[slothtrop]

> I did not know that "degrowth" people are for banning quality of life improvements for all economic strata.

Now you know.

> Do you have any sources because this just sounds like a giant strawman.

https://brankomilanovic.substack.com/p/degrowth-solving-the-...

"If one wants to keep world GDP more or less as now one must (A) “freeze” today’s global income distributions so that some 10-15% of the world population continue to live below the absolute poverty line, and one-half of the world population below $PPP 7 dollars per day (which is, by the way, significantly below Western poverty lines). This is however unacceptable to the poor people, to the poor countries, and even to degrowers themselves.

Thus they must try something else: introduce a different distribution (B) where everybody who is above the current mean world income ($PPP 16 per day) is driven down to this mean, and the poor countries and people are, at least for a while, allowed to continue growing until they too achieve the level of $PPP 16 per day. But the problem with that approach is that one would have to engage in a massive reduction of incomes for all those who make more than $PPP 16 which is practically all of the Western population. Only 14% of the population in Western countries live at the level of income less than the global mean. This is probably the most important statistic that one should keep in mind. Degrowers thus need to convince 86% of the population living in rich countries that their incomes are too high and need to be reduced."

Noah Smith also wrote about this several times.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/degrowth-we-cant-let-it-happen...

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/people-are-realizing-that-degr...

If you familiarize yourself with the degrowth perspective as is most popularly employed, you can't in good faith contrive that this is a strawman.

[wishpishh]

The quote doesn't even support your claim. Clearly, alternative (B) does not ban economic growth across _all economic strata_. Unrealistic as though it might be, still.

Also, you're equating "quality of life improvements" with economic income. Which is troublesome in many ways, especially if the economic income incurs major (huge) environmental problems that even jeopordizes the future of civilization as we know it. Or at the very least leads to _massive_ health and quality of life issues on a global scale. Then "income" is a worthless "quality of life" metric.

Anyway, your original reply comes off as very arrogant and/or hypocritical. You express concern for the developing countries, and at the same time acknowledge rich countries' rights to a lifestyle that you yourself acknowledge isn't sustainable if adopted by everyone. So as long as only the rich (us) have cars, it's ok?

Also, your claim that westeners are not the biggest emitters is factually incorrect. Check this out as a starting point: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...

[slothtrop]

> Clearly, alternative (B) does not ban economic growth across _all economic strata_. Unrealistic as though it might be, still.

My claim is that either it does, or B is the alternative. Neither is realistic.

> Also, you're equating "quality of life improvements" with economic income. Which is troublesome in many ways, especially if the economic income incurs major (huge) environmental problems that even jeopordizes the future of civilization as we know it. Or at the very least leads to _massive_ health and quality of life issues on a global scale. Then "income" is a worthless "quality of life" metric.

In the first place, growth need not lead to such catastrophic problems (see the Noah Smith links), in the second, that has no bearing on whether lifting a country out of poverty improves their quality of life; it clearly does.

When immigrants move to the West for a better life, what makes it better is easily be qualified: houses, vehicles, electricity, gadgets, consumption in general, and better jobs. It's not for the healthcare. Those things are made possible, or imply, higher income.

> Anyway, your original reply comes off as very arrogant and/or hypocritical.

Stop projecting. That is arrogant.

> at the same time acknowledge rich countries' rights to a lifestyle that you yourself acknowledge isn't sustainable if adopted by everyone

I did no such thing. It isn't unsustainable. Unsustainability would have to imply global population growing in perpetuity. Not only are we nowhere near lacking resources, global population growth is projected to stagnate.

What's more, between innovation and aggressive transition to renewables, we more efficiently use resources and can expect diminishing global carbon emissions in the near future.

Western fertility is already stagnant. The only reason we grow is a matter of federal policy: the immigration rate. And immigrants come because of quality of life.

> your claim that westeners are not the biggest emitters is factually incorrect

Again, I made no such claim. I claimed that the *growth* in global emissions is primarily driven from East Asia.

