The consumption-based per capita CO2-emissions in almost all high-income countries (e.g. EU, US,...) dropped by about 25% the past 15 years (since 2005)
I would argue that we shouldn’t look at “per capita” but CO2 emissions as a whole, since the climate isn’t going to be more lenient just because we have more people. Most countries haven’t been able to decouple their overall consumption-based CO2 emissions from their GDP, including our country:
And the world as a whole:
Now a couple countries have managed to decouple it so it is technically possible, but given how quickly we need to act I don’t think we have enough time.
GDP can still grow by an extremely huge amount before hitting these limits.
I’m also curious as to your thoughts on the other types of environmental damage. Let’s say we innovate our way into replacing all combustion engine vehicles with electric vehicles. EV’s require lithium for their batteries whose manufacturing is very bad for the environment independently of CO2 emissions (also human rights are often violated) and they’re heavier which is worse for our infrastructure. New technologies require more rare metals whose industry causes violations of human rights / degradation of the environment / wars. And it’s not a little bit more either, 1kWh of renewable energy requires ten times more metals than 1kWh of fossil energy. Perhaps tech-based solutions let us only play a game of whack-a-mole, replacing manure externalities with CO2 externalities and now rare metals externalities.
In contrast, degrowthers believe in the feasibility of another kind of decoupling, between economic wealth and human well-being or life satisfaction. But there are no countries that show an increase in well-being (e.g. an increase in living standards or flourishing) and a decrease in GDP or resource use. There is strong evidence that GDP is positively correlated with measures of well-being.
GDP is subject to Goodhart’s law. Countries lie about their GDP and also change what GDP measures, just so they can increase it. Also, according to this study, the relationship between GDP and life satisfaction is ‘hump shaped’, life satisfaction seems to peak at around $30,000-$33,000 and then slightly but significantly decline among the richest countries. (This could potentially be an explanation for the Easterlin paradox)
I have two more degrowth policies which you haven’t mentioned, which might be more to your taste:
Tariffs on polluting goods, which would have a negative effect on growth, but a positive effect on the environment. And since most countries are protectionistic this should be politically feasible.
High severance taxes. This would also have a negative effect on growth, but also have positive impact on the environment. And since most governments like having a higher budget this should also be politically feasible.
More drastic population reduction measures, for example by unvoluntary sterilization, are unethical and politically unfeasible. [...] For example, some highly productive people are willing to work more hours and employers are willing to pay them for those extra hours, but they would be prevented from doing so. This is an infringement on liberty.
Your proposed tech based solutions are achieved through ‘soft’ policies such as taxes instead of ‘hard’ policies such as banning, why couldn’t the other policies be achieved the same way? E.g replace sterilizing people with giving them less child care subsidies, or replace banning people from working over a certain number of hours with taxing them more? You are correct to warn of side-effects, but these policies can have positive side effects too, for example this (admittedly non-causal) study which found that working less hours is associated with higher life satisfaction.
However, a rebound effect is mitigated if a pollution tax (or a tax on dirty technologies) is introduced
I would like to point out that carbon taxes are regressive, so it would need to be paired with a climate income if we don’t want to exacerbate the rising wealth inequality.
There are negative ethical aspects of population reductions. Having fewer happy people is problematic according to some reasonable population ethical theories, such as total utilitarianism
It will arguably have negative ethical aspects if total utilitarianism is right, but it arguably won’t have negative ethical aspects if one of the following ethical theories is right:
Negative utilitarianism argues that minimizing suffering has greater moral importance than maximizing happiness.
Contractarianism argues that morality is arrived from mutual agreement, and unborn children cannot agree to be born.
Kantian ethics argues “A man should never be used as merely a means to an end, but always be treated as an end in himself”. A child can be created for the sake of other people, but not for their own good and should therefore not be created.
Libertarianism argues you shouldn’t take nonconsensual actions toward other people, and people cannot consent to being created.
Positive utilitarianism argues it’s immoral that humans slaughter, experiment and destroy the habitats of billions of animals. An argument could be made that even positive utilitarianism wants us to reduce the number of humans.
There are many possible answers for contractualism and virtue ethics, so no definite conclusion there. Counter-arguments could be made of course, but overall a (surprisingly) large number of ethical theories could be seen as in favor of reducing the human population.
EDIT: Thanks for the response, I’ll look more into it!
You can consider total instead of per capita CO2 emissions, but then I could also consider total instead of per capita welfare (life-satisfaction or well-being). Perhaps per capita life satisfaction doesn’t grow with income (Easterlin’s paradox), but total life satisfaction increases with population size (just like total emissions increase with population size in a decoupled economy with constant per capita emissions).
The decrease in emissions is not quick enough, but the question is what is the most effective way to make it quicker. As we already see some decoupling, further and faster decoupling seems feasible. We could make it faster, with more technological innovation. I don’t see much evidence that degrowth would result in faster emission reductions, given the fact that it seems hard to even start degrowth. No country voluntarily started degrowth so far. And to meet climate policy targets with only degrowth, degrowth not only has to start, but it also has to be very fast.
