Degrowth, green energy, social equity, and circular economy

Massive fires, floods, and heat waves are making the climate and biodiversity crises ever more evident, and the need for economic transition ever more urgent.

Andrew Nikiforuk, in I Warned Against the Green Energy ‘Boom.’ It Sparked Debate, argues for degrowth.  Despite huge resistance among policy makers, degrowth in the transportation sector is essential and could be readily achieved with tax measures.

Policy makers should also integrate green energy in a circular economy while addressing social equity. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation popularized the circular economy concept. MacArthur was the fastest solo sailor to circumnavigate the world – in only 71 days: “After circling the globe – carrying everything she needed with her – she returned with new insights into the way the world works, as a place of interlocking cycles and finite resources.”

MacArthur concluded that our economic system is fundamentally flawed. Her foundation promotes three principles: eliminate waste and pollution, keep products and materials in use (e.g., “right to repair”), and regenerate natural systems.

A circular economy contrasts with a one-way, linear economy that depletes natural resources, transforms them into waste, and pollutes residual natural capital through resource extraction, production, and waste disposal practices.

Kenneth Boulding’s 1966 paper, The economics of the coming spaceship earth, is often cited as the origin of the circular economy concept. Boulding, a pioneering ecological economist, drew on his knowledge of natural systems and the 1960s fascination with space travel to consider Earth as a finite, closed system – a spaceship.

Boulding predicted that “the time is not very far distant, historically speaking, when man will once more have to retreat to his current energy input from the sun, even though this could be used much more effectively than in the past,” adding that “tomorrow is not only very close, but in many respects it is already here,” and “it seems to be in pollution rather than in exhaustion that the problem is first becoming salient.”

Boulding characterized attitudes as: why worry “when the spaceman economy is still a good way off (at least beyond the lifetimes of any now living), so let us eat, drink, spend, extract and pollute, and be as merry as we can, and let posterity worry about the spaceship earth.” He wrote, “I am tempted to call the open economy the “cowboy economy,” the cowboy being symbolic of the illimitable plains and also associated with reckless, exploitative, romantic, and violent behavior.”

Canada has done little to implement a circular economy, whereas the People’s Republic of China incorporates it in economic planning. Some scholars trace the concept back to China and Japan of the 1600s.

At the start of the Edo Period (1603-1868), Japan faced severe environmental degradation, exhausted farmland, depleted forests, and famine. Azby Brown’s Just Enough: Lessons from Japan for Sustainable Living, Architecture and Design explains how Japan reversed deforestation, increased agricultural yields, and grew its population while keeping people fed, housed, clothed, educated, and healthier than before.

A Japan Times review laments that “people who would benefit most from this book — those with the requisite power and influence in policymaking — are unlikely to encounter it.”

Fast forward to 2023, and an article entitled Circular economy strategies for combating climate change and other environmental issues. Its authors urge “life cycle assessment” of the industry, waste, energy, buildings, and transportation sectors. They note that the construction industry produces 40 per cent of the world’s total waste through its “obtain, manufacture, and dispose” linear model, and that half of that waste occurs at the “end-of-life” stage when building materials are discarded directly. They point to the major opportunity to recycle construction waste and apply it to new construction sites.

A circular economy differs from a “bio-based economy” that emphasizes use of biotechnology and biomass to produce goods and services. Biological materials are a major component of a circular economy – we must eat, and our waste must return to the ecosystem. But the 2023 article cautions that overreliance on bio-based materials would present “a challenge in terms of land use and land cover,” and that technologies such as carbon capture and storage are “prohibitively expensive.”

David Suzuki, in “Circular economy is too important to be co-opted by industry,” warns that Canadian corporations are “greenwashing” using circular economy jargon. But let’s not dismiss the concept – the Union of Concerned Scientists points out that Wind turbine blades don’t have to end up in landfills.  

Degrowth can go hand-in-hand with social equity measures and integrating renewable energy within a circular economy. In the transition to circularity, Indigenous wisdom that values respect and reciprocity between people and Nature will be invaluable.