[wishpishh]

1. No, you claimed that any degrowth strategy is equivalent to banning quality of life improvement across all economic strata, which is clearly not the case as one strategy that you yourself quote offers an alternative that clearly does not prohibit an increased income across all economic strata. The realism of its success comes down to politics, not economic or technological factors.

2. Our current model of economic growth is clearly and demonstrably catastrophic. There's no sign of turning it around in any kind of relevant time frame.

3. A nation's economic growth is not equivalent to improved quality of life of individual people living in poverty. GDP as a measure of quality of life is deeply flawed. You need to look at income distribution, costs of living, availability of basic services such as healthcare, human rights etc etc. Sure, lifting an individual from poverty through a raised income raises quality of life but that is a very simplified picture of what is actually going on. And of course, most relevant for the discussion at hand, you also need to look at the long-term effects of the growth model that is driving the economic growth. If you look a few decades ahead, our current model doesn't work. It's starting to fall apart even now.

4. I apologize for commenting on your personality, of which I know nothing.

5. That is a very narrow point of view on sustainability. Why are you defining it as perpetual population growth, or lack thereof? Clearly, if we are consuming resources at a rate much higher than they are reproduced, it's not sustainable. Regardless of what your techno-optimistic hopes for future miraculous technological breakthroughs might tell you. They aren't coming. It's over.

6. You are clearly dismissing the content of even the article you're commenting. Which is of course well within your rights to do. There's no aggressive transmission to renewables happening in the transportation sector. It's not even close to happening in a time frame that's relevant. It would be interesting to see what data you're looking at that suggests otherwise.

7. I apologize for misinterpreting you. But either way, the West is still a far greater emitter per capita. So again, going back to your concern that we shouldn't limit developing nations from achieving the same wealth we have, we have no right to point any fingers.

[slothtrop]

> which is clearly not the case as one strategy that you yourself quote offers an alternative that clearly does not prohibit an increased income across all economic strata.

I wrote : '"degrowth" is just demanding that people in developing countries not be permitted to improve their quality of life, that Westerners race to an arbitrary bottom to worsen theirs, and put lives at risk.'

This is meant to be an and/or for the first two. I hope that's clear.

> Our current model of economic growth is clearly and demonstrably catastrophic.

This is a mantra or truism, but there's no reason to believe this. It's also why "degrowthers" themselves are pivoting in their messaging. GDP growth does not scale 1:1 with resource extraction. Between technological innovation and the aggressive pivot to renewables, blaming "the model" stops making sense.

> A nation's economic growth is not equivalent to improved quality of life of individual people living in poverty.

Improved quality of life for impoverished countries depends on it, which isn't the same as saying they're equivalent.

The percentage of people on earth living in extreme poverty as defined by the UN has been diminishing for decades. This is because of growth.

> You need to look at income distribution, costs of living, availability of basic services such as healthcare, human rights etc etc.

If a country is poor as fuck, these are all a moot point. The bottom rung of countries will have worse quality of life regardless of distribution scheme.

> Why are you defining it as perpetual population growth, or lack thereof?

Tautology. Lack of sustainability by definition implies a scenario, not unlike the Malthusian argument, that there is a perfectly linear upward trajectory for land encroachment, resource extraction and emissions (which will lead to exhaustion of one resource or another, or ecological collapse).

The reality is it's a curve. The upward trajectory is temporary, there's zero reason to believe in some scenario where resources and land are completely exhausted; no prediction model suggests that.

We need short-run solutions, surely, because climate is an imperative problem in the near-term. That's what the shift to renewables and investment in innovation is for, and the Green New Deal spin from re-grouped degrowthers is starting to sound a lot like that anyway.

> Regardless of what your techno-optimistic hopes for future miraculous technological breakthroughs might tell you. They aren't coming. It's over.

lol emissions are a solved problem, there's no miracle necessary.

The lingering issue will be climate, not strictly speaking CO2 emissions.

> There's no aggressive transmission to renewables happening in the transportation sector.

