“We're robbing people of the future right now,” says Mary Heath, sitting in her kitchen drying seeds for planting. The climate activist is talking about Earth Overshoot Day, the ominous annual milestone that marks when humanity has consumed more from the Earth than it can replenish in a year.
Globally, the deficit began on August 1st, meaning we are “using nature 1.7 times faster than the Earth's ecosystems can regenerate.”
Australia's overshoot date was April 5th.
Despite facing the climate crisis, resource depletion and biodiversity disaster, businesses and governments continue to cling to the notion of eternal growth.
Climate activist Mary Heath at her home in Adelaide. Photograph: Shea Duff/The Guardian
But there is a growing movement to slow or stop the rate of growth, or even downsize the economy to save the world. They are not talking about reducing the quality of life anywhere, let alone in the developing world. What they are talking about is sustainability, the value of resources other than money, and the recognition that infinite growth is impossible and that pursuing it is disastrous for the planet.
Heath is a dynamic and passionate example of people who want to put the brakes on – call it anti-consumerism, anti-capitalism, de-growth, de-growth or a return to simpler times.
She has mended dozens of holes in thrift store sweaters, runs six different compost piles, makes worm farm covers and cushions out of old denim jeans using her grandmother's overlock machine, and even made a shroud for her best friend out of her favorite clothes.
Seeds ready to be planted. Photograph: Shea Duff/The Guardian
She's a guerilla gardener, collecting seeds, propagating them and planting native plants in neglected corners of Adelaide's suburbs.
In 1992, Bill Clinton's press secretary, James Carville, coined the phrase “It's about the economy, idiot,” a phrase that remains popular on the campaign trail today due to its appeal in its simplicity.
But a growing number of people are questioning whether our pursuit of “growthism” is leading us to make foolish economic decisions.
The recent drive for economic growth has focused on the birth rate “crisis”, the ageing of the population and their impact on the economy.
The argument is that plummeting birth rates will result in a shrinking pool of young taxpayers unable to support a growing elderly population. And population growth means economic growth, but that means… what exactly?
Economic growth has lifted millions out of poverty, but it has done little to bring equality. Statistics show that its benefits have gone overwhelmingly to the pockets of those who are already wealthy. And endless economic growth is inextricably linked to consumption, which in turn hampers parallel efforts at sustainability.
Think of the ultra-rich and their superyachts.
Not to mention the problematic assumption that women are responsible for giving birth to the humans that support this never-ending growth.
For now, the world's population is still growing. Nandita Bajaj, executive director of the US nonprofit Population Balance, says discussing population is taboo among those opposed to permanent growth. She told a forum this week that population and consumption (and the associated emissions) are intimately linked, but there's a reason the left and the degrowth movement avoid this discussion.
Although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that “globally, gross domestic product per capita and population growth continued to be the largest drivers of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion over the past decade,” Bajaj says people are still “very uncomfortable” talking about the link. It's taboo.
This, she says, is due to a combination of human exceptionalism, a sense of entitlement and superiority, a distaste for past coercive birth-reduction policies and a pro-natalist push to have more children for the sake of gaining more political power or to pressure economic growth and “more taxpayers”.
Professor John Quiggin, an economist at the University of Queensland, says the entire fertility crisis is a “hoax”, and not just because policies to address it appear to have failed across the board.
“Economically speaking, the cost of raising a child is much higher than the cost of caring for the elderly,” he says.
However, since the cost is borne by the parents, in a sense they are giving a “free gift to society.”
“They're in pretty good health until six months before they die, at which point they'll need the same level of care as a baby,” he says, “so it doesn't make sense to raise a baby to take care of an elderly person.”
Sandra Cunk, a former Democratic senator and national executive director of the Australian Sustainable Population Association, agreed. “The cost of raising a child is much higher than the cost of putting someone in a care home,” she said, adding that having more children puts even more strain on the planet.
“So the resources that we think are available to us aren't available to our children,” she says, “which contributes to climate change and creates greater instability.”
