What do you think about when you hear the word growth? What do you associate it with? Does it feel like a positive or a negative thing? Growth is good, growth is progress, or so we have been taught. Growth is quite literally life. A seedling grows into a tree, a baby grows into an adult, a caterpillar grows into a butterfly. So what could possibly be wrong with the pursuit of economic growth? Wouldn’t that mean better lives for all of us? Sadly, the opposite is true. Our drive for endless economic growth has led to devastating consequences. The exploitation of the natural world and living beings (including ourselves), and the ripple effects of uncontrolled consumerism and extraction of resources have contributed to many of the crises we are facing today.
“An attitude to life which seeks fulfilment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth – in short, materialism – does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.”
― E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
Now the good news is, there is a solution for all this – the Degrowth movement. The concept of degrowth advocates for the need to reduce global consumption and production and for a socially just and ecologically sustainable society with social and environmental well-being replacing GDP as the indicator of prosperity. [Wikipedia]
So how to implement degrowth?
There are things we can do on an individual level, but mainly, it's about understanding the system we live and work in and why it exists, so that we can understand what we want and need to change and what it is we are advocating for. For this topic, we're writing this newsletter after the book club, partly to use the inspired knowledge of our attendees. The topic is a biggie and if you’ve been following us for a while, you know that the very first step to action for us always starts with self education and ‘Less is More’ by Jason Hickel, last month’s bookclub read, is the perfect introduction to the concept of degrowth (as I write this I notice that my text editor keeps underlining the word ‘degrowth’ as it apparently doesn’t exist – well, I guess we have work to do). The book is divided into two halves: More is Less and Less is More. The first part describing what is currently wrong about our capitalist system and economy and the second part takes a look at what is already being done and what can be done to create a better world for all of us.
As with every topic we have set up our community Notion document in which we have gathered books, essays, podcasts and more relating to the topic of degrowth. We have made a start but everybody is welcome to contribute. You can do so here.
Call for submissions: Imagining a better future ✏️
During our bookclub meet up we read a quote from the book in which Hickel imagines his future as an old man in his home town. A future in which we have tackled the world’s biggest issues and can now live in peace and prosperity – all of us. It made us realise how amongst all the doom and gloom and catastrophic daily headline news, we sometimes forget to think about what the world could look like if we did make it. If we did solve our problems together, and what that would mean. How can we fight for a future when we don’t even know what we would like it to look like? So here’s our ask – take 10 minutes to imagine what your brightest future life would look like in a world, maybe 20, 30 or 40 years from now, and write it down. Where would you live? How are you getting around? Who do you live with? Where does your food come from? What do you fill your days with? How close are you to nature and what is your relationship with it?
To give you some more inspiration, here is the quote from the book that inspired us:
I like to imagine a time in the future when I’m again captivated by the number of insects back home in Eswatini. I’m an old man, sitting on the porch in the evening, watching them in awe, listening to their chirping , just as I did as a child. In this vision, a lot has changed about the world. High-income countries brought their use of resources and energy down to sustainable levels. We began to take democracy seriously, shared income and wealth more fairly, and put an end to poverty. The gap between rich countries and poor countries shrank. The word ‘billionaire’ disappeared from our languages. Working hours fell from forty or fifty hours a week down to twenty or thirty, giving people more time to focus on community, caring and the arts of living. […] And we began to think of ourselves differently: as beings interconnected with, rather than separate from, the rest of the living world.
Send your submission to hello@andthefuture.com or simply comment on this post – we can’t wait to read it!
Reflecting on last month’s topic: Climate Justice ✊🏽
Race is a construct that was invented to deliberately separate us
We can fight injustice only when we join forces - white, black, brown, indigenous, working class, middle class, upper class. There is a lot of interest by governments to keep us feeling that our struggles are separate and not linked and that we are each others’ enemies.
Colonialism still exists today (on Earth and now even in outer space 👀) and there is a massive colonial history we have inherited.
Guilt doesn't help anyone. What's important is the actions we take after the guilt.
We can focus on the past and we need to know what happened in order to prevent it from happening again. However, we should spent at least the same amount of time actually imagining what we want the future to look like in a just world.
Personally, we feel like we still have a lot to unpack when it comes to our own biases and learnt behaviours. It's a lifelong journey.
Interesting fact: The White Panthers was an anti-racist and anti-capitalist activist group that was founded in 1968 in response to an interview where Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, was asked what white people could do to support the Black Panthers.
The topic of Climate Justice opened my eyes to a whole new world that I didn't know about before, let alone understand. The book we chose for the book club was short but powerful, and angry – rightfully so. I put off reading it for a while and chose instead to start with Mary Robinson’s book ‘Climate Justice’, filled with stories from people directly affected by the climate crisis. What do I care about a little atoll country in the middle of the Pacific? Quite a lot now, it turns out. The people of Kiribati were forced to buy land in a whole other country, Fiji, in order to have a place to move to when their own country disappears underwater. Talk about displacement. Then, I read our original choice for Climate Justice, the wonderful book, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, written and set in the 1930's – I highly recommend it. I completed the Colonial History of Climate course by Climate in Colour. And then I finally bit the bullet and picked up the What White People Can Do Next by Emma Dabiri. The conversations at our bookclub meet up are always enlightening and I finish up feeling more intelligent, but this was especially the case on this topic. And the answer to the question, What Can White People Do Next? The answer is, for me, read up on the topic, read books by black and POC authors, challenge racism when you come across it in your circles and change the conversation.
– Tash
Join next topic’s discussion on renewable energy
Energy is the topic for the letter E in our Alphabet of Climate Solutions series. We’re reading Manifesto: How a maverick entrepreneur took on British energy and won, by Dale Vince, founder of ecotricity.
“Dale Vince never intended to start a business. Driven by a passion for sustainability, he left school aged 15 and became a New Age traveller, living for free in a wind-powered double decker bus. But after building his first wind turbine, he realised that to change the world he needed to be on the grid, not off it. In 1996 he founded green energy company Ecotricity based on principles of social, financial and environmental sustainability, and changed the landscape of UK energy forever.”
Join the online discussion on the 23rd of August at 7PM – tickets via Eventbrite below.
We’re taking a break from Future Hour!
Thank you to all of you who have joined our Future Hour’s over the past year – collectively we have made so much happen in these hours and we’re really proud of all of your achievements. As it is summer and the days are longer, we are drawn to spending more time in nature and socialising (safely) in real life. We have therefore decided to take a break from Future Hour until the autumn/winter. Keep your eyes peeled – we’ll announce it here first when we resume them 👀
Thank you for reading this far and being part of this community! We’ve taken the concept of Degrowth to heart and are posting a little less frequently atm but we’d love for you to follow along on our social media channels: Instagram and Linkedin. If you have any questions please add a comment to this post, DM us on Instagram or send us an email to hello@andthefuture.com
Lisa & Tash ✨
A big thank you goes out to last month’s contributors to our Notion document and our wonderful bookclub attendees 💚