, Capitalism, Socialism, Degrowth: A
Rejoinder. Capitalism Nature Socialism 30 (3): 266–272.

[8] Jason Hickel 2020, A response to Pollin and Chomsky:

We need a Green New Deal without growth,
https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2020/10/19/we-need-a-
green-new-deal-without-growth.

[9] David Schwartzman 2020, A Critique of Degrowth: an

Ecosocialist Alternative,
http://www.globalecosocialistnetwork.net/2020/12/17/a-
critique-of-degrowth-an-ecosocialist-alternative/.

[10] David Schwartzman 2021, Cuba and Degrowth?,

http://www.globalecosocialistnetwork.net/2021/07/13/cuba
-and-degrowth/.
[11] Riccardo Mastini et al. 2020, For the Green New Deal
to Work, It Has to Reject “Growth”,
https://inthesetimes.com/article/green-new-deal-
decarbonization-economic-growth-climate-activists-
climate-change.

[12] Juan Bordera and Fernando Prieto 2021, The IPCC

considers degrowth to be key to mitigating climate change
(Google Translation from Spanish),
https://ctxt.es/es/20210801/Politica/36900 /IPCC-cambio-
climatico-colapso-medioambiental-decrecimiento.htm.
[13] E.g., Robert Ayres 1998, Eco-thermodynamics:
economics and the second law. Ecological Economics 26:
189–209.  

[14] Peter Schwartzman and David Schwartzman 2021,

Can the 1.5 ℃
warming target be met in a global transition
to 100% renewable energy? AIMS Energy 9 (6): 1170-1191,
doi:10.3934/energy.2021054.

15] AGI nd, American Geosciences Institute. How does

recycling save energy?
https://www.americangeosciences.org/critical-
issues/faq/how-does-recycling-save-energy, most recent
reference: 2019.

[16] John Bellamy Foster et al. 2021, Against Doomsday

Scenarios: What Is to Be Done Now? Monthly Review 73
(7): p. 10.

[17] Data sources for Italy: BP 2021, p.10;

https://worldpopulationreview.com.

[18] UNDP for 2019,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_exp
ectancy.

[19]  John Bellamy Foster et al. 2021. p.12.

[20] John Bellamy Foster et al. 2021. p.14.

[21] Jason Hickel 2018, Why growth can’t be green,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/12/why-growth-cant-be-
green/.

[22] E.g., Arnulf Grubler et al. 2018, A low energy demand

scenario for meeting the 1.5 °C target and sustainable
development goals without negative emission
technologies. Nature Energy 3: 515-527; Lorenz T. Keyßer
and Manfred Lenzen 2021, 1.5 °C degrowth scenarios
suggest the need for new mitigation pathways. Nature
Comm. 12: 2676, doi.:10.1038/s41467-021-22884-9.

[23]  John Bellamy Foster et al. 2021. p.14-15.

[24] David Schwartzman 1996, Solar Communism. Science

& Society 60 (3): 307–331.

[25}Matt Huber 2020, Electric Communism: The

Continued Importance of Energy to Revolution. In:
Lenin150 (Samizdat), Hjalmar Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn (ed.)
Hamburg, Germany: KickAss Books, pp.187-199.

[26] David Schwartzman 2020, An Ecosocialist Perspective

on Gaia 2.0: The Other World That is Still Possible.
Capitalism Nature Socialism, 31(2): 40–49.

[27] John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark 2021, The

Capitalinian. Monthly Review 73 (4): 1-16.

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