Aren’t we doing enough already?

  • Excess emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases generated by human activity as well as the global climate warming these emissions generate constitute only one out of the nine planetary boundaries identified as the critical limits for human life on Earth (see "What are planetary boundaries?”). At present, six out of the nine boundaries have been crossed, climate being "only" the fourth of them in terms of gravity. Even if humanity were able to bring climate warming back within safe operational limits today, this would not solve the threat posed by excess chemical pollution, biosphere degradation, disruption of nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, of freshwater cycles and land artificialization. Moreover, reaching CO2 neutrality would reduce the amount of new GHG we emit, but it would not solve the problem of the GHG already present in excess in the atmosphere. To achieve this, a drawdown of GHG is necessary, which requires a massive restoration of natural habitats (for instance forests) to fulfil their role as carbon sinks. Finally, in the present context of massive energy and raw material overconsumption by the world's bigger economies, trying to achieve CO2 neutrality without a drastic reduction of global energy and material use would have further disastrous impact on most other planetary boundaries. For instance, biosphere degradation, fresh water cycles and land artificialization would be greatly affected by the expansion of mining activities necessary to provide lithium, cobalt and other rare earth minerals for the production of the batteries and the digital infrastructure needed for industrial production of renewable electricity.

  • Yes, they can, and they should! But cleaner resources also pollute. So, even if we move to cleaner substitutes, their quantity matters nonetheless. Solar and wind, for example, are cleaner than coal, but building the needed infrastructure also requires significant amounts of energy and materials (steel, concrete, copper, etc) and the energy they generate must be stored on batteries using large amounts of lithium or cobalt. If we were to achieve the carbon emission reduction goals of the Paris agreement through cleaner technologies, the global demand for rare-earth elements – which implies mining and thus large scale environmental damage – would rise from 300 to 1000 percent by 2050. Doing so could possibly limit climate warming, but it would also significantly worsen the situation in terms of other planetary boundaries such as biodiversity loss, land system change, fresh water use and pollution. Moreover, in order to have any effect on carbon emissions, a transition to cleaner technologies must go along with phasing out the dirty alternatives. Unfortunately, present trends point rather in another direction. While sales of electric vehicles are growing, so do the sales of fossil fuel-powered SUVs; while solar and wind power are growing quickly, fossil fuel use is doing just the same. Rather than substituting dirty energy sources, cleaner technologies are so far only adding more energy to the system. Cleaner substitutes are essential to reduce environmental impacts, but they cannot achieve this on their own, without a significant reduction of overall resource use.

  • They can. However, in market economies under capitalism whose primary goal is to maximise financial surplus-value, it has been empirically shown that the more efficiently resources are used, the cheaper they become, and the more total resources get used. This is the essence of economic growth: labour and resource productivity free resources that are then devoted to more production and new services, extracting more value. This is what is called the “rebound effect”, as theorised by economist Stanley Jevons in 1865 already. So although a technical efficiency gain is supposed to decrease resource use, the available data shows that more resource-efficient economies keep increasing their overall material use.

    Don’t get us wrong: resource efficiency is important and it will play an essential part in the transition towards a sustainable future. But to reduce the impact of our economies on the ecosystems, we simply need to produce less in order to use much less natural resources. In other words, if we want to bring our economies back within safe planetary boundaries, it will not be enough to slow down the pace at which we increase our consumption of natural resources. We need to sharply diminish the overall quantity of resources we use. A good way to move in this direction is to combine efficiency improvements with regulatory limits: caps, or mandated reductions in resources and pollutants.

    Moreover, efficiency improvement unfortunately also has its own physical limits. There is a point beyond which efficiency can no longer compensate for any further increase of production. Not only are there limits on how far, but also on how fast efficiency can improve. The energy efficiency of some goods like refrigerators or cars has been increasing at 2 percent per year over the last thirty-five years , but not everything can improve so quickly. Air travel efficiency hasn’t changed much, for instance, while the efficiency of electric power plants only improved 1 percent per year.