As for fears about an ageing population, she says they are based on flawed assumptions: “That everyone over 70 is basically going to have dementia, that all the baby boomers are going to end up in nursing homes, etc.”
“Most of them are making fantastic contributions. Many are still working… and those who are retired are running free babysitting services for their grandchildren.”
The growth myth
More broadly, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Olivier De Schutter, has spoken of the “ideology of 'growth'” and said that it “must not distract from the urgent need to provide more goods and services that enhance well-being and to produce less unnecessary or harmful things.”
De Schutter said the government was “still acting as if infinite growth was possible” and argued that GDP growth was not necessary.
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Samples on display in Heath's home. Photograph: Shea Duff/The Guardian
“A shift from a profit-maximizing economy to a human rights economy is possible and necessary if we are to stay within planetary limits,” he wrote in the July report.
Ian Rowe, professor emeritus at Griffith University's School of Environmental Science, says population growth is just the easiest way to keep the economy growing. “But if the economy grows by 3% and the population grows by 3%, on average nobody wins,” he says.
“As our population continues to grow, we need to reduce our environmental impact per person to maintain the status quo in terms of our environmental impact.
“If we don't stabilize the population in a socially acceptable way, sooner or later it will be stabilized by disease or by conflict among ourselves.”
As Kunk puts it: “Nature strikes last. It's the planet that fights back and determines population levels.”
De Schutter says there are other ways to tackle poverty, social exclusion and inequality. The productive economy relies on “the so-called reproductive economy”, which he writes is “unpaid, in families and communities, and in which women are the main contributors”.
We must recognise and value care work – looking after children, parents and dependents – he says, pointing out that a post-growth scenario doesn't mean austerity, but a transition to a society that is less dependent on growth. It's about human rights, not the endless pursuit of more.
Peter McDonald, professor emeritus at the Australian National University's School of Humanities and Social Sciences, said there are three drivers of economic growth – “population, participation and productivity” – and that population is not the best option.
“You can't beat productivity,” he says. “If you can maintain a high level of productivity, the other two become supplementary. But Australia's productivity has been pretty bad recently.”
Increased productivity, and therefore improved living standards, are often achieved through new technologies, and artificial intelligence could be part of the answer, he says.
“It's so scary.”
And yet the idea of downsizing appears to be gaining ground.
Especially as the cost of living continues to rise, some people are embracing degrowth, abandoning fast fashion and working to reduce consumption in order to reduce their impact on the planet.
A 2023 YouGov survey found that almost half of Brits surveyed said environmental sustainability influences their purchasing choices.
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“Underconsumercore” is trending on social media, with people showcasing their recycled goods, second-hand clothes, and their ability to reduce, reuse and recycle as an antidote to mass consumerism and fast fashion.
For Heath, it's a matter of ethics and integrity (as well as education and fun). She's not telling others what to do, or deluding herself into thinking that one person's actions will solve everything. But she says we have to stop growing forever, and that means organizing and taking collective action to force change.
“We need to recognise that we are living through a climate emergency. We are living through the collapse of the natural world and we cannot tolerate this level of waste.”
Heath has a stepdaughter, but she says she disagrees with some people's notion that a DNA connection makes her more important than anyone else on the planet. “I just think, 'Why would I want to have children? There are plenty of young people in life who need that extra adult attention,'” she says.
In 1968, Paul R. Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, sparking fears of overpopulation and mass starvation due to the Earth's inability to feed the masses. He revisited the concept in his memoir, A Life.
The book, he writes, “despite its flaws,” remains “a useful lens.”
“The film has awakened millions of people to the fundamental issue of the limits of the planet to support human civilization.”
He wrote that he was targeted at the time because the economic “fairy tale” that population growth and rising per capita consumption would “ensure eternal expansion of human enterprise and therefore human happiness” ignored the true costs of production, including environmental costs.
He welcomes the falling birth rate and says population reduction is desperately needed.
“But with rapidly growing threats to our biophysical and social existence, effectively exacerbated by population growth, I very much fear that we have less than two decades left to change our ways,” he wrote.
“After all, we are already in overshoot.”