One reason to grow now is to have more money available for more scientific research to have more technological solutions to many problems such as climate change. Spending money on campaigns to have an economy with less money (i.e. degrowth campaigns to reduce GDP), seems to me more like a waste of money, that could have been used to fund research. (And not just a waste of money, but also in a sense a bit stealing and burning money.)
Other types of environmental damage are also a concern just like climate change, but as with climate change, no sufficient reason for degrowth. Environmental costs of rare metals can be included in the price, as a tax, just like a carbon tax. And the human rights violations can more effectively be addressed with appropriate international policy than with degrowth.
The more autocratic countries seem to lie more about their GDP, but this does not refute the usefulness of GDP. And as GDP positively correlates with many important measures (life expectancy,…), I don’t think it is so bad to not attempting to decrease GDP.
Tariffs on polluting goods and severance taxes are proposed by degrowthers, but also by most mainstream economists, so I don’t consider them to be characteristic degrowth policies.
Giving parents less child care subsidies seems a bad idea to me, given some studies I recently heard about that free child care is probably at least as good (cost-effective) as direct cash transfers. Child care subsidies are good for household incomes (mothers can work more and earn higher income) and child development.
Taxing people from working too much hours: I think that basically comes down to the usual labor taxation we already have, especially in a progressive income taxation system. People who work more hours have higher incomes and hence higher marginal tax rates in a progressive system. That is basically taxing extra working hours.
Working less may indeed result in higher life satisfaction, but people can freely choose to work less, if they want such higher life satisfaction. But that also means they earn less, so they face a trade-off between money and life satisfaction. It is possible that people prefer more money above more life satisfaction. If this is the case, then from a preferentialist utilitarian perspective, it is better if people earn more money (hence higher GDP) than if they get a higher life satisfaction. Looking back at Easterlin’s paradox: a higher GDP results in more preference satisfaction than a higher life satisfaction does. So if preference satisfaction (and not life satisfaction) is what ultimately matters, growing GDP is good.
A carbon tax is indeed regressive, and a climate income (carbon fee and dividend) system is more progressive, but I’m not sure that such a system is more progressive than a system where the carbon tax income is for example used to fund clean tech R&D. It could be that clean tech R&D can more effectively reduce emissions and reduce climate change than a fee and dividend system. And if climate change harms the poorest people more (marginal damages or costs to people in poorest countries are highest), then reducing more climate change might be more progressive. So if you include future generations and people in poor countries, I’m not sure whether the “carbon fee and dividend” system is more progressive than a “carbon fee and clean tech R&D subsidies” system.
You can have population ethical theories that entail having fewer people is good, but they also often face very counter-intuitive implications. Negative utilitarianism could entail a preference for total extinction (through sterilization). I don’t see how contractarianism, Kantian ethics and libertarian ethics really entail having a smaller population is good.
I would argue that we shouldn’t look at “per capita” but CO2 emissions as a whole, since the climate isn’t going to be more lenient just because we have more people. Most countries haven’t been able to decouple their overall consumption-based CO2 emissions from their GDP, including our country:
And the world as a whole:
Now a couple countries have managed to decouple it so it is technically possible, but given how quickly we need to act I don’t think we have enough time.
But why do we need to grow right now? If we slow down for a couple of decades to make our economic systems more sustainable we can still grow to reach these limits later. And slowing down now might very well mean preventing a catastrophic risk.
I’m also curious as to your thoughts on the other types of environmental damage. Let’s say we innovate our way into replacing all combustion engine vehicles with electric vehicles. EV’s require lithium for their batteries whose manufacturing is very bad for the environment independently of CO2 emissions (also human rights are often violated) and they’re heavier which is worse for our infrastructure.
New technologies require more rare metals whose industry causes violations of human rights / degradation of the environment / wars. And it’s not a little bit more either, 1kWh of renewable energy requires ten times more metals than 1kWh of fossil energy. Perhaps tech-based solutions let us only play a game of whack-a-mole, replacing manure externalities with CO2 externalities and now rare metals externalities.
GDP is subject to Goodhart’s law. Countries lie about their GDP and also change what GDP measures, just so they can increase it.
Also, according to this study, the relationship between GDP and life satisfaction is ‘hump shaped’, life satisfaction seems to peak at around $30,000-$33,000 and then slightly but significantly decline among the richest countries. (This could potentially be an explanation for the Easterlin paradox)
I have two more degrowth policies which you haven’t mentioned, which might be more to your taste:
Tariffs on polluting goods, which would have a negative effect on growth, but a positive effect on the environment. And since most countries are protectionistic this should be politically feasible.
High severance taxes. This would also have a negative effect on growth, but also have positive impact on the environment. And since most governments like having a higher budget this should also be politically feasible.
Your proposed tech based solutions are achieved through ‘soft’ policies such as taxes instead of ‘hard’ policies such as banning, why couldn’t the other policies be achieved the same way? E.g replace sterilizing people with giving them less child care subsidies, or replace banning people from working over a certain number of hours with taxing them more? You are correct to warn of side-effects, but these policies can have positive side effects too, for example this (admittedly non-causal) study which found that working less hours is associated with higher life satisfaction.
