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I am new to Gemini Space, in fact this is my first attempt at writing in this corner of the cyber world. In Gemini space I read many articles about degrowth, and being resident in a depopulated city, I thought I would give my two cents on the topic. The philosophy is not new. In the past they just used to call it Malthusianism, and in my opinion it is a harmful idea, a relic from the colonial past.
I am writing now from Damascus, the capital city of Syria, a country that before a decade had 25 million people living in it and according to a UN estimate in 2017 its population shrinked to 18 million, and I believe that now it is below 15 million.
The process of depopulation was and still is painful. The amount of suffering is unbelieveable. Lower levels of population did not bring the utopia that many are preaching.
Human communities are not as bad as many in the privileged western societies believe. Humans are an essential part of this planet. It is hard to grow and ironically very easy to destroy, and the planet is big enough to accomodate billions of humans. Just look at all those empty lands that surround us.
Having less people, doesn't mean having more resources. After all you need people to make resources available.
In Damascus energy is rationed. Electricity comes for 2 hours, then it is cut for 4, that is, each day electricity is produced for only 8 hours, 33% of what people expect to get in other countries, fuel is rationed as well, car owners are given 25 liters of fuel every 10 days, yet the environment is suffering hugely
Not having access to modern types of energy made people resort to antiquated means of heating, agricultural lands are not as productive as before, forests are being slaughtered.
My experience in living here, taught me that we need more people not less. People are the most valuable resource our planet has. People are more scarce than energy.
Instead of minimizing our births and maximizing death rates, we as humans should start thinking about how to live and grow in way that doesn't harm our planet. We do not need to kill our planet, on the contrary we should nourish it and take care of it so it can provide us with the habitat and shelter we need to live and grow our children in.
We as a race need to grow and become mature. Growing should not mean that we destroy. We can grow and keep the planet healthy.
Aug 27 · 3 months ago · 👍 skyjake, gritty, aRubes, gemalaya · ❤ 1 🔥 1
Thank you for your post. It is very interesting, coming from someone who is on the ground.
Controlled, or better yet, voluntary scaling down, is different from poverty-driven one. It's not likely, but if people were voluntarily limiting themselves to 25 liters of gas every 10 days, we would probably have better public transit to pick up the slack.
Voluntary blackouts of electricity would do wonders to our energy consumption. However, those most vocal about conservation tend to use up ungodly amounts of resources (see Al Gore's megawatt house, with apologists' remarks that yeah, but it uses less power than other palaces of similar size...).
rationing is not the solution. The community should recieve the energy it needs, unless you want your neighbor burning your curtains to cook her meal or cutting your backyard tree to heat her children in the cold night.
Earth recieves daily 4.4 x 10^16 watts from solar radiation, that is far much more than we as a race need (~17.4 x 10^12). Believe it or not, we have more energy than we can ever consume.
The problem is not in consumption or growth, it is in mismanagement and protecting privilege.
🍄 Ruby_Witch · Aug 27 at 15:27:
Hi naf, I appreciate that you have a very different perspective on the idea of degrowth as you have seen the harms of uncontrolled devastation.
I do not believe there is any support for population control or depopulation anymore. This was attempted in China a while ago and was found not to work, as it is unenforceable even under a strict rule. Because of this, that Malthusian line of thinking has been severely out of fashion for over a decade.
What you are experiencing, sadly, is uncontrolled destruction, not degrowth. Degrowth must be a controlled process and focused only on those industries which do the most harm, while actually encouraging growth in things which are helpful for society, despite its name.
@Ruby_Witch thanks for your comment, but I think that the club of Rome is very active in promoting their theory of limits to growth. I think they should call it the limits of petrol instead. Their Earth4All (oil for only developed nations initiative) was only launched in 2020.
The path that degrowth was achieved in Syria is not as important as the result, and from what I am seeing, a viable and healthy human population is not harmful, on the contrary, an under-populated community can cause more damage to the planet than what we might imagine.
🍄 Ruby_Witch · Aug 27 at 16:17:
@naf While I can definitely see how Syria's current situation can make the idea of anyone wanting to shrink some parts of any economy rather than grow them seem utterly ridiculous, I don't believe that what has happened there is the result of anyone's degrowth initiative.
There are quite a lot of tragic things which came together to cause the devastation of your beautiful country, but I don't think anyone ever sat down at a desk and said that this had to occur for the good of the environment. If anything, it was caused by a lot of greed and desire for growth in other places at the expense of your people.
But maybe I'm naive, I'm certain that you've seen a lot of things that I haven't.
I think it's more important to have a conscious population, then a growing one. If the population has a goal, a meaning to exist and the environment doesn't restrict it too much, it's going too grow. I am living in a town, which has been on a demographic decline for decades, it's not a city. Only 1 city in Lithuania is growing and it's mostly from immigration from other places. I may be wrong, I am not prolific in this topic.
@Ruby_Witch first of all I appreciate you taking my argumentum ad absurdum gently. I too am sure that what happened in Syria was not done by environmentalists! I just looked at the state of affairs here & tried to imagine how the world will look like if we curtailed its population to 4 billion people. How will the remaining people behave, what means will they use to fulfill their needs, how will they produce their food, the social & political structures they'll embrace & its effect on development; & it occured to me that: having less people might be harmful & damaging! If we want to be our planet's keepers we should have more people not less. Taking care of a planet is not a trivial mission
🐉 gyaradong · Aug 28 at 08:09:
Degrowth is not population control. It's about when your clothes get dirty, instead of throwing them out you just get a washing machine. Or when your plates get dirty, instead of throwing them out you just buy a dishwasher.
And if your dishwasher gets hungry, instead of leaving them to die and getting a new one you just feed them. Yes it harms the economy but overall its not that bad.
🐉 gyaradong · Aug 28 at 08:45:
More seriously, degrowth is about living equitably with the people around you. Capitalism makes it really easy to ignore the labor of others and dehumanize them. Then you get into the crazy rationalisation that everyone should have what you have. An order of magnitude the other way you'll be wishing everyone had a private yacht complete with staff... err... robot staff!
At some point you have to admit it's not just a fantasy which helps people rationalise their own existence, but it is actually a contemptible way to live. It is the fundamental cause of our ills. Leaving the big web for Gemini isn't just less resource intensive, for example, it is actually healing.
@gyaradong thanks for the informative description, but I think what you decribed is more related to sustainability, efficiency, common sense, etc..
As for degrowth, the term is the antonym of growth which webster defines as:
(1) To decrease in size by a natural and organic process; to decrease in bulk by the gradual loss of matter out of a living organism; -- said of animals and vegetables and their organs.
(2) To become smaller and weaker, to wane, to be diminished, to decline, to fail.
It is interesting that such a semantic was chosen for this term you described. Wonder if the plain meaning should be rejected in favour of description you kindly provided?
🐉 gyaradong · Aug 28 at 21:46:
the people who came up with the term chose a contentious name on purpose. Not everyone agrees with the choice, specifically because a lot of people equate it with decay.