Better understand growth, its implications, its limits, its alternatives.
At a time of climate, ecological and energy challenges, should we, or even can we continue to want to grow our economies?
The question is still very much taboo as the prospect of the end of growth is so scary. Despite the drastic reductions in CO2 emissions that are targeted, despite a growing awareness of the impact of our lifestyles on the planet, we largely refuse to talk about the subject. Growth will be green, sustainable, sustainable, but it will be there, it is obvious ...
To think about decrease is to hypothesize that no, this growth is not eternal, and moreover that it is no longer desirable in the current context.
This is what Timothée Parrique, doctor of economics, author of a thesis on the subject (The political economy of degrowth, 2019).
Timothée is also the author of “Decoupling debunked - Evidence and arguments against green growth”, a report on green growth published by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) in 2019. He teaches at Uppsala University in Sweden and at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and is currently writing a book for Flammarion on the subject of degrowth.
What are we talking about ?
03:00 - Course of Timothée Parrique. Why the decrease?
06:00 - How to define economic growth? How to measure economic growth?
10: 00 -Mechanisms of economic growth. Role of energy and debt in growth? Role of work and innovation?
16:00 - Role of energy in growth?
20:00 p.m. - Role of debt in growth?
24:00 - Idea of progress. Relationship between progress and growth.
28:00 - What is objectionable, questionable in the discourse on growth? Are the promises of growth realistic?
35: 00- Empirically, we get the impression that economic growth is something concretely positive. How to understand the apparent correlation between growth and the standard of living, the progress of the population, the development, the power of a nation.
40:00 - Myth of eternal growth.
49:00 - Specificities of the XX-th century.
56:00 - Degrowth: what are we talking about?
01:01 - Reception of the word "degrowth". Decline and recession. Why speak of "degrowth"? What is needed in the "degrowth" project.
01: 06- Is degrowth a necessity? Why is this subject so polarized?
01:09:00 - What would decay planning look like?
01:17:10 - How to do it? Is the degrowth project realistic? Realistically acceptable?
Interview recorded on May 4, 2021