Less is More - Booknotes

A friend recently read Jason Hickel’s Less is More: how degrowth will save the world and recommended it to me. The word ‘degrowth’ seems to have been floating around a bit over the last year and not knowing much about it I was intrigued. My local city library came through for me and I had Hickel’s book in my hands a few weeks later.

I work in the financial services industry and I knew from about page two of the introduction this book would be full of cognitive dissonance for me. How does someone who makes their living within the capitalist finance system come to terms with the idea that to address our global climate emergency and return humans to equity with each other and our world is to move to a post-capitalist finance system and society? Slowly and with lots of reflection, is my feeling so far.

Before picking up this book all I knew about degrowth is that it is about halting the growth of capital of our current system and somehow move more towards a stable system that doesn’t count on growth for humans and the planet to prosper. So not a lot! This is a great book as an introduction to the topic of degrowth and has further piqued my interest to learn more about how a post-capitalist society would work.

Most of the books I read about climate, waste, and the environment are very much focused on what we can do as individuals to help address these issues. Less is More focuses on systemic changes that are needed to deal with the climate crisis. I had mixed feelings of helplessness while reading, I’m not a government leader, but also glad that as an individual I can take some action to contribute to what’s needed systemically. I’ll share a few of those thoughts at the end of this post after the booknotes.

I haven’t written booknotes before and greatly enjoyed the experience. It’s something I am doing to do again in the future when I pick up a book I know will be important and change my thinking. Let’s get into it.

Introduction: Welcome to the Anthropocene and Part One: More is Less
The introduction briefly sets the scene of where the planet is heading if the climate crisis is left unchecked. New content here for me is the complex interdependencies of our world and tipping points - if we push something too far we won’t be able to stop it and the rest of the dominoes will fall as a consequence. Introduces planetary boundaries - if we cross one boundary others may follow. This includes loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, deforestation, and others. Each acts as a separate measure of climate crisis aspects and we need to keep them all within the boundaries.
Hickel touches on the basics of capitalism - Gross Domestic Product (GDP, it’s always given me a bad feeling as a measurement of progress) and endless growth for its own sake. Capitalism does not support what we need to do to halt and reverse climate change.
Next are the basics of degrowth, post-capitalist economy, animism and dualism. We need to understand how we got here so we can keep moving.

Degrowth is a planned downscaling of energy and resource use to return the economy to balance with the living world.

One: Capitalism - A Creation Story
I liked the very dry joke of the title, likening capitalism to a religion by titling it as a core religious concept of a creation story. Hmm.
A history of Europe from the 1500s like you’ve never read it before. As backlash against the serfs who changed feudalism a brutal policy of enclosure happened that made public goods and areas private, followed by colonisation, and into the 1800s and the normally studied period for the Industrial Revolution.
Capitalism thrives on artificial scarcity, forcing humans to work to make money to buy private things that were previously shared and free for everyone.
Moved from animism, many non-human beings and the land itself have human properties and treated as such, to dualism, the split between mind and body as separate things, divine and earth, human as separate from nature. This led to the appropriation of nature and bodies. Body appropriation is particularly found in colonisation, this also includes the othering of coloured peoples as non-human compared to white people.

Two: Rise of the Juggernaut
Innovation fuels growth fuels productivity fuels growth.
The problem is endless growth - for what purpose?
Moved away from use-value to exchange-value. It’s not the value I get from eating this loaf of bread, it becomes about how much profit I can make from selling the loaf. Contributes to loss of skills, people are too busy working for someone else to make them profit and to make a living so don't have time to learn how to bake their own bread.
Growth for accumulation. Profit becomes capital, this is exponential and unsustainable. Drives more appropriation to accumulate more.
GDP is flawed, it only measures the health of the economy, not humans or the planet.
Structural adjustment as post-colonial strategy, so inequity and unfairness continues and it keeps capitalists in power. Rich countries structure policies and global environment so poor countries can never get ahead and must keep serving the rich. 
Juggernaut now has its own momentum, to stop it can’t be of its own accord (not fast enough to halt and reverse climate emergency) - we have to actively stop it ourselves.

