Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

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He discusses that investments in clean energy have not replaced use of coal and oil but have simply added to our net energy demands. In the first two chapters, he traces the origins of this view back to our separation from nature in ancient times, manifested in the idea that humans should have “dominion” over the earth (Genesis 1:26) and Plato’s dualism. The discussion of alternative economic system elements such as reducing inequality, limiting material extraction, and non-debt-based money are useful but under-developed. Our society has bought into the myth that the economy of human society must constantly grow to be successful.

By shining a light on ecological breakdown and the system that's causing it, Hickel shows how we can bring our economy back into balance with the living world and build a thriving society for all. A constantly growing GDP uses too much energy, destroys too much of the environment, creates too much inequality, that it then hurts the lives of the people who contribute to said growth.Finally, Hickel goes on to describe the components of an economy that will be truly democratic and sustainable. What if we adopted a new paradigm in terms of how we view the Earth - what if we were to treat everything in our environment as "connected"? This book explores not only the systemic flaws but the deeply cultural beliefs that need to be uprooted and replaced. A system that has taught us to assign value to a thing not based on utility, but based on how hard it is to get, on scarcity, on how it makes people look at us, on how much we can get for it when we sell it.

His media appearances include Viewsnight, the Financial Times, the BBC World Service, Sky News All Out Politics, BBC Business Matters, Thinking Allowed, Renegade TV, NPR, Doha Debates, TRT World, the LA Times, Citations Needed, and Russell Brand's podcast Under the Skin. The way that everyone interacts with the world is a product of a system that is fundamentally flawed. In Plato’s Republic “the true state” was one in which people ate moderate vegetarian meals, “not begetting offspring beyond their means lest they fall into poverty or war” (see Republic 372). Hickel είναι ένας οικονομικός ανθρωπολόγος που βλέπει ότι το περιβάλλον και ο άνθρωπος είναι ένα ενιαίο σύστημα που δεν είναι ξεκομμένο απ' την οικονομία.

He serves on the Statistical Advisory Panel for the UN Human Development Report 2020, the advisory board of the Green New Deal for Europe, and on the Harvard-Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice. Exponential growth is possible only with endless extraction , which involves bringing more and more of the planet and human activities under the economy, and this is causing us to fast approach the point where our planet cannot regulate and regenerate itself successfully. It's not just the kind of abstract and sometimes metaphysical philosophising that you often read in degrowth books, especially French ones. The impact of these are shown to be relatively minor compared with the changes needed to avoid climate disaster. In Eastern philosophy, the Axial Age produced the Buddha whose “Son’s Flesh Sutra” Hickel quotes with approval in his Acknowledgments.

Less is More covers centuries and continents, spans academic disciplines, and connects contemporary and ancient events in a way which cannot be put down until it's finished.

And had Jason Hickel put down his metaphorical pen and finished the book here, this would’ve been a 5/5 review.