Lise Lillebrygfjeld Halse

In August 2024, Joseph Stiglitz predicted that neoliberal capitalism in the US would lead to fascism. His theory: neoliberal capitalism is enabling a wealthy, fascist-leaning elite to buy political power, eroding democratic institutions. His prediction came true.

I just finished reading this degrowth hit piece everyone's tweeting about. It's a hugely problematic paper. Degrowth is not without flaws. But the problem with this hit piece is that it essentially labels the entire degrowth paradigm as 'unscientific' without much evidence. First, as many degrowth scholars have already pointed out on this platform (e.g. @JKSteinberger and @g_kallis), tons of important degrowth papers are neglected. The methodology of this hit piece for selecting degrowth literature is deeply flawed. If you are going to claim that an entire academic paradigm is based on opinions rather than analysis — which this degrowth hit piece does — you better have bulletproof backing, because that's a loaded and potentially harmful statement. I'm not even a 'degrowther' myself, and I've read a wealth of articles from degrowth scholars in respected climate journals, like Nature and Lancet Planetary Health, that are highly analytical and data driven. Most of these are not included by this degrowth hit piece. Second, if you are going to take a massive dump on degrowth, you better tackle its arguments and evidence head on. This degrowth hit piece barely does that. There is a sliver of critical discussion on the policy feasibility of degrowth, but even this discussion lacks depth. Why am I coming so strongly to the defence of degrowth when I'm not even a degrowther? It's because this degrowth hit piece is potentially harmful to advancing knowledge. Degrowth is a polemic term and challenges conventional wisdom, so the movement understandably meets resistance. But I now see many people endorsing this degrowth hit piece on X/Twitter without engaging much with degrowth arguments. In effect, people who endorse this degrowth hit piece are endorsing a view that degrowth is not analytically rigorous, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Spreading false claims about degrowth is not going to advance knowledge about ecological economics or political ecology.