Ecological breakdown

Abstract

Abstract Industrialization and economic growth have been major factors in causing ecological breakdown. International climate agreements even have benchmarks to compare today’s levels of global warming to ‘pre-industrial levels’ because this is the last time we can confidently say that we lived within planetary boundaries. In this chapter, I compare two perspectives that offer different growth and industrialization pathways in the age of ecological breakdown: green paradigms and degrowth. Degrowth more accurately and honestly highlights the contradictions between growth and ecological sustainability but faces more economic trade-offs and practical hurdles from a policy perspective. In light of this, I highlight three policy pathways where the perspectives can meet: (i) target and scale down ecologically damaging industries and activities, (ii) incentivize community-centred living rather than individual-centred living, and (iii) focus scale-down measures at those responsible for ecological breakdown (e.g. the rich and the global North rather than the poor and the global South).