Any plan for the future is a gamble. We cannot know what the future holds, we can only make a reasoned guess based on the evidence we have available.
But not all gambling is the same. Different bets have different odds, and different stakes. Sustainable growth is a bad bet, the stakes are high, the odds low and the payout low. On the other hand, degrowth is a good bet: its stakes are low, odds high and the payout high.
Clearly this view is very different than the one Leigh Phillips set up in his recent essay ‘The Degrowth Delusion’. Here, Leigh attacks what he sees as a revival of Malthusian thinking in ‘sections of the environmental community’, which have embraced ‘limits to growth’ arguments.
