And in return, my own condescending advice to you is that if you boo and jeer people in preference to engaging them in constructive debate, then you should not be surprised when they withdraw to more welcoming spaces where people behave with the civility that we all consider normal in person.

you can still have an opinion people think is misinformed or bad

The article does not represent my opinion. Never mind. My attempt at stimulating a debate by means of a contrary viewpoint did not go well and I will bear that in mind before trying anything similar in this community again.

The discussion I wanted to have (unrealistically, yes) was over what might be a winning response to the argument presented. Because it’s a powerful one, it’s very clearly in the ascendant, and I care about how best to counter it. Apparently you do not.

Given that my contributions are always made in good faith, and that I always choose to assume good faith on the part of others, I consider all downvotes to be poisonous. “Mindless” is the generous hypothesis.

I don’t know what your point is about scarcity vs abundance mentality,

My point is that the abundance “mentality”, which is in fact a fully fledged school of thought and was already an integral part of rightwing economics, is now gaining ground quickly on the left too. In the public arena, degrowth is currently losing the debate before our eyes. That is my point. Is it irrelevant to raise an inconvenient truth in this community? Would it be better if nothing was said about it?

The substance of your rebuttal to the “really weak” arguments presented is that that people are confusing their desire for wealth with their inner yearning for non-ruinous healthcare and access to justice. That must be true to some extent. But it does seem to cherry-pick what, for instance, Trump-voting immigrants themselves say about the American Dream. And it’s pretty unsatisfactory as an answer the abundance agenda, which is both environmentally illiterate and a clear vote-winner.

If a downvote in response to a carefully composed and good-faith attempt at discussion on a super on-topic subject is “intentional”, then personally I think the intention is problematic. But then I think that downvoting is almost always toxic, so we will probably have to disagree on this one. And in any case I don’t debate with people who downvote me, so that’s the end of this discussion.

It’s not “rich” that people want to be its well off. Once most people reach a certain point of comfort and access to resources demand for things levels off.

But is that true? We know that the 1% are consuming and polluting as much as the 90%. This suggests that, in the absence of constraint, demand does not in fact level off. Marxist dogma notwithstanding, I think the evidence of 300 years of capitalism is that needs can be satisfied but desires never can. And that many humans do in fact just want to be richer than those around them, because we are a social species and wealth is the main marker of status.

Equating Degrowth economics to returning to poverty is politically setting the idea up for failure. Degrowth should be about telling people that they will still have plentiful access to food, water, shelter and energy.

Agreed, basically. But “plentiful” energy is looking hard to pull off for 9 billion people in the medium term. Same for food if that means meat, which alas it will. There are unfortunately hard limits that apply even to your modest sales pitch.

What’s your point here? People’s minds can be changed

Go on then, change them. That’s my point. That’s why I posted this. It’s an article that expresses decently a viewpoint that is completely incompatible with degrowth and yet is currently fashionable and very widely held.

Your counter-argument is “Do some reading” and “Wait and in the end we will win”.

The basic argument here is that instead of talking about degrowth and sacrifice (regardless of their necessity), we should rather focus on the positive agenda of wellbeing, which stands a better chance politically. I find the argument convincing.

Listening recommendation: Club of Rome podcast. High quality discussions, unfortunately very irregular episodes. The author was a guest on several of them.

Yes, that’s what they meant. I thought the factoid was quite well-known by now.

Economic growth is becoming decoupled from resource use. The problem is that it’s agonizingly slow, so that the decoupling remains stubbornly relative: the resource throughput is still going up, just less quickly. The holy grail is absolute decoupling. No sign of that in sight, notwithstanding optimistic predictions about “green growth”. This lack of actual progress is the main argument for dumping growth as an indicator.

Ha. Amusing. I haven’t seen that scene but I know what you’re talking about. Seems like a decent theory of mind for EK. What remains for me is the interesting paradox of being intellectually in awe of someone who holds what seems to be a transparently dumb opinion. Still, his voice is very nice to listen to. And that beard looks great too - such an improvement.

Interesting insight, thanks!

I do remember the interview with Hannah Richie and thinking something similar. After all this careful hedging about how we need to keep things in perspective and perhaps it’s not so bad, she suddenly admits to personal behavior that suggests otherwise! But I definitely took her more seriously because of that.

I’d say EK is cautious rather than a cynic (tho perhaps the meaning of this powerful word is migrating). And honestly, I share his general temperament.

What really bothers me about EK is his apparent ecological illiteracy. Yes, we know that voters like economic growth. To the point that it might even be a prerequisite for democracy and individual rights (I suspect this fear is what is driving EK). But we also know that economic growth is closely correlated with ecological destruction, and that the dream of absolute decoupling is nowhere in sight. And that there will be no social progress left to protect with a biosphere in full breakdown. At this point these observations are pretty close to anodyne scientific truth. I expect doctrinaire orthodox economists to wave them away or ignore them - but so does this thoughtful vegan. I don’t get it. Am I really smarter than Ezra Klein? For me it’s an ongoing mystery.

If true then that would just make me American. But either way I still don’t get your point, for the reasons explained.

The left has been talking “for decades” about degrowth? Or about accelerationist growthism? I’d say it’s neither, they’ve mainly just talked about redistribution, with an occasional vague nod to “growing the pie” via “structural reforms”, i.e. what The Economist wants (because then redistribution is not even necessary). Surely we can all agree here that nobody much in the mainstream public discourse is a fan of degrowth. Putting aside whether it’s necessary or not.

And another meta-review today, from Vox’s Eric Levitz. Again, basically on board with the “Abundance agenda” as a sort of left-leaning Reaganism and election-winner. Which it no doubt is. The question whether it’s sustainable in a world of fast-shrinking planetary limits is passed over entirely.

Interesting. I share your general take so it’s good to know I’m not missing something obvious.

TBH I’m finding it very hard not to psychoanalyze. EK is a super conscientious intellectual with two young children. He’s therefore super invested in making his moral choices add up correctly. This insidious thought first occurred to me a couple of years back when he began emphasizing that the most recent climate forecasts are - surprise! - better than than the previous ones. (That said, I like to use this factoid when talking to complete pessimists, because mindless pessimism is a danger in itself IMO.)

he casually used the term “solarpunk” in an interview

Pretty sure I remember that and it pricked my ears up too.

Yes but unfortunately not a very popular one. I see it as a helpful bargaining chip to make steady-state solutions seem more presentable.

Hallelujah.

Boring meal on Christmas eve?

So it’s not about DNA yet it is about being “descended” from these people whose culture was uniquely evil? This sounds very, very like essentialism.

The convenience of the “rationalisation” is in any case moot if the person you’re addressing does not even accept your label of them (“white”). What do you propose to do about that problem? Tell them that you know what invented category they belong to better than they do?

What a mess! I resubmit my simpler solution: we are all humans, there is only one species, we are all implicated in its successes and failures, end of story.

You’re both right. Degrowth has poor optics. But that’s mainly because growth has been the subject of centuries of positive branding. By contrast, in a medical context the term is anything but positive.

One interesting anecdote that I learned from Tim Jackson’s book: Keynes himself saw growth as a vehicle to a destination. In other words, time-limited, and to be replaced by another goal once it had done its job.

The concept of “white folks” is entirely unscientific, it’s an American cultural construction.

But yes, I am indeed saying that we just need to give other cultures time and we will all end up at the same destination. I don’t essentialize humans by their arbitrary racial characteristics.