  • Making today’s economy more circular will definitely help reduce its ecological impacts, but it is not sufficient to bring us back within safe planetary boundaries. Recycling and reusing stuff also takes human and natural resources and energy. The bigger the circle is, the faster the circulation takes place and the more energy and resources are used. Moreover,the circular economy is a false image: many of the resources we use today cannot be reused or recycled, or only partially so. Here again, as with cleaner technologies (see “Can’t clean resources substitute for polluting ones?”) better production and usage processes need to be coupled with a reduction of total resource use in order to be helpful in the long run.

It sounds impossible. Or catastrophic.

  • The ecological situation on Earth is indeed dire (to say the least). The damage inflicted upon the biosphere by human industrial production and consumption patterns cannot easily be reversed. Even if it were possible to magically halt today all factors driving us ever further outside of the planetary boundaries, we would still be confronted with an ecological peril of unprecedented scale.

    It will be a very different world from the one we know today, with greater ecological dangers and drastically less natural resources easily available. However, if the right decisions are taken and implemented quickly enough, even this drastically different world could be a healthier and happier world than it is now for all beings living in it. Doing all that is possible in order to limit the damage remains absolutely meaningful and essential. We should aim to construct a world in which a dignified human life is possible for everyone without jeopardising future generations and other species. The chance of seeing this world one day being realised depends on the efforts we invest today in making it possible, however improbable our chances may seem!

  • No. A society with much lower levels of material consumption, and yet higher levels of well-being, is perfectly possible. It is true that achieving the necessary material footprint reduction will require us as a society to make choices and give up on a certain number of things, goods, services, consumption patterns and habits which are the most resource-intensive or which contribute the least to our general well-being. Adapting to this will undoubtedly represent a big challenge for everyone, both collectively and individually. We would have to learn to live with less of certain things like cheap air travel, online shopping with instant delivery, individual cars, fast fashion and 1-way items, or cheaply available exotic foods. We should progressively phase out the things that we can collectively agree on as being superfluous (see infosheet “Democratising the economy”).

    At the same time however, massive investments would be made in public services, improving public transport, healthcare, access to energy, education, housing, local food production, culture, and other things. Qualitative access for everyone to publicly available services will be the basis on which it will be humanly possible to develop a society with much lower consumption, and higher well-being. Reducing the material footprint of our country’s economy does not mean we will have to give up on the benefits of the scientific and technological achievements of the past centuries. Access to modern healthcare, transportation, communication technologies, and other fruits of human progress will actually be more easily available to most, than they are now.

  • Just as is the case between the global north and the global south (see: “Will we not have to live like people in very poor countries if we radically reduce our energy and material use?”), material use reduction will not affect everyone in the same manner in Belgium. Wealthier people, because their lifestyles often have a greater material footprint, will proportionately have to contribute a much bigger effort to the national material use reduction. This said, even the less wealthy parts of the Belgian population will have to change aspects of their daily lives in order to reach the global sustainable levels. But the good news is, if the reduction of our material footprint comes hand in hand with ambitious social policies, as advocated in our manifesto, this lifestyle change can be a change for the better in terms of well-being. Even with a 65% reduction of raw materials use in Belgium, provided resources are allocated fairly and to the right purposes, there is more than enough to secure a good life for everyone, and thus improve the living conditions of the most vulnerable in our society.

  • To achieve a raw material use reduction, we will necessarily need to produce less stuff, which in turn implies that less stuff will be sold. A phase during which GDP might diminish is thus very likely. At the same time, new less resource-intensive economic activities will be developed as a direct consequence of the decrease in material production, in particular in fields such as repair and maintenance (which will become much more crucial economic sectors as things will necessarily need to be repaired and maintained rather than replaced). Moreover, as long as we make sure to attribute enough of the available resources to improving accessibility and quality of basic public services, providing meaningful jobs and social justice, the impact of a reduction of GDP on people doesn’t have to be negative. On the contrary, making the political choice of prioritising the well-being of citizens over economic growth has all chances to improve the quality of life for the majority of people.

