Ecosocialism and degrowth folly

Is decoupling temporary?

If products require materials in their production you will eventually hit limits. You might increase the yields of tree plantations and design wood products so that they do not need as much of that material. However, at some point these gains will be exhausted and you will have to increase the area devoted to trees. There is a similar story with the land required for increasing amounts of wind and solar energy.

Substitutions are no help in the long term. You can use aluminum or plastic instead of wood. But increasing their use is bound to require more extraction, land and water, either directly or indirectly. There is a similar problem with pollution if it increases at all with growing output.

We also have to take account of the fact that the more stuff we have the more space it takes up leaving less for nature.

This is all quite correct. They are expressing the truism that you cannot infinitely increase production of stuff on a finite planet. But how relevant is this?

The biggest reductions in land and water will be in agriculture and this is a sector where we can expect growth to greatly slow down once everyone is well fed and the population stabilizes or even starts falling. There will be a similar story to some extent with human settlement. We will become better at building up in the air and down into the ground and better at recycling water. There could well be considerable reductions even if we find new uses for water and floor space and they grow at a modest rate.

Wind and solar are not limited to land but could increasingly be offshore while nuclear and geothermal use little land.

Material consumption in poorer countries will increase dramatically as they develop over the next half century or so. However, most of this will be construction material which is not a major cause of environmental damage. Besides, this surge will eventually slow down as this basic development task is completed.

Decoupling looks even less temporary when we take into account the fact that the science and technology of future centuries will give our descendants vastly greater ability to both harness and care for the natural environment. These would no doubt seem to us like magic if someone were to come back and tell us about them, much like someone now traveling back to 1900 with a dozen copies of *Wired* magazine.

Are we too late?

Degrowthers are right that you could reduce greenhouse gases and other environmental impacts more quickly if you were degrowing the economy. And it is also true that the general inadequacy of our efforts so far have built in considerable delays. However, you are still left with the fact that ecosocialist degrowth is just non-operational silliness.

The revolution needs growth

For Marxists, growth and the elimination of economic backwardness is the primary prerequisite for successful revolution. Reaching a high level of development creates the prospect of sharing material prosperity, humanizing work and having ample free time. We have a long history showing how we are not prepared to share the opposite - poverty and toil. These two blights have been the very basis of class society. So, we need to achieve a level of material conditions where the benefits of living in a convivial classless society considerably outweigh the benefits of being a "winner" under capitalism.