The No-Nonsense Guide to Degrowth and Sustainability. Wayne Ellwood
‘Publishers have created lists of short books that discuss the questions that your average [electoral] candidate will only ever touch if armed with a slogan and a soundbite. Together [such books] hint at a resurgence of the grand educational tradition… Closest to the hot headline issues are The No-Nonsense Guides. These target those topics that a large army of voters care about, but that politicos evade. Arguments, figures and documents combine to prove that good journalism is far too important to be left to (most) journalists.’
Boyd Tonkin,
The Independent,
London
About the author
Wayne Ellwood is the author of the best-selling No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization, which is currently in its third edition. He established the North American office of New Internationalist and worked as a co-editor of the magazine until 2010. He has also worked as an associate producer with the groundbreaking BBC television series Global Report and edited the reference book The A-Z of World Development. He has travelled widely in Asia, Africa and Latin America. He lives in Toronto, Canada, where he is an editorial consultant and writer.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Peter A Victor for kindly agreeing to write the foreword and for his important contributions to the degrowth and sustainability debate. Thanks also to Herman Daly for his pioneering and influential work in ecological economics; to Britain's New Economics Foundation for bringing growth issues to public attention; and to David Suzuki for his passion, vision and dedication to the environment.
About the New Internationalist
New Internationalist is an independent, not-for-profit publishing co-operative that reports on issues of global justice. We publish informative current affairs and popular reference titles, complemented by multicultural recipe books, photography and fiction from the Global South, as well as calendars, diaries and cards – all with a global justice world view.
If you like this No-Nonsense Guide you will also enjoy the New Internationalist magazine. The magazine is packed full of high-quality writing and in-depth analysis, including:
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The No-Nonsense Guide to Degrowth and Sustainability
First published in the UK in 2014 by
New Internationalist™ Publications Ltd
Oxford OX4 1BW, UK
newint.org
© Wayne Ellwood
The right of Wayne Ellwood to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing of the Publisher.
Series editor: Chris Brazier
Design by New Internationalist Publications Ltd.
Cover image: Corbis Images
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.
A catalog for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-78026-127-0
In the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution, the classical economists feared that any improvement in living standards above subsistence would be temporary. Economic growth would be a passing phase, succeeded by reversion to a steady-state economy where most people would be poor. Writing in the mid-19th century, John Stuart Mill was the first economist to write positively about the end of economic growth. His commentary on the costs of economic growth expressed well the concerns that occupy a growing number of commentators today. Pressure on the natural world, anomie and alienation, confusion of material gains with real prosperity, the general hustle and bustle of modern life – all were observed by Mill 150 years ago.
Despite the considerable influence on economics of his Principles of Political Economy (1848), Mill’s critique of economic growth was largely ignored, and not just by economists. In the late 1950s this began to change, starting when several quite prominent authors took up where Mill had left off. They offered penetrating analyses of modern economies where all was clearly not well. A number of these contributions, and many which came after, inform the arguments so cogently presented by Wayne Ellwood in The No-Nonsense Guide to Degrowth and Sustainability.
In this short and readable book, Ellwood describes the many ways in which economies are dependent on the environment for energy and material resources, for disposal of all kinds of wastes into the air, water, on and under the land, and for a variety of ‘ecosystem services’ such as pollination and flood control, without which human economies could not function. He explains that economic growth has placed an unsustainable burden on the planet’s resources and life-support systems to meet increasing demands from today’s massively expanded population and economies. Ellwood rejects the argument that the answers to our problems, particularly in the rich countries, lie in yet more economic growth. He points out that all too often, the highly touted gains in efficiency from new technologies are overwhelmed by the increasing scale of economies that grow without limit and make a bad situation worse, not better.
It is rare, but not unknown, for original thinkers to be effective communicators of their ideas to the general public. In today’s world, where institutional divisions distinguish ‘academics’ from people who make their living communicating ideas to the public, those who develop new ideas rely heavily on others to disseminate them. Typically, professors write for their academic peers and their students, leaving it to authors with a flair for communication to disseminate their ideas more broadly. The advent of social media has changed this a little, but it remains generally true that without the determined efforts of writers like Wayne Ellwood, important ideas such as degrowth and sustainability would likely remain on the periphery of public discussion and debate. In light of the seriousness of the economic, environmental and social issues that we face, this would be a serious loss, depriving the public and our governments of frameworks of thought and principles of action needed to guide us through these difficult and challenging times.
Of course, sustainability is not really a new idea. It has been the mantra of farmers and foresters for a very long time. That it should be applied to considerations of the economy is, however, more recent, dating back to the 1980s. Degrowth is even newer, only about 15 years old. Wayne Ellwood explains what these ideas mean and why we should pay attention to them. If you are curious about them, as I hope you are, then do read on.
Peter