I would like to point out that carbon taxes are regressive, so it would need to be paired with a climate income if we don’t want to exacerbate the rising wealth inequality.
It will arguably have negative ethical aspects if total utilitarianism is right, but it arguably won’t have negative ethical aspects if one of the following ethical theories is right:
Negative utilitarianism argues that minimizing suffering has greater moral importance than maximizing happiness.
Contractarianism argues that morality is arrived from mutual agreement, and unborn children cannot agree to be born.
Kantian ethics argues “A man should never be used as merely a means to an end, but always be treated as an end in himself”. A child can be created for the sake of other people, but not for their own good and should therefore not be created.
Libertarianism argues you shouldn’t take nonconsensual actions toward other people, and people cannot consent to being created.
Positive utilitarianism argues it’s immoral that humans slaughter, experiment and destroy the habitats of billions of animals. An argument could be made that even positive utilitarianism wants us to reduce the number of humans.
There are many possible answers for contractualism and virtue ethics, so no definite conclusion there.
Counter-arguments could be made of course, but overall a (surprisingly) large number of ethical theories could be seen as in favor of reducing the human population.
EDIT: Thanks for the response, I’ll look more into it!
Thanks for the comments. Some quick replies
You can consider total instead of per capita CO2 emissions, but then I could also consider total instead of per capita welfare (life-satisfaction or well-being). Perhaps per capita life satisfaction doesn’t grow with income (Easterlin’s paradox), but total life satisfaction increases with population size (just like total emissions increase with population size in a decoupled economy with constant per capita emissions).
The decrease in emissions is not quick enough, but the question is what is the most effective way to make it quicker. As we already see some decoupling, further and faster decoupling seems feasible. We could make it faster, with more technological innovation. I don’t see much evidence that degrowth would result in faster emission reductions, given the fact that it seems hard to even start degrowth. No country voluntarily started degrowth so far. And to meet climate policy targets with only degrowth, degrowth not only has to start, but it also has to be very fast.
One reason to grow now is to have more money available for more scientific research to have more technological solutions to many problems such as climate change. Spending money on campaigns to have an economy with less money (i.e. degrowth campaigns to reduce GDP), seems to me more like a waste of money, that could have been used to fund research. (And not just a waste of money, but also in a sense a bit stealing and burning money.)
Other types of environmental damage are also a concern just like climate change, but as with climate change, no sufficient reason for degrowth. Environmental costs of rare metals can be included in the price, as a tax, just like a carbon tax. And the human rights violations can more effectively be addressed with appropriate international policy than with degrowth.
The more autocratic countries seem to lie more about their GDP, but this does not refute the usefulness of GDP. And as GDP positively correlates with many important measures (life expectancy,…), I don’t think it is so bad to not attempting to decrease GDP.
Thanks for the study about GDP and life satisfaction. On Easterlin’s paradox, this is an interesting read: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/coryFCkmcMKdJb7Pz/does-economic-growth-meaningfully-improve-well-being-an
Tariffs on polluting goods and severance taxes are proposed by degrowthers, but also by most mainstream economists, so I don’t consider them to be characteristic degrowth policies.
Giving parents less child care subsidies seems a bad idea to me, given some studies I recently heard about that free child care is probably at least as good (cost-effective) as direct cash transfers. Child care subsidies are good for household incomes (mothers can work more and earn higher income) and child development.
Taxing people from working too much hours: I think that basically comes down to the usual labor taxation we already have, especially in a progressive income taxation system. People who work more hours have higher incomes and hence higher marginal tax rates in a progressive system. That is basically taxing extra working hours.
Working less may indeed result in higher life satisfaction, but people can freely choose to work less, if they want such higher life satisfaction. But that also means they earn less, so they face a trade-off between money and life satisfaction. It is possible that people prefer more money above more life satisfaction. If this is the case, then from a preferentialist utilitarian perspective, it is better if people earn more money (hence higher GDP) than if they get a higher life satisfaction. Looking back at Easterlin’s paradox: a higher GDP results in more preference satisfaction than a higher life satisfaction does. So if preference satisfaction (and not life satisfaction) is what ultimately matters, growing GDP is good.
A carbon tax is indeed regressive, and a climate income (carbon fee and dividend) system is more progressive, but I’m not sure that such a system is more progressive than a system where the carbon tax income is for example used to fund clean tech R&D. It could be that clean tech R&D can more effectively reduce emissions and reduce climate change than a fee and dividend system. And if climate change harms the poorest people more (marginal damages or costs to people in poorest countries are highest), then reducing more climate change might be more progressive. So if you include future generations and people in poor countries, I’m not sure whether the “carbon fee and dividend” system is more progressive than a “carbon fee and clean tech R&D subsidies” system.
You can have population ethical theories that entail having fewer people is good, but they also often face very counter-intuitive implications. Negative utilitarianism could entail a preference for total extinction (through sterilization). I don’t see how contractarianism, Kantian ethics and libertarian ethics really entail having a smaller population is good.