> The degrowth movement has a view that we need to use radically less energy, up to 95% less for the West and 60% less globally. These are numbers degrowthers share. The underlying view, explicit or implicit, is that there are just too many people on this planet. A malthusian view of sinful people. Sometimes this is wrapped up in an anti-capitalist rhetoric that 'infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible'. Catchy slogan, but it doesn't actually align with (capitalist) reality.
This is a radioactively bad faith smear. Lowkey. It's not about people being sinful, or even about there being too many people. It's about the market economy wasting resources in ways that do not improve our lives. Degrowth is perfectly aligned with the goals of socialism, and should not be conflated with austerity, population control, or unmitigated societal collapse.
We should use the resources we have already harvested in a more efficient way instead of trashing them and wasting them on billion dollar toys for the billionaires, and distribute our resources more equally than we currently do.
Let's not kid ourselves here, we could slash a large amount of our economic activity and we would still largely be ok (or even better off).
