Economic degrowth in 2020 reduced global carbon emissions by around 5%. With the reduction of GDP, this came at a cost of $1700+ per ton. Investing in renewables only costs $60 per ton. Degrowth is not a serious solution. youtube.com/shorts/vIaK2... - ThreadSky

econchrisclarke.bsky.social • 61 days ago

Economic degrowth in 2020 reduced global carbon emissions by around 5%. With the reduction of GDP, this came at a cost of $1700+ per ton. Investing in renewables only costs $60 per ton. Degrowth is not a serious solution.

https://youtube.com/shorts/vIaK2z1C9qM?si=TfBZNgrHDY8EC7KQ

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brewenjon.bsky.social•60 days ago

Can you point to any degrowth lit saying we should do decarbonisation through GDP reduction alone and not replacing energy production with renewables? Because if not this is a massive strawman. Degrowth doesn't mean reduce everything indiscriminately, even the useful things ...

econchrisclarke.bsky.social•60 days ago

Here is an overview of the decoupling literature. There are a couple of degrowth works that claim substantially shrinking GDP is necessary. Jackson (2009) and Hickel & Kallis (2020) are two major ones. The latter calls for GDP to fall at 6.2% annually.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800923002008

brewenjon.bsky.social•59 days ago

Whatever the shrinkage they call for, it’s not the single solution proposed. Nobody degrowth is saying don’t invest in renewables. They’re complementary proposals. So saying the cost of shrinkage is the cost of degrowth’s solution to co2 reduction is just illogical.

brewenjon.bsky.social•59 days ago

Also, comparing the cost of a shutdown of society for a pandemic to the intentional shrinkage of impactful and less-necessary production is hardly apples to apples.

brewenjon.bsky.social•59 days ago

And lastly, you’ve missed the point of the reductions in throughput. CO2 emissions reductions from the energy transition will not happen anywhere near fast enough to avoid catastrophic warming unless we concurrently reduce energy demand. You’ll be wishing we reduced at $1600/T if we hit 3C.

econchrisclarke.bsky.social•59 days ago

I don't get the need for degrowth when investment in renewables is on the table. Using $1750, we can reduce one ton of CO2 via degrowth. Or we can reduce around 30 tons via renewable investment. We would we choose to degrow instead of invest? It's orders of magnitude less effective.

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