One Way or Another, the World is Headed for a Degrowth Future
On my mind in recent years has been some version of the phrase, “that which is unsustainable will inevitably end”. It sits nicely alongside other comforting truisms like “all things shall pass”, and also resonates with a common observation of those who argue for degrowth: essentially, that there cannot be infinite growth on a finite planet.
Degrowth is not a singular vision or policy set, more of a school of thought, a network of proposals for transforming economic and social life. In general, it eschews the notion that humanity can (or should) abstract itself from the Earth and the webs of reciprocity from which all life emerges and to which all life returns. It argues for a slower (and thereby, sustainable) social metabolism; a society more centered on care than financial returns, on uplifting lives aimed at meaning and contentment rather than maximum productivity. Such a turn is, regrettably, quite radical in comparison to the general state of things in 2025. It is also, I believe, inevitable, if only because the status quo is simply unsustainable, and what is unsustainable will inevitably end. Whether by choice or by force of circumstance, the world is headed for some form of degrowth — so we might as well choose it.
The degrowth movement has attracted an unexpected amount of media attention over the last few years. This was seemingly driven at least in part by a growing recognition of the environmental, social, and psychological costs of industrial capitalism. Extreme weather events increasing in tempo and severity; strife in the streets of major cities; wealth inequity of astronomical extremes; the disintegration of governmental integrity and legitimacy (to the degree that either term was ever applicable). We are living through a period of profound reorganization—socially, politically, climatically—and the visions of possible futures seem increasingly strange and frightening, with the worst people in the world arguing that the degrading situation represents the only possible path to progress. In this context, the tenets of degrowth carry a subversive energy, a challenge to the underlying logic of a society built on extraction and private accumulation. Yet far from being a radical or innovative set of proposals, it simply calls for recognizing and repairing our relationship with the world as it is, and as it will surely reassert itself if we choose to ignore our role as Earthlings.
There seems to be broad public consensus around the notion that things are headed in the wrong direction, however defined. This has helped to create fertile ground for other visions and narratives, mostly of the reactionary, racist, and nationalist sort that seems to rear up whenever masses of people feel frightened, frustrated or disenfranchised, and which we see taking hold across the world. The social and economic order are not blamed for the struggles of the average person, but rather some other group of average people, very often immigrants, or queer people. These are just the sort of responses this system fosters and encourages, a mechanism of self-defense and re-entrenchment that, perhaps ironically, underscores its inherent unsustainability.
Far from being the wings that will give flight to the human race, industrialized, extractive capitalism has shown that it will deepen divisions and inequities as a matter of self-preservation and perpetuation, to the point of exhausting the planet and emiserating all but those at the very top of the system (eventually they, too, will suffer for lack of a functioning biosphere). Our common sense for the future and the futuristic have helped to sell the idea of progress as a process of distancing from nature, becoming more alienated from one another. Some of the most wealthy, powerful, and out-of-touch people are absolutely convinced of the need to depart the Earth and to transfer our lived experience into silicon chips. Humanity is of course far more likely to go extinct than to evolve into a martian Google drive; the future being offered by the predominant world order is no future at all.
Meanwhile, other visions and ideas have also emerged from the seams of mainstream thought, including those which imagine a more equitable, reciprocal world. In my book about mushrooms, I posited that the mounting public interest in fungi is rooted in the recognition that the familiar systems and institutions are falling apart. People are recognizing in nature a model for decomposition and renewal that offers hope in our own struggle to emerge from the muck of this troubled historical moment. I still believe that, and I also think the growing curiosity about and receptivity to degrowth is similarly a response to the subversive, radical, hopeful vision it offers, picturing a different way of living and organizing ourselves around more reasonable, regenerative, and humane priorities. It requires no invention or innovation, no disruption or ‘creative destruction’, just a shift in our collective priorities. Much of the world it describes is in the room with us now, if we would only turn to embrace it.
The proposition of degrowth is rather simple: removing concepts such as GDP and the destructive fantasy of endless economic growth from the heart of social, civic, and economic life. What that looks like and how it can be accomplished (particularly in an organized, just way) are among the main points of discussion. There is copious literature and scholarship that explores these questions, but laying those arguments out is not my goal in this little essay. Degrowth places a higher value on things like maintenance and care work than ‘scaling up’ or returns on investment. It emphasizes the use of appropriate technology over the pursuit of constant innovation, bioregional approaches to social and economic organization; an end to fossil fuel use; fewer flights and road trips; more rail, bikes, and robust systems local, public, carbon-free transportation in neighborhoods and cities structured to meet the needs of the people living in them, free of reliance on tenuous supply chains and vast, environmentally ruinous transportation networks. It seeks to enrich the proverbial soil in which civilization is planted, while orienting its activity to promote regeneration of actual soils: fewer pallets of Cheez-Its or Liquid Death arriving by truck traded for greater stewardship of local lands, foodways and watersheds, obviously with the leadership of Indigenous communities, whose millennia of experience in these matters (and, of course, rightful claim to the land in the first place) remains urgently relevant.
