These reactions reflect a growing intellectual fad: “degrowth.” Degrowthers offer a substantial critique of the tendency to prioritize economic growth above all else. They argue it would be better to re-center increasingly unhappy societies away from materialism and toward ecological sustainability.
We share some of their concerns. But, with respect, we still disagree that degrowth is the way to address them. As we noted in another editorial, the numbers show that curtailing economic growth cannot produce a safer, sustainable world. Even if economic growth paused in rich countries, the world would still miss its carbon emissions targets by 38 billion tons. And it would amount to a kind of environmental imperialism to insist that poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America halt their development in the name of fighting climate change.
For more than 200 years, pessimists have warned that a rapidly increasing population would bring civilizational doom. Yet unprecedented population growth has coincided with unprecedented economic development, which in turn has freed billions of people from extreme poverty. Human ingenuity — a feature of growing societies — has made ills such as famine and infant mortality rarer.
One reader wrote that “we cannot continue to grow in a finite space.” Moreover, some readers argue, a society that values economic growth above, say, justice or morality has lost its way. We acknowledge the challenge of combating economic inequality and providing all people with opportunity and purpose as society’s overall wealth increases. But degrowth threatens to do the opposite. The rich would stay rich, while everyone else’s living standards would decline.
Degrowther pessimism rests on the notion that economic output is inherently exploitative: Growth, in this view, necessarily requires extracting more. But history has proved time and again that economies can defy gloomy predictions. Electricity, the internet, penicillin, breakthroughs in agriculture and other advancements made it possible to do more with less, improving people’s living standards and freeing them from a constant struggle to merely subsist. Productivity growth can take the world in directions that are benign for the physical and social environment. Growth can mean less pollution, more forests and better health.
We do not know exactly how many humans the Earth can support. But across the globe, economic and social development inevitably lead to fewer children. This is why our concern is not breakneck population growth but the opposite: how to sustain economic vibrancy if and when the number of people working — thinking, experimenting, inventing and investing — stops increasing, or declines. Wise societies would prepare.
We agree with some of our readers that paying women to have more children can reinforce patriarchal norms. As one noted, “Politicians are using women’s bodies as a political tool in the fight over abortion care.” Moreover, so-called pronatalist policies deployed in many countries have largely failed to pump up birth rates.
Pronatalist policies should not be directed toward those who prefer to remain childless. No amount of government support will fully offset the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to raise a child. Rather, pronatalist programs are properly aimed at the still large number of women who say they want children but cannot bear the cost. Even if birth rates do not boom in response, enabling women to make that choice is still worthwhile.
American values of individual autonomy and choice mean that a child-free life is one that must be respected. But freedom cuts the other way, too: One shouldn’t assume that women who desire more children suffer from false consciousness. As one reader put it, “Everyone should have the right to choose if and when to have children and to have the number of children they want. That’s a basic tenet of reproductive justice.”
We agree. Societies should make it easier to have children — but also prepare for a time, already here for many, when they can no longer rely on a rising population to thrive. Humans have to do more with the same or a declining number of people. Or else the world will get the future that degrowthers desire — and our bet is people will not like it.
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