The value of sacrifice in (post-)growth scenarios

Figures & data

Table 1. Outline of post-growth scenarios.^a

Core components of phased-in transition	Features	Impact
Assumptions	Accelerated rate of extinction of Earth’s biota Accelerated rate of producing high-entropy throughput Finite resource base Risk of social and environmental collapse at planetary scale	A fair distribution of burdens and benefits between communities within the planet’s ecological limits
Short- and medium-term policy goals	Developing national accounts of wellbeing Building carbon-saving public assets Downscaling of production, consumption, and waste of goods and services for all non-renewable resources Decoupling-targeted policies Shift in the burden of taxation from economic goods (e.g. incomes) to ecological bads (e.g. pollution) Developing community-based assets (e.g. bonds, currencies, habitats, commons)	Improving the work-life balance
Long-term policy goals	Ecological education and training of ecologically literate workforce Better standards on product durability, sustainability, and fair trade Reform of the multilateral trading system	Creating resilient eco-communities Framing issues of social-ecological justice

a ) The plural is meant to emphasize the perspective of various yet related streams of thought within the large basin of post-growth scholarship. No dominant ‘grand theory’ exists yet, one that would perform not as a disciplinary specialization like ‘ecological economics’, but like the science of economics itself.

Sources: Compiled from Spash (2002); Jackson (2009); Kallis (2011); Parrique et al. (2019); Bauwens et al. (2019)..

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