By Justin Dempsey
February 20, 2025
Originally published in: VTDigger
“Degrowth” is an intentionally suggestive term. It is meant to question the wisdom of increasing GDP and calling it progress.
On Feb. 16 Kevin Chu wrote a well-intentioned but misinformed opinion piece on scarcity and abundance. In it, Mr. Chu disparages degrowth economics by making a common mistake — confusing growth in size with improvement in quality. “We celebrate growth on an individual level,” Chu writes, “let’s extend that sentiment to our state as a whole.”
Of course, no one is against personal growth — becoming more emotionally mature and resilient. But physically, humans are not meant to grow indefinitely. I am in my early thirties. I stopped growing taller more than a decade ago. Now, my challenge is to improve my health and strength without growing my waistline.
This is the essence of degrowth economics, which my colleagues and I study at the University of Vermont. The challenge for our state is to improve the quality of our economy without unsustainably increasing the quantity of resources that it consumes.
Degrowthers point out that increasing GDP means increasing the amount of energy and materials which go into the economy. We argue that the size of the economy is not a good metric for its success. Instead, let’s focus on outcomes like quality of life and public services.
Degrowth comes from ecological economics — an effort to make econ less obsessed with abstract numbers and more holistic. As any ecologist will attest, the sustainability of a species depends on the relationship between their resources and their population. So, this does not mean that degrowthers are against population growth, just that we acknowledge the role population must play in economic decision making.
Personally, I think Vermont must grow its population, but also must develop more housing to relieve the cost-of-living crisis many Vermonters are facing. However, we cannot grow for growth’s sake, or in an arbitrary way. We must increase the populations of towns that have excess capacity in their systems — sewage, schools, etc. — to absorb and benefit from that growth. Mr. Chu rightfully pointed this out.
“Degrowth” is an intentionally suggestive term. It is meant to question the wisdom of increasing GDP and calling it progress. In this sense, economic growth is not “growth” as in development, but growth as in material expansion. An unfortunate consequence of using a “wedge term” like degrowth is that can lead to misunderstandings between people who would otherwise be aligned. I believe that is happening here.
To clarify what degrowth is all about, I am teaching an Osher Lifelong Learning Institute class on June 10 open to the greater Burlington community.
Since the 1980’s, increasing GDP has not increased quality of life, but instead increased economic inequality and ecological devastation.
“Degrowth” and “abundance” are not opposites. Degrowth means sustainable abundance, and the opposite of degrowth is arbitrary material expansion. Since the 1980’s, increasing GDP has not increased quality of life, but instead increased economic inequality and ecological devastation. Degrowth is about having a conversation as a community about how we can use our shared resources to improve overall wellbeing. It is about moving capital away from industries which are not fostering the public good and towards the practices that do.
Our goal is the same as Mr. Chu’s — to improve Vermont’s future. Let’s grow Vermont’s health, not its waistline.
Justin Dempsey is a PhD student in Natural Resources at UVM, with a focus on Ecological Economics. His research involves working with local stakeholders across Vermont to establish 'Energysheds' where green energy is produced for local consumption. He is interested in the ways that the neoclassical economic narrative of 'homo-economicus' distorts our innate drive toward cooperation, and how the discipline of economics can broaden to incorporate other sources of knowledge. He loves film, traveling, brewing, and playing basketball.
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