‘These ideas are incredibly popular’: what is degrowth and can it save the planet?

The post-growth movement says GDP is the wrong way to measure progress and we need a radical economic rewiring

In the run-up to the UK general election, the Labour party’s central offer to the public was a “laser-like” focus on economic growth. Its leader, Keir Starmer, promised to “take the brakes off Britain” and repeatedly said “ensuring economic growth will be fundamental”.

In the weeks since the party was elected, it has regularly been grilled about whether the required growth is possible, or how it could be achieved. But to the dismay of ecological economists and climate experts, there has been almost no debate about what sort of growth it should be, who it would benefit – or even whether the aim of perpetual growth on a planet with finite resources is either possible or desirable in the midst of an escalating climate crisis.

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