Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

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He has authored three books, including most recently The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions . These books did not prepare me for exactly how searing Jason Hickel's assessment of capitalism and ecological destruction would be. Another example is him suggesting that “with simple legislation, we could require manufacturers to guarantee their products for the duration of maximum possible lifespans”.

In fact, once GDP outstrips the peak of quality of human life, it actually starts to hurt that quality. We want our children to grow, but not to the point of being 9 feet tall, and we certainly don't want them to grow on an endless exponential curve; rather, we want them to grow to the point of maturity, and then to maintain a healthy balance. His discussions of the philosophical and ideological background of the growth economy misses the mark on several key points. The area is like a urban forest with trees that thrive among numerous residential and industrial areas and wild animals teem freely. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.Hierbij neemt de auteur rustig de tijd om ieder mogelijk tegenargument zelf aan te halen en vervolgens te weerleggen.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. First part starts off with describing the origins of capitalism, then moves on to diving into structural laws and tendencies of capitalism that led us to the verge of ecological collapse and finishes up by investigating the potential of technological solutions within capitalism to this collapse, concluding that those are not only insufficient but, within the current system, mainly a distraction. We want our crops to grow, but only until they are ripe, at which point we harvest them and plant afresh.For years, I (and many others, I suspect) have been reacting to this tug the same way: Saying Yeah, something is wrong here and then continuing to go about my day. In minder dan 300 vlot geschreven pagina’s wordt duidelijk gemaakt dat het blijvend nastreven van continue economische groei niet alleen overbodig, maar ook onhaalbaar is en zelfs enorm schadelijk voor onze planeet. And it was surprising that most of the shocking information in the introduction was already known to me from various documentaries on the topic. The abandonment of animism is what allowed capitalists to exploit nature and fellow humans to the point of billionaires. He mentions the “dominion” passages in the Old Testament (Genesis 1:26), the Axial Age in which we saw the rise of the dominion ideology (p.

The discussion of alternative economic system elements such as reducing inequality, limiting material extraction, and non-debt-based money are useful but under-developed. Hickel mentions, but never addresses in depth, the question of where the ultimate limits to growth are — either for agriculture, for industry, or for human population. Jason is able to personalise the global and swarm the mind in the way that insects used to in abundance but soon shan't unless we are able to heed his beautifully rendered warning.Nearly half of the book is spent looking at the origins of capitalism in Western thought, and praising primitive cultures and their animistic, nature-oriented beliefs.

In Eastern philosophy, the Axial Age produced the Buddha whose “Son’s Flesh Sutra” Hickel quotes with approval in his Acknowledgments.Hickel derides Plato, but Plato actually addresses both population and food limits much more directly than does Less is More. I've worked my way through a few titles recently that tied into anti-capitalism sentiments, such as Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing and David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs. Thankfully, this violent breach has also exposed a revolutionary fervor that I didn't know I possessed. i) Liberal technocracy baggage: “degrowth” is close to the “Limits to Growth” MIT technocrats of the 1970's, who combined useful systems science (which eventually evolved into Earth System Science) with reductionist “overpopulation” analyses mentioned above. It is definitely an eye-opener which has caused me to reconsider how I live in my life and what I should work towards in the future.