Welcome to Degrowth & Sustainability
These are my opening remarks from our Degrowth & Sustainability Conference, held at Purdue on March 28, 2024.
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Good Afternoon everyone,
Welcome to our Degrowth and Sustainability conference. Let’s start off with some context for this event: Why are we here, with such a mix of students and faculty, joined by several partner institutions, and poised to discuss the possibility of actively shrinking the global economy, for the purpose of social and environmental sustainability? Spoiler alert, that’s what degrowth is.
Well, we’re really here as an extension of a monthly meeting that has been going on for almost two years now, started among EEE graduate students and myself, to discuss degrowth. These discussions over coffee and tea, were borne out of a shared skepticism about the sustainability movement’s focus on technology and efficiency.
I personally, have not only felt this skepticism for a while, but it’s what drives my research on environmental assessment and carbon footprinting standards. I worked for many years in sustainability consulting, helping clients such as Google, Coca-Cola, and the Cities of Los Angeles, Seattle, and Honolulu develop decarbonization and circular economy plans. We operated on a triple bottom line principle. People – Planet – Profit. We could reduce your energy and material demands, saving you money, and helping the planet along the way. It sounds nice, but it doesn’t describe what actually happens.
Organizations, companies, and really society in general, do not maintain resource demand reductions for long. Those profits do not sit idle. They are reinvested in expanded production and new products, i.e. economic growth, which quickly claim whatever ecological space was freed up by so-called sustainability initiatives. It is not hard to observe this macroeconomic reality, and I know we’ll hear more of the details from our speakers today. What I want to acknowledge is that so many students, sustainability advocates, and recovering sustainability professionals like myself are making this observation.
So the question becomes, what to do? And such a thought path naturally leads to degrowth, a deliberate management of economic size, within planetary limits, and correcting for distributional effects and historical injustices along the way. I have found more hope for achieving true sustainability in our monthly Degrowth Coffee Hours than in most other venues where sustainability is discussed. Our meetings have been, dare I say, growing! We now have an in-person and virtual monthly meeting and over 75 people subscribing to our newsletter and mailing list. We’ve read three books, produced our own publications, and today is the second event we’ve held in conjunction with Purdue’s Institute for a Sustainable Future.
We organized this event specifically so we could get some outside voices in the room, especially from outside of science and engineering. So, thank you to everyone who made the trip here – from South Bend, from Champaign, from across campus, and from further afield via the internet. Thank you to ISF – the voice of all planet-saving things happening on campus – for making this event happen. And to our organizing committee – Gary, Thomas, Jason, Miriam, and Bob who really spearheaded this.
One last and very important acknowledgement as we get set to discuss the economy, society, and stewardship of the earth. Purdue’s West Lafayette campus is situated on the traditional homelands of the Potawatomi, Lenape, Miami, and Shawnee People. They are the original caretakers of the land, who occupied it at different times and over many centuries. Let’s acknowledge that history as we engage in today’s debate and discussion.
Thank you.
