Degrowth

Abstract

Society has awakened to the reality of the risk of climate and ecological collapse, but there is no unanimous acceptance of its main cause: the socioeconomic model. Simultaneously addressing the environmental and climate crisis, as well as the growing inequality, is essential for their resolution. Scenario modeling reveals that there are new radical social policies capable of combining social prosperity and low carbon emissions that are economically and politically viable. For the time being, all these radical, effective, and viable policies remain within economic degrowth and do not fit with sustainable development and green growth. Economic degrowth will occur in a more or less disorderly way in the form of chained recessions. Our only option is to understand and accept it, so that we can take the lead in this transformation, minimizing unwanted side effects and taking advantage of the opportunity to become a more humane civilization.