These aren’t exactly new ideas—concepts like permaculture and doughnut economics have articulated the need to operate within limits set by the planet, and to prioritize the wellbeing of the majority of people. (Again, of course, indigenous societies have exemplified these ways of being as well. What if progress were commonly defined not as a process of increased accumulation and separation from nature, but instead in terms of operating more like societies whose histories are measured in millennia rather than centuries?) But the concepts that degrowth draws together have been given a new urgency amidst the drastic crisis of unrestrained industrial capitalism, and part of its recent impact is for offering a pointed answer to the unsustainable statue quo. In today’s context of accelerating development, innovation and extraction, proposing to ‘degrow’ seems almost sacreligious, and indeed the term carries a negative connotation to many ears. The idea of using less energy, of making fewer things, of setting our civilizational sights not on improving convenience or conquering other worlds, but on repairing relations with and upon this one, challenges many people’s vision of the world and where it should be headed. It registers as a decline, a step backwards rather than toward an aspirational future. After all, the future is supposed to be shiny, bright, sleek, and high tech. It’s supposed to look like the stuff we saw on screens and read about in science fiction books throughout the 20th century. Never mind that those images were, more than anything, reflections of their present moment. Even George Jetson worked a nine-to-five under a terrible boss.
We live in a time of emerging artificial intelligence (or at least something sold under that brand); flying cars are finally starting to show up; humans can engineer biology with an ease that approaches the banal. Rockets routinely soar and land in spectacular fashion, in scenes worthy of Industrial Light and Magic. The project of scalable fusion energy seems to be making progress, and the potential implications are thrilling to contemplate. There is no doubt that these developments will have major impacts on society and the world, at least in the near term. But let’s stop gazing at the sky for a moment, and take a look around. Wealth inequality is at its worst since the gilded age. In the last half century, the abundance of the world’s animal life has diminished by well over half. The extraction and use of fossil fuels and plastics, as well as the cultivation and consumption (and attendant environmental ruination) of the meat and dairy industry are similarly ascendant. All this despite massive campaigns of education on the destructive impacts of such industries, an endless parade of market solutions and ‘sustainable alternatives’ and campaigns to adjust consumer behavior. All the while climate change, exacerbated by all the aforementioned factors and more, is fostering an increasingly unstable environment, and worsening a process of mass migration. This is putting strain on governments and economies throughout the world, fueling the reactionary and nativist impulses already being exploited by fascist political movements, further intensifying and entrenching border conflicts while perpetuating brutal campaigns of land and resource theft playing out around the globe — in the case of Palestine, to a genocidal degree once thought relegated to the 20th century.
In short, here at the purported pinnacle of human progress, things are bad and getting worse. The factors behind these conditions are the very same that we are supposed to believe will bring about a better world. Eventually, we’re promised, humanity will innovate itself out of the problems we’ve innovated ourselves into. The inequities of modern capitalism will finally pay off for everybody. “I am accumulating resources to help make life multiplanetary & extend the light of consciousness to the stars,” wrote Elon Musk on Twitter back in 2021. He’s doing all of this for you! The check’s in the mail. At what point will we recognize that this is a lie? That which is unsustainable will surely end.
The billionaires’ view of the future, too, is nothing new. It’s the long-promised pot of gold at the end of the arc of progress starting around the industrial revolution. Its vision has remained largely unchanged for almost a century: a world of endless conveniences, science and technology approaching magic, trivial worldwide travel and communication, the ability to make anything we need in abundance. It‘;’s worth noting much of this we have already achieved, how high the standard of living could be for everybody right now if all scientific and technological progress were to halt and the future were more ‘evenly distributed’ as William Gibson put it. It is also worth asking: where does this end? What is it all pointed to? The only answer I can arrive at is the full abstraction from Earth. Is that a necessary or worthy future for humanity?
Extractive industrial capitalism doesn’t promise a reintegration with nature, a deepening of our Earthly roots, but exactly the opposite. Eventually, we’re told, we can escape the surly bonds of our bodies along with the planet and the fractal ecological scales in which we are enmeshed; a post-human vision of humanity. The most prominent techno-evangelists promise that in just a few decades, our minds will be fully merged with machines, in a long-foretold ‘singularity’ that cannot be mistaken as anything but religious in nature. Technology is supposed to make things better, to address problems; the only problem to which this escapist form of progress offers a solution is that of being human. I’m convinced this attitude, the industrialists’ ‘lie agreed upon’, will destroy any prospect for a decent future before it delivers us to a better world. But it also seems likely to destroy itself, because that which is unsustainable will surely end, and we cannot extract or accelerate our way to sustainability. The slower, ‘degrowing’ future that inevitably follows can and should mark a step forward, if we can bring ourselves to see it that way.
Capitalism is an abstract logic applied to a living, breathing, and now bleeding world. It can’t answer any questions about what we are living for, nor of how we ought to relate to the planet or to one another. It is the death drive run amok with a grip on all levers of power. But its nature as such also gives me some comfort—it too emerged from Earth, and it too shall die. That death is unlikely to be orderly, graceful, or kind, but a death it shall be. What will be left behind is impossible to foretell, except that it will be slower. The life that carries forward — one hopes it includes humans— will by necessity operate as life has always done prior to the emergence of our world-eating economic system and industrial metastases. Nothing on Earth has grown or ever will grow endlessly, and indeed industrial capitalism may turn out to be one of the shortest-lived forces of note in the planet’s history. That’s not to say that it won’t do immense damage in the process, at least as far as a world consistent with human wants and needs is concerned. But it won’t last, and if we are as smart as we like to think we are, we’ll get with the Earthly program and start focusing on repair, reintegration, and reciprocity. You can call that degrowth, but I just think it’s natural, and inevitable whether we choose it or not, whether it’s us returning to these ways of being or the forms of life that succeed the human experiment.
Karl Marx believed that capitalism would necessarily lead to socialism; I’m not so sure, but what I am sure of is that it leads to a world in which humanity operates more slowly, more locally, in solidarity with one another, and in reciprocity with everything else. That’s the case, because otherwise there won’t be any humanity to speak of. None of that precludes a high tech future, or even one in which humanity traverses the stars. If we are to step boldly onto other worlds, though, shouldn’t it be from right relationship with this one?
