A degrowth world seems impossible to imagine. Could we use health to shift public opinion? 

The economic system in which we live is based on perpetual growth for economic gain: a simple example of this might be UK Chancellor, Rachel Reeves’ recent approval of the Heathrow airport expansion to boost national GDP. Allowing more flights to and from the UK massively increases CO2 emissions, having major implications on the health of people and planet.

Degrowth has been suggested as an alternative to the capitalist system which would help to decarbonise the economy, but people often don’t recognise it as a viable solution. Might an argument around health be a way to shift public opinion? 

In his book Less is more: How degrowth will save the world, expert Jason Hickel explains degrowth as ‘a planned reduction of energy and resource use designed to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human well-being.’ 

Almost all mainstream economists, from conservatives like Milton Friedman to liberals like Jeffrey Sachs, will claim that we need growth to improve well-being, but Hickel notes that “For the vast majority of the history of capitalism, growth didn’t deliver welfare improvements in the lives of ordinary people; in fact, it did exactly the opposite.” Chair of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, Richard Smith explains, degrowthers generally don’t advocate for a rapid shutdown of the global economy, recognising that would cause chaos; instead, it would entail ‘purposeful downsizing and global redistribution’, while focusing on policies such as ‘active transport, plant-based diets, ecological agriculture, insulating homes, sharing, repairing, and favouring second-hand products over new ones’, and more that would have huge benefits for well-being. 

Another alternative to perpetual and damaging economic growth is what some have labelled as ‘green growth’. People with this view claim that we can decouple environmental harm from growth in order to solve climate change, meaning we grow the economy without increasing CO2 emissions, pollution and habitat destruction. Hickel identifies the problems with this: Firstly, despite huge advances in renewables, infinite growth will be so energy intensive that renewables alone won’t suffice and fossil fuels will have to be used.  Secondly, it’s important to remember that rising global temperature is only one crisis amongst many of the environmental crises we are facing. The extraction of the minerals required for renewables (such as lithium) require mining, which is damaging to communities and ecosystems. Finally, there is a risk that if we decided to continue growing the economy with a 100% renewable grid, we would simply use this renewable energy to continue activities such as overfishing, road expansion and industrial farming.  

‘There is no alternative to capitalism’  

It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism; a concept known as ‘capitalist realism’. Coined by philosopher Mark Fisher, it’s defined as ‘the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.”  
If asked directly, most people would likely agree that infinite growth on a finite planet is mathematically impossible – but claims like ‘capitalism is the best we’ve got’ or ‘everything else has failed’ are often offered as a counter-argument. It can seem impossible to imagine a degrowth world, especially when even most political parties claim growth is imperative to survival. 

Capitalist realism is so entrenched that many don’t even think of capitalism as just one economic system among many options, but rather ‘how the world works’. 

But isn’t it survival of the fittest? Just basic human nature? 

Our economic system feeds us the belief that humans are inherently selfish and that success or failure is natural selection, with anyone who has not ‘succeeded’ deserving their fate. However, when studying the animal kingdom, it is observed that there is a huge amount of community and mutual aid among social species – and humans are no exception. For hundreds of thousands of years we survived only by working together, traditionally in the form of hunting or cooking and later in early civilisations. We see countless examples of selflessness in modern society today: aid workers risking their lives in dangerous places, firefighters running into burning buildings for others, and people volunteering, caring or giving money to charities. Some may counter that greed is a natural part of human nature; others would disagree, but even if this is the case, so is selflessness. Would the mere existence of greed be enough of a reason to build an entire economy that thrives off it? 

Can public opinion be shifted? 

Fisher explains there are ways to overthrow the belief that capitalism is inevitable. One of these is explaining that we did, in fact, make the economy up! Our current economic system is not a hard science or universal fact; it was simply decided as a way of handling capital a few hundred years ago. Humans came up with this system, and humans can change it. Austerity doesn’t have to be the status quo, the climate doesn’t have to be burning up, nature doesn’t have to be destroyed to keep growing the economy forever, and not everything can or should be run for profit. 

Communication is central to shifting public opinion, and for this to be effective, it is imperative to engage people across the political and socioeconomic spectrum. Given the range of different opinions on economics, politics, climate and more, this can be a major challenge. 

As part of my internship with the UKHACC, I attended the Global Climate and Health summit. In my blog reviewing the conference, I note that Jeremy Farrar, chief scientist of the World Health Organisation, highlighted the absence of health at the forefront of the climate agenda is a missed opportunity to galvanise action, given the ‘universal truth’ that everyone cares deeply about their health and healthcare. 

This is strongly supported by research undertaken by Britain Talks Climate which investigates people’s attitudes to climate change and a broad range of issues surrounding it. The population is divided into seven groups with wildly different outlooks, some very pro-climate action (eg. progressive activists) and some generally anti (eg. backbone conservatives). However, their research suggests that health and the NHS are key priorities for all groups, ranking either highest or second highest in terms of voting considerations and overall issues of concern. Health and the NHS are certainly national priorities that people deeply care about, and as our economic system contributes to climate breakdown, our health and healthcare systems suffer the consequences. Framing discussions around health and healthcare could therefore be an entry point for changing minds. 
Around 90% of the population live in extreme poverty, whilst the wealth of the world’s billionaires grew by $2trillion in 2024.  What’s clear is that the destruction of climate, nature and human potential under our current economic system will come to an end, one way or another. When talking about the possibility of a different economic system, one major stumbling block is that it’s labelled ‘impossible’ or ‘ridiculous’, and growth is claimed as the only way out of every crisis we face. Part of the difficulty in arguing for degrowth is that people claim there are no practical steps to it. But you don’t need a bulletproof solution to identify a problem. Rather than trying to work out every little detail of a degrowth society, it should be pointed out that there are lots of different models and we don’t need to have one specific vision.

Some countries are already experimenting with economic models that de-prioritise growth. The concept of a wellbeing economy, for example, is an economy designed to serve people and the planet, rather than the other way around. Rather than treating economic growth as an end in and of itself and pursuing it at all costs, a wellbeing economy puts human and planetary needs at the centre of its activities. Scotland, Wales, Iceland, Canada, Finland and NewZealand are working together through the Wellbeing Economy Governments Group to deepen understanding and test alternative visions to build wellbeing economies.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish First Minister when the group was founded in 2018, said at the time, ‘When we focus on wellbeing, we start a conversation that provokes profound and fundamental questions – what really matters to us in our lives.’ Other examples of countries exploring themes around wellbeing include Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness index, and Amsterdam’s efforts to implement the Doughnut Economics model.  

There is increasing recognition that our current system is failing, and we need to think about what we do when it inevitably does. Framing degrowth in terms of the benefits to our health and healthcare systems may, therefore, be the most promising strategy in getting people talking, investigating and ultimately realising the possibilities of degrowth.