by Harald Desing.
There is a fundamental debate ongoing whether the needed transformation to a fossil-free and circular society can be achieved through green growth or degrowth (e.g. here). Both schools of thought want the same: accelerate action to maintain and restore a hospitable climate. Yet, they disagree on how this can be achieved: green growthers argue that only a growing economy can finance and support the transition; degrowthers see overconsumption as the main cause of the current crisis and thus shrinking consumption the main remedy. In my view, the debate has valid points on both sides and I would like to put forward a hypothesis:
We will need both: green growth for building renewable infrastructure and degrowth in consumption.
Looking from a bio-physical perspective, the transition can be accelerated by investing additional fossil energy necessary for building renewable infrastructure. The fastest possible transition could be achieved within five years energetically, limiting cumulative emissions to an absolute minimum and thus increasing our chance to stay below 1.5°C to ~90%. This is good news, but it would require a very different approach than currently envisioned.
Renewable infrastructure—e.g. solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles—have to be built fast and at a massive scale. This will grow the relevant part of the economy tremendously. Ramped up fossil energy provides the necessary extra energy (i.e. "investing" fossil carbon in the transition) during this time and the fossil system is shut down as soon as the renewable system is big enough to take over. Involved material industries—such as aluminum or silicon—will have to grow alongside manufacturing industries, distributors and installers of renewable infrastructure components. After a massive growth this industry would need to stay dormant until the first replacement wave. During this time it may engage in the subsequent task of cleaning up the atmosphere from excess CO2. Already today, atmospheric CO2 concentration at 420ppm is massively above the safe long-term threshold of 350ppm. Consequently, this excess CO2 has to be removed together with all emissions necessary for the transition with large-scale negative emissions below zero. Energetically, this can be achieved within decades, after which this industry will have to shrink again down to the level where it compensates for leaks back to the atmosphere. After clean-up is complete, there is ecological room for increasing energy demand up to the ecological limit. Planetary boundaries restrict the maximum appropriation of renewable energy at an approximate 2000 Watt of average power demand per capita (this, accidentally, coincides with the old proposal of a 2000 Watt society). These forms of green growth are massive during the transition and clean-up, but have definite ends.
At the same time, we (the rich) will have to degrow consumption, i.e. converge at a globally equitable level anywhere in between ecological limits and fulfilling basic needs. Following the idea of the doughnut economy, fulfilling basic needs can be seen as an ethically justifiable minimum, which requires about 300 Watt per person. Today, we are at around 900 Watt per person on global average, Switzerland has about 6000 Watt, Somalia around 200 Watt. Consequently, rich countries will need to reduce in order to generate an equitable society as raising energy demand for everyone to "western standards" is incompatible with Earth. Simultaneously, there is some growth necessary and possible for poor societies. The lower energy demand per capita during the transformation, the more energy is disposable for the transition and clean-up, resulting in lower cumulative emissions and higher chances to safe our climate. If we aim at e.g. a 600 Watt society during the transition (proposed for example in the low energy demand scenario included in IPCC), this would mean degrowing Swiss energy demand by a factor of 10 (!), while tripling Somalia's.
We are all experiencing now that the current economic and political system is unstable when not growing. The question thus is: how could we envision a socio-economic system that can deliver a fast transition? How can we realize dedicated but limited growth in renewable infrastructure and degrowth in consumption?
