Sir, – In “Capitalism is killing the planet – but curtailing it is the discussion nobody wants to have” (Environment, August 8th), Padraic Fogarty writes that, “Curtailing consumption is the conversation nobody wants to have”.
While this may be a true characterisation of our current political debates, it is less so of emerging ecological and economic thought.
In 2014, Philippe Bihouix’s book The Age of Low Tech was a surprising best-seller in France. In it, he argued: “Like it or not, there only remains the very rational option to apply the brakes: reduce, as quickly and as drastically as possible, the average consumption of resources per person . . . The choice is not between growth and degrowth, but between imposed degrowth – because the resource issue will catch up with us in due course – or elective degrowth.” He shows that we will need a new culture which will “slow down, simplify, disconnect, reduce”.
Various theories of “degrowth” economics have now become quite prominent. The seriousness with which this approach is now viewed can be testified by the recent conference in Trinity College Dublin on “Re-thinking Growth” held in June. This was very well attended and had many insightful contributions toward modelling a society centred on wellbeing rather than economic growth.
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The conversation on reducing consumption and de-growing our economies in favour of wider wellbeing is indeed well under way. The only question is how quickly our wider political and media mainstream realise this and join in. – Yours, etc,
MARK GARAVAN,
Cloughjordan,
Co Tipperary.