It is true that measures to alleviate poverty will be an integral part of any national or international green transition. And some economic growth will be required in areas such as renewable energy, housing, care and education. But overall growth is not, as many of its advocates seem to presuppose, essential to any effective economy. And the evidence, carefully reviewed in recent reports by the European Environmental Bureau and the European Environment Agency, does not support the claim that green technologies will allow for the uncoupling of growth from increased carbon emissions.Sustainable production and consumption must therefore replace undifferentiated economic growth as the goal of 21st-century political economy. And making the case for this means challenging the belief that sustainable consumption will always involve sacrifice, rather than improve wellbeing.
Our so-called “good life” is, after all, a major cause of stress and ill health. It is noisy, polluting and wasteful. Its commercial priorities have forced people to gear everything to jobseeking and career development, but still leave many people facing chronically unfulfilling and precarious jobs and lives. Consumer culture, formerly seen as a vehicle of self-expression, is better viewed at this stage in its evolution as a means of extending the global reach and command of corporate power at the expense of the health and wellbeing of the planet and most of its inhabitants. Conversely, there is much to recommend a slower-paced, less work-centred and more community-oriented way of living. A work culture less dominated by profit-driven ideas of efficiency would free time for other activities. Slower and more hybrid modes of working (making use, for example, of artisanal methods alongside smart technologies) could enhance job fulfilment and allow more job sharing. Ecologically benign methods of production would exclude built-in obsolescence and radically reduce waste. People would have the gratification of knowing they were no longer contributing to environmental breakdown and threatening the very survival of their children and grandchildren.....read on https://www.theguardian.com/