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by kiba 1636 days ago
I don't think that degrowth would have to limit quality of life - many of the things that we spend tremendous amounta of fossil fuels on, like commuting, are not things we want to do, but that we have to do primarily due to really bad planning and systems that don't need to exist. For the last two years a bunch of people stopped commuting and while WFH doesn't work well for some of us (if it weren't a pandemic, the same change could've come with local co-working spaces), that has not hurt quality of life while having a great impact on co2 production.

I hardly call that degrowth, That's just efficiency.

2 comments

Well, economic growth is based on increased consumption, not increased wellbeing - so in my mind, degrowth is focused on decreasing consumption. If we can get to our carbon goals by decreasing consumption while maintaining or even improving happiness (I think America's socioeconomic model is near perfectly designed to neglect happiness while maximising consumption for example) then that's ideal. If we take all the low hanging fruit and the world is still setting on fire then we'll have to start cutting things we like, because I'd rather be an unhappy vegan than a drowned carnivore (and I love meat!)

Focusing on decreased happiness on the assumption that it'll also decrease co2 is just 21st century puritanism.

Even better. Promoting efficiency is a much easier sell than degrowth anyway.