  • Therein probably lies one of the main hurdles preventing the implementation of ecologically and socially sound policies! The stark raw material use reduction which is required to avoid an ecological collapse will only bear its fruits in a future which lies far beyond the issues at stake in contemporary politics. In the short term of electoral cycles, such a policy is difficult to carry for political parties because it is seen as a position that will cost them votes and thus the political power necessary to realise any policy at all. Building a large support base for such policies in the civil society and among the population is a good way to both pressure politicians into taking more courageous stances and also facilitate public acceptance of difficult, but necessary changes. This is precisely what this campaign is about.

  • To begin with, a substantial part of the needed transition will be financed by implementing a fairer and stronger taxation regime. This new taxation regime would need to close the loopholes of globalisation and tax evasion, to tax all companies over the business they do in our country rather than only on the basis of where these companies are legally located, to have increased taxation rates for more environmentally and socially harmful businesses, to tax revenues from both labour and capital equally and to tax wealthier parts of the population proportionally more than is the case at present. Further taxes such as a wealth tax should also be envisaged in order to generate more income while reducing inequalities.

  • Once social inequalities have been effectively reduced and the most polluting industries have been phased out, revenue from the taxes that were initially devised to get there will indeed fall. At that point, a more profound transformation of our economic system will be needed in order to both maintain the levels of natural resource use within sustainable limits and to be able to further develop and support the high quality public services and welfare we advocate for. A promising path for such a transformation can be found in the principles of the Modern Monetary Theory. This trend in economics envisions a system in which the state regains control over money printing, and is able to finance public services directly by generating the necessary liquidity. In such a system, the value of money is represented by the fact that there are people who are available and skilled to provide services which are needed by others (think of all public services). Rather than generating income for the state, taxes become a way to regulate the money supply in the economy, and thus, inflation.

  • By making choices, as a society, about what is essential to us and what is superfluous, and by phasing out the production of what is (considered to be) superfluous. Replacing harmful products and production processes with better ones that are less polluting, socially just and more energy efficient will evidently also play a key role, but the bulk of the necessary material use reduction will be achieved by halting production and consumption of certain goods and services altogether. These will not be easy choices. Involving everyone in a large-scale and fair democratic debate will be essential to realising such a plan (see infosheet “Democratising the economy”).

  • As stated in our manifesto, the necessary material use reduction will have to be carried out in a globally just manner if we are to achieve a sustainable situation for human life on our planet. In 2017, the per person material use of the world richest countries was over 13 times that of the poorer countries (this difference has since increased). While high income countries like Belgium will need to drastically reduce their material footprint to reach the global sustainable levels (- 65% for countries of the EU), many poorer countries still have margin to increase their material use to improve their infrastructures and services. In other words, if the richer countries engage in the steep material use reduction necessary to bring their economies back within planetary boundaries, no one on the planet will have to live as people do in today’s world’s poorest regions.

  • Material use reduction means less stuff. The question is: how happy does stuff really make you? As explained in our info-sheet “a culture of sustainability” scientific studies indicate clearly that beyond a certain level, increased consumption no longer improves well-being. In other words, the ability to possess, or to have access to a certain amount of stuff is needed in order to achieve well-being, and thus happiness, but beyond that, happiness no longer depends on this factor. We argue that there is more than enough stuff available to humans in order to guarantee the conditions of happiness for everyone while respecting the natural limits of our planet. Once the basic material needs are comfortably met, making it possible for everyone to be happy will depend mainly on how we are able to achieve social justice, to foster peaceful and mutually beneficial cohabitation between communities, to create a sense of security and freedom, and to free time and mental space for culture, spirituality and relationships.