Large transport is more difficult to abate, but that is still happening, yes. Hydrogen and nuclear.

> greater emitter per capita

Total emissions matter most. Canada has high emissions per capita but it has a population a fraction of the size of the US, and very spread out, so per capita tells you very little.

> we have no right to point any fingers.

I argue that developing countries are within their right to increase emissions to improve their quality of life.

[wishpishh]

> I wrote : '"degrowth" is just demanding that people in developing countries not be permitted to improve their quality of life, that Westerners race to an arbitrary bottom to worsen theirs, and put lives at risk.'

> This is meant to be an and/or for the first two. I hope that's clear.

No, that was not clear to me. Especially not as you replied to someone else and confirmed that yes, degrowth means preventing improvement of quality of life across all economic strata. But let's not make this a "I-said-you-said" argument. Fair enough. We all seem to agree that degrowth doesn't necessarily imply degrowth across all economic strata.

Either way, note that nowhere did I even propose a "degrowth" strategy. I was merely saying that going on defense and conjuring all kinds of emotional arguments for why you personally can't dispense with your huge gasoline truck for reasons that are really quite trivial in the grander scheme of things, is very immature and selfish. Also very short-sighted, even from a selfish perspective. Nowhere did I suggest that you can't at least shift consumption from CO2E-heavy goods to less CO2E-heavy goods. That would in theory not require any degrowth whatsoever, merely a shift to more sustainable consumption even if the level of total economic consumption stays the same.

> This is a mantra or truism, but there's no reason to believe this. It's also why "degrowthers" themselves are pivoting in their messaging. GDP growth does not scale 1:1 with resource extraction. Between technological innovation and the aggressive pivot to renewables, blaming "the model" stops making sense.

Again, I don't share your narrow view of sustainability as equivalent to "resource extraction". Clearly, if the model induces external costs that threaten to end civilization as we know it and the economic models or at the very least radically decrease quality of life and incur huge economic and human costs in the foreseeable future, it is not sustainable. Sustainability, by the definition I know, means that you can keep the system or behavior unchanged. It doesn't matter if we have the potential to keep extracting fossil fuels in the current rate for millennia, if a side effect is a civilization-ending environmental catastrophe. The amount of resources is irrelevant. Unless you factor in "livable climate and environment" as valuable resource, it doesn't work.

> The percentage of people on earth living in extreme poverty as defined by the UN has been diminishing for decades. This is because of growth.

That model has obvious flaws and has been criticized by many. For one, the available data is lacking and hand-picked. Secondly, there have been many instances where GDP has risen alongside with poverty, if measured on a national level. See India for example.

> The reality is it's a curve. The upward trajectory is temporary, there's zero reason to believe in some scenario where resources and land are completely exhausted; no prediction model suggests that.

Really, there's no prediction that suggests that the current trajectory of emissions is catastrophic? Well, if you're gonna dismiss all climate models or predictions, then this whole discussion is irrelevant and I have nothing more to say.

> lol emissions are a solved problem, there's no miracle necessary.

> The lingering issue will be climate, not strictly speaking CO2 emissions.

> Large transport is more difficult to abate, but that is still happening, yes. Hydrogen and nuclear.

You are way too technology-centered. It doesn't matter if there are technological solutions on a lab table somewhere. You have to factor in rates of adoption, political incentive, scale, regulations, economics, etc etc. Given that, there's absolutely no indications that we are anywhere near on track for deploying technological solutions on a time-scale that is relevant. I'd love to see your data if you think otherwise.

> Total emissions matter most. Canada has high emissions per capita but it has a population a fraction of the size of the US, and very spread out, so per capita tells you very little.

Of course total emissions of a specific nation doesn't matter most. Total global emissions matter. It doesn't matter for the climate if people are spread out - it only matters for the local environment which is a different issue. And from a fairness perspective, of course you need to look at per capita. Why should you or I be entitled to a lifestyle that we acknowledge would not be anywhere near feasible if adopted by everyone?