Growing by decreascing

Abstract

To justify the thesis under the motto “growing by decreasing,” this paper presents three arguments. First, the evolution of ideas about tackling the environmental side effects of economic growth went from “limits to growth” to the unifying concept of “beyond-growth,” with “green growth” and “degrowth” as two poles of the recent debate. Second, there are indications of important convergences regarding policy prescriptions in any “green strategy.” Third, some clues suggest that, despite the convergences, the main challenge is overcoming the inertia in production-consumption systems by destabilizing the dominant configuration and inducing a change in consumers’ preferences.