  • Travel will of course still be possible, but differently. For instance, if today you are used to taking a plane several times a year, you will probably only fly once every couple of years, and only for destinations that can not reasonably be reached with low impact means of transportation. Generally speaking, travelling will become much slower than it is now. At the same time, in a more socially just division of travelling resources and time off work, it would actually become easier and more accessible for most people to travel, visit friends and family, and see the world.

  • Yes, you will. However, online services and more generally speaking the infrastructure enabling the internet as it is today has a very large energy and material footprint which will have to be reduced as well. The same applies to the numerous devices we use to access the internet. In the future, you will probably keep your smartphone much longer than you do now before replacing it. Repair and long- term support will replace planned obsolescence and constant software upgrades. You will probably also be making a much more reasoned use of data transfers. For instance, instead of being constantly online and receiving a constant flux of notifications, updates and messages, you might have to tell your phone to go online each time you need an information, or to check your email. Possibly, streaming services will no longer offer movies in ultra high definition, social media will include much less video material and websites will be streamlined for lower data transfer rates…

What on earth does life look like with 65% less?

So who are you, to propose all this?

  • No, we don't. But technological innovation alone will not solve the ecological problem, nor will it establish social justice. Technological improvements in terms of energy and resource use efficiency will play an essential role in reducing the impact of our economies on the environment. Therefore, research in this direction should be prioritised. But without strong policies to cap resource use and bring it down quickly to sustainable levels, technological innovation and efficiency gains risk to just further stimulate overproduction (see "We are so much more efficient today than we were 100 years ago, why should it stop? Can't resources be used even more efficiently?").

  • No. To secure a sustainable and just world for our children to live in, our two main objectives are to reduce global raw material use, while improving social welfare and justice. Lowering the GDP - what most people think of when they hear the word ‘degrowth’ - is not an objective on its own in that regard. But a lower GDP might very well result from the measures necessary to achieve the two above-mentioned objectives, and we are not afraid of that. As explained in our infosheet “Well-being as a central policy goal”, GDP is not an adequate manner to measure the level by which an economy serves its people. Rather than advocating for a lower GDP, we advocate for an increase of well-being, both for our own and for future generations, by whatever means possible, for as long as it allows us to get back and remain within planetary boundaries and ensure global social justice.

  • As much as there is no precedent to the crises we are living in at present, there is no precedent to the transition we believe is necessary. So we cannot be sure that it is feasible, or how it will play out exactly. What is known for sure is that the way we function today is already carrying us into disasters of all kinds. Scientific evidence points in that direction and the world’s most respected scientific panels are urging for an immediate change of course. That is precisely what we are proposing with this campaign. Rather than a vague exercise in hope, we propose on the one hand to take a good look at some of the hard truths. On the other hand we propose a change of perspective that allows us to see some solutions we can try out.

    We don’t buy into the fearsome idea that ‘saving the planet’ necessarily comes at the expense of people’s happiness. We also don’t believe that some groups will have to suffer, to be cut off from well-being, or even from survival, in order for the rest to thrive and survive. In fact, we believe the contrary: a planet that remains inhabitable for humans can only be achieved through various kinds of social justice and collaboration.

    Compared to this picture, the ‘speculative exercise in vague hope’ is rather the status quo, the insufficient solutions being tried out so far.

  • No, we are not affiliated to any political party.

  • We are a network of independent and concerned citizens - scientists, activists and artists - working on a voluntary basis. For more details go to the “about” section of this website.

  • Nobody “profits” from this campaign. Or better said, if it succeeds in making the policies outlined in our manifesto more popular and bringing them closer to their political feasibility, we believe everyone will profit from it. This campaign is about fostering a more socially just and ecologically sustainable society for everyone.

  • This campaign receives no institutional funding. Everyone working for it does so on a voluntary basis. The material costs (website, banners, printouts, etc) are financed via crowdfunding. You can support us with donations here.

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