The vision is a five-minute bike ride to the train station. On brisk mornings like this, gloves are necessary and a warm coffee is packed for the commute. A work buddy, Lucy, gets on two stops down, always with a pair of scones, wheeling her bike next to mine in the locker downstairs before joining me in the sunny coach section. Half an hour later, we unload the bikes and race each other along the greenway to our office. Twice a week, this; twice a week, we co-work from a cafe in the suburbs. The rest of the week is ours to enjoy. — a drabble from Looking Forward reader Betsy Ruckman
The spotlight is on the idea of a perpetual three-day weekend, for those who support the concept of degrowth: a school of thought aimed at shrinking economies and moving away from GDP growth as a metric of success, while instead emphasizing universal basic services and social well-being. The idea is gaining followers, especially in Europe and especially among young people. A Beyond Growth conference hosted by the European Parliament last May saw 7,000 attendees, including the president of the European Commission. Akielly Hu, Grist’s news and politics fellow, discussed the growing popularity of degrowth with Kohei Saito — a Marxist author whose 2020 degrowth manifesto quickly turned into a bestseller in Japan and beyond. (The English translation, called Slow Down, was just released last month.) Hu was inspired by Looking Forward’s drabbles in writing the lede of her piece, which paints an image of a degrowth future: Imagine a world where you work three or four days a week. In your free time, you play sports, spend time with loved ones, garden, and engage with local politics. Overnight shipping, advertising, and private jets no longer exist, but health care, education, and clean electricity are free and available to all.
But there’s another aspect of degrowth that lends itself to a vision of a clean, green, just future: It’s inherently about producing and consuming less, and that means less carbon. “We’re hurtling toward these major climate deadlines,” Hu said. “And I think there’s this deep sense of disconnect between what we say we’re going to do about climate change and what’s actually happening. And one of the things that’s actually happening is that there are all these blatant, unnecessary, and unhelpful ways that massive amounts of carbon are still being consumed.” She offers private jets as a common example highlighted by degrowth advocates. Taking a private plane creates an absurd amount of emissions proportionate to the number of people it benefits. Even though the theoretical future of degrowth may sound appealing, critics still say it’s a political nonstarter.
Saito admits the idea of widespread degrowth is “in some sense utopian.” But, he adds, “believing that capitalism will prosper in the decades to come is utopian, too.” We’ve excerpted Hu’s Q&A with Saito below. Find the full piece on the Grist site. — Claire Elise Thompson
