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“Perhaps the answer is that it is necessary to slow down, finally giving up on economistic fanaticism and collectively rethink the true meaning of the word 鈥渨ealth.鈥� Wealth does not mean a person who owns a lot, but refers to someone who has enough time to enjoy what nature and human collaboration place within everyone鈥檚 reach. If the great majority of people could understand this basic notion, if they could be liberated from the competitive illusion that is impoverishing everyone鈥檚 life, the very foundations of capitalism, would start to crumble (p. 169).”
― Franco Bifo Berardi

“When people live in a fair, caring society, where everyone has equal access to social goods, they don鈥檛 have to spend their time worrying about how to cover their basic needs day to day 鈥� they can enjoy the art of living. And instead of feeling they are in constant competition with their neighbours, they can build bonds of social solidarity.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“The problem isn鈥檛 just the type of energy we鈥檙e using; it鈥檚 what we are doing with it. Even if we had a 100%-clean-energy system, what would we do with it? Exactly what we are doing with fossil fuels: raze more forests, trawl more fish, mine more mountains, build more roads, expand industrial farming, and send more waste to landfill 鈥� all of which have ecological consequences our planet can no longer sustain. We will do these things because our economic system demands that we grow production and consumption at an exponential rate.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“It鈥檚 not growth itself that matters 鈥� what matters is how income is distributed, and the extent to which it is invested in public services. And past a certain point, more GDP isn鈥檛 necessary for improving human welfare at all.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“Under capital鈥檚 growth imperative, there is no horizon 鈥� no future point at which economists and politicians say we will have enough money or enough stuff. There is no end, in the double sense of the term: no maturity and no purpose. The unquestioned assumption is that growth can and should carry on for ever, for its own sake. It is astonishing, when you think about it, that the dominant belief in economics holds that no matter how rich a country has become, their GDP should keep rising, year after year, with no identifiable end point.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“When capital has bumped up against limits to profit-growth in the past, it has found fixes in things like colonisation, structural adjustment programmes, wars, restrictive patent laws, nefarious debt instruments, land grabs, privatisation, and enclosing commons like water and seeds. Why would it be any different this time? Indeed, a study by the ecological economist Beth Stratford finds that when capital faces resource constraints, this is exactly what happens: it turns to aggressive rent-seeking behaviour. It seeks to grab existing value wherever it can, with clever mechanisms to suck income and wealth from the public domain into private hands, and from the poor to the rich, exacerbating inequality.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“Consider this thought experiment: if Portugal has higher levels of human welfare than the United States with $38,000 less GDP per capita, then we can conclude that $38,000 of America鈥檚 per capita income is effectively 鈥榳asted鈥�. That adds up to $13 trillion per year for the US economy as a whole. That鈥檚 $13 trillion worth of extraction and production and consumption each year, and $13 trillion worth of ecological pressure, that adds nothing, in and of itself, to the fundamentals of human welfare. It is damage without gain. This means that the US economy could in theory be scaled down by a staggering 65% from its present size while at the same time improving the lives of ordinary Americans, if income was distributed more fairly and invested in public goods.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“Today, nearly every government in the world, rich and poor alike, is focused single-mindedly on GDP growth. This is no longer a matter of choice. In a globalised world where capital can move freely across borders at the click of a mouse, nations are forced to compete with one another to attract foreign investment. Governments find themselves under pressure to cut workers鈥� rights, slash environmental protections, open up public land to developers, privatise public services 鈥� whatever it takes to please the barons of international capital in what has become a global rush towards self-imposed structural adjustment. All of this is done in the name of growth.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“When we innovate more efficient ways to use energy and resources, total consumption may briefly drop, but it quickly rebounds to an even higher rate. Why? Because companies use the savings to reinvest in ramping up more production. In the end, the sheer scale effect of growth swamps even the most spectacular efficiency improvements.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“Progress in human welfare has been driven by progressive political movements and governments that have managed to harness economic resources to deliver robust public goods and fair wages. In fact, the historical record shows that in the absence of these forces, growth has quite often worked against social progress, not for it.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“We know exactly what we need to do in order to avert climate breakdown. We need to mobilise a rapid rollout of renewable energy 鈥� a global Green New Deal 鈥� to cut world emissions in half within a decade and get to zero before 2050. Keep in mind that this is a global average target. High-income nations, given their greater responsibility for historical emissions, need to do it much more quickly, reaching zero by 2030. It is impossible to overstate how dramatic this is; it is the single most challenging task that humanity has ever faced. The good news is that it is absolutely possible to achieve. But there鈥檚 a problem: scientists are clear that it cannot be done quickly enough to keep temperatures under 1.5掳C, or even 2掳C, if we keep growing the economy at the same time. Why? Because more growth means more energy demand, and more energy demand makes it all the more difficult 鈥� impossible, in fact 鈥� to roll out enough renewables to cover it in the short time we have left.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“On a global scale, growth in energy demand is swamping growth in renewable capacity. All that new clean energy isn鈥檛 replacing dirty energies, it鈥檚 being added on top of them.