Yves here. This is depressing. Politicians, businessmen, economists and following them, the popular press, have fetishized economic growth even though a lot of is it groaf (dirtier air and water, more processed food, more crapified products designed to have short-ish lives and force frequent replacement, lower housing affordability, and often worse conditions for workers due to surveillance and productivity demands, such as 24/7 on call expectations for many white-collar employees). You would think that Europeans, with their greater general receptivity to the reality of global warming and perhaps some memory of better lifestyles under more democratic socialist regimes, would be willing to entertain the costs of groaf and settle for less. But it appears not.
Mind you, fossil fuel interests bear a great deal of responsibility for effective climate change denialism. But so too do Green New Deal hopium-sellers, who sold the idea that there would be no growth cost to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
By Ivan Savin, Associate Professor of Quantitative Analytics, ESCP Business School and Lewis King, Postdoctoral research fellow in Ecological economics, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Originally published at The Conversation
Debates about the necessity and desirability of economic growth are shifting. Among researchers working on sustainability and climate policy, there is growing scepticism about whether continued economic growth is necessary to achieve the social and environmental goals of a sustainable society. Some argue that we should move beyond growth as a central policy goal altogether, as it is counter-productive to staying within environmental limits.
But this shift in thinking is not mirrored among the public.
In a new study, we surveyed almost 17,000 people across 13 European countries to understand how citizens view the role of economic growth in building a sustainable society. The results reveal a striking contrast with academic debates.
Most Europeans Still Believe in Economic Growth
A clear majority of Europeans – nearly 60% – believe that economic growth is necessary to achieve social and environmental goals. Fewer than one in ten take a clearly sceptical stance towards growth. For most respondents, economic growth is not seen as something to limit or abandon, but as something that underpins key aspects of modern societies, from funding environmental protection to improving life satisfaction.
A Wide Gap with Experts
This stands in sharp contrast to earlier research on climate policy experts, where only around 14% of researchers expressed pro-growth views, while a much larger share were indifferent or sceptical about the role of growth.
In other words, while scepticism about growth has become widespread among experts in the EU, it remains a minority position among citizens.
Not Seen as a Trade-Off
The difference is not simply a matter of priorities, but of how the relationship between growth and sustainability is understood.
Academic debates often frame the issue as a tension or trade-off between economic expansion and environmental protection. Yet our findings suggest that most citizens do not perceive such a fundamental conflict.
People who support economic growth are no less concerned about climate change than those who are sceptical of it. Nor are they less supportive of climate policies.
This points to a different view among the public, where growth is evaluated not as an end in itself, but as a means of achieving broader societal goals.
More Than Self-Interest
Another common assumption is that support for economic growth is driven primarily by self-interest.
However, the patterns in our data tell a more nuanced story. Pro-growth attitudes are associated not only with values linked to personal success and material well-being, but also with values related to equality, social equity, and collective well-being. This suggests that many people see economic growth as a way to support society as a whole, rather than simply as a path to individual gain.
Differences Across Europe
At the same time, support for growth is not uniform across Europe. We aggregated the views within each country in a single growth support index scaled between -1 (strong growth scepticism) and +1 (strong growth support), and this index tends to be lower in countries that are wealthier and more equal, where basic needs are already widely met.
In such contexts, citizens may feel less dependent on further economic expansion to secure well-being. Differences also emerge in how people think climate policy should be designed. Those who are more sceptical about growth are generally more supportive of regulatory measures, such as bans on high-emission activities, while pro-growth respondents tend to favour policies based on public investment and subsidies.
Why This Matters for Policy
These differences matter because they shape what kinds of policies are likely to gain public support.
The growing prominence of growth-sceptical perspectives in academic and policy discussions reflects important concerns about environmental limits. However, our findings suggest that these perspectives have not yet translated into widespread public support.
For policymakers, this creates a challenge. Climate policies need to be ambitious enough to address environmental risks, but also aligned with how citizens understand economic and social progress. If policies are framed in ways that appear to undermine economic stability or public services, they may struggle to gain traction, even among populations that are otherwise concerned about climate change.
The gap between expert debates and public opinion therefore raises broader questions about how sustainability transitions are communicated and implemented. If growth-sceptical ideas are to play a larger role in policy, they will need to connect more clearly with people’s concerns about jobs, security and well-being.
At the same time, if economic growth remains central to political narratives, it will need to be reconciled more convincingly with environmental goals.
Ultimately, the future of climate policy in Europe will depend not only on scientific evidence and economic arguments, but also on how citizens perceive the role of economic growth in their lives. Right now, that perception remains firmly rooted in the idea that growth is part of the solution, not the problem.
I don’t think that most regular folks think of things like hedge fund manager fees and bank fees and insurance premiums as growth…
I think a lot of people conflate economic growth with a rising standard of living and don’t even think about economic rent.
And when they hear degrowth they just think that it’s an excuse to impoverish them.
Maybe this study was set to take this into account, but they don’t show all the questions or statements in the survey they did.
It makes all sense: these academics are highly conscious environmental experts and not economists. In Capitalism growth is necessary and most people these days are