Three: Will technology save us?
Lots of technological innovations to make life easier, work faster, etc. But we don’t let these gains stand and we work less, we use the gains to extract more and consume more and grow productivity and work just as much while producing more.
Climate solution plans based on technology. For example, using airplanes to spray into atmosphere solutions that will block the warmth contributing to climate crisis. This and other plans are possible but all flawed.
They’re too slow, have unknown consequences, don’t do enough for issues outside the global warming part of the climate crisis. They don't address other planetary boundaries that contribute to the crisis.
These plans might be part of what we can do but they're not the only things that are needed. If we keep using technology gains for further capital growth we will never get ahead of the crisis.

Part Two: Less is More
Four: Secrets of the good life
This chapter explores the things that make people happier, healthier and wealthier, while at the same time creating equity between humans.
The commons need to be restored - access to land, gardens, growing food. Also includes public services, healthcare, education, transport. These are the things to spend money on and expand instead of capitalism.
Countries that rank highly on happiness and well-being do so on much smaller GDP rates than “rich” countries like the US.

Five: Pathways to a post-capitalist world
This is the real crux of the book, where Hickel arrives at the majority of the systemic strategies needed to move us into a post-capitalist world.
Includes reducing energy and material use, and what the economy can be focused on instead.
Stop planned obsolescence
Reduce advertising (perceived obsolescence)
Stop food waste
Policies to restore commons as discussed in previous chapter, including economic and social realms
Cancel debt at the national level
Reduce working week
Support workers to transition between industries

Six: Everything is connected
A return to animism, which supports radical abundance rather than dualism and artificial scarcity of capitalism.
Learn from cultures that still recognise and live within the complexity of our world as humans and non-humans together. We all rely on each other and should be treated as such. Interdependence is the key.

Concluding thoughts
I greatly enjoyed Less is More. It is a great introduction to degrowth concepts and it immediately changed how I think about capitalism and what we need to achieve to stop the climate crisis. Despite Hickel focusing on systemic requirements, we can take away some actions as individuals from his points in Chapter 5.

Stop planned obsolescence: we can do our best to live intentionally, only bringing into our lives those items we need and deeply want. We can buy items that are the best quality we can afford, to avoid needing to replace them more often. The movement for the right to repair is gaining momentum so hopefully more and more items will be repairable in the future as well.

Reduce advertising (perceived obsolescence): this is a fun one to attempt. We can’t remove all advertising from our lives but we can absolutely remove a lot! Install ad blockers on all devices where possible, and avoid free to air radio and television. Unsubscribe from as many marketing emails from brands as you feel comfortable to do. Reduce use of social media and keep follows and likes only to your core interests, review this regularly. Combining some of these tactics goes a long way to reducing the amount of advertising we are exposed to, which helps reduce the feeling of missing out or believing buying one more item will give us happiness and fulfillment.

Stop food waste: this one is a constant struggle in my home. It’s difficult to only buy what you know your household will eat, and how do you get through all the leftovers while they’re still good and the freezer is already full? Composting helps with the actual food waste part, enabling you to pop all the fruit and veggie offcuts into a place where they will become beautiful and useful soil.

Advocacy and activist work: for all of Hickel’s solutions, we as individuals can support organisations and politicians working to move our world in post-capitalist directions. This takes practice to feel comfortable talking about and sharing emotive topics like the climate crisis, but start with friends who you know share some of the same views, build confidence and go from there. There are so many campaigns and petitions to support I hope everyone can find one to suit their ideas and confidence.

I have my eye on so many other environment and climate related books I do not know which one to read next! First though, a few fiction and light hearted reads before diving back into the world of non-fiction and challenging ideas.