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“There is an enormous net flow of resources that goes from poor countries to rich countries. The patterns of extraction that characterised colonisation remain very much in place today. But this time, instead of being seized by force, those resources are being handed over by governments that have been rendered dependent on foreign investment and beholden to the growth imperatives of capitalism.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“The thing about growth is that it sounds so good. It鈥檚 a powerful metaphor that鈥檚 rooted deeply in our understanding of natural processes: children grow, crops grow鈥� and so too the economy should grow. But this framing plays on a false analogy. The natural process of growth is always finite.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“The problem with economic growth isn鈥檛 just that we might run out of resources at some point. The problem is that it progressively degrades the integrity of ecosystems.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“As ecological breakdown triggers tipping points, as agricultural output declines, as mass displacement undermines political stability, and as cities are ruined by rising seas, the environmental, social and material infrastructure that underpins the possibility of growth 鈥� and indeed the possibility of organised civilisation 鈥� will fall apart.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“We will find ourselves plunging into ecological collapse well before we run into the limits to growth.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“Lashed to the growth imperative, technology is used not to do the same amount of stuff in less time, but rather to do more stuff in the same amount of time.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“Upper-middle income and high-income nations 鈥� countries over the threshold of $10,000 per capita 鈥� could in theory deliver flourishing lives for all, achieving real progress in human development, without needing any additional growth in order to do so. We know exactly what works: reduce inequality, invest in universal public goods, and distribute income and opportunity more fairly.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“Any policy that reduces the incomes of the very rich will have a positive ecological benefit. And because the excess incomes of the rich win them nothing when it comes to welfare, this can be accomplished without any cost to social outcomes.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“Growthism is little more than ideology 鈥� an ideology that benefits a few at the expense of our collective future. We鈥檙e all pushed to step on the accelerator of growth, with deadly consequences for our living planet, all so that a rich elite can get even richer. From the perspective of human life, this is clearly an injustice. And indeed we have been aware of this problem for some time. But from the perspective of ecology, it is even worse 鈥� it is a kind of madness.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“It is politically easier to rev up GDP and hope some of it trickles down to the poor than it is to distribute existing income more fairly.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“Those who insist that aggregate growth is necessary to improve people鈥檚 lives force us into a horrible double-bind. We are made to choose between human welfare or ecological stability 鈥� an impossible choice that nobody wants to face. But when we understand how inequality works, suddenly the choice becomes much easier: between living in a more equitable society, on the one hand, and risking ecological catastrophe on the other.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“It鈥檚 high-income countries that are the problem here, where growth has become completely unhinged from any concept of need, and has long been vastly in excess of what is required for human flourishing.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“Our economic system is structurally dependent on growth, it serves the interests of the most powerful factions of our society, and it is rooted in a deep-seated world view of dominion and dualism that goes back some 500 years. This edifice will not yield easily. Not even to science.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“If we want to have a decent shot at keeping temperatures under 1.5掳C, we have to cut global emissions in half by 2030 and get to zero before 2050. It is impossible to overstate how dramatic this trajectory is. It means nothing less than the rapid and dramatic reversal of our present direction as a civilisation.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“If the rich have more money than they can spend, which is virtually always the case, then they invest their excess in expansionary industries that are quite often ecologically destructive.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“The vast majority of major, collaborative infrastructure projects around the world have been guided by government policy and funded by public resources: sanitation systems, road systems, railway networks, public health systems, national power grids, the postal service. These are not the spontaneous outcomes of market forces, much less of abstract growth. Projects like these require public investment. Once we realise this, it becomes clear that we can fund the transition quite easily by directing existing public resources from, say, fossil fuel subsidies (which presently stand at $5.2 trillion, 6.5% of global GDP) and military expenditure ($1.8 trillion) into solar panels, batteries and wind turbines.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“Faith in technology as the ultimate solution to all problems can thus divert our attention from the most fundamental problem-the problem of growth in a finite system and prevent us from taking effective action to solve it.”
― Donella Meadows, The Limits to Growth

“We can choose to keep shooting up the curve of exponential growth, bringing us ever closer to irreversible tipping points in ecological collapse, and hope that technology will save us. But if for some reason it doesn鈥檛 work, then we鈥檙e in trouble.
It鈥檚 like jumping off a cliff while hoping that someone at the bottom will
figure out how to build some kind of device to catch you before you crash
into the rocks below, without having any idea as to whether they鈥檒l actually be able to pull it off.
It might work 鈥� but if not, it鈥檚 game over. Once you jump, you can鈥檛 change your mind.

If we鈥檙e going to take this approach, the evidence for it had better be rock solid. We鈥檇 better be dead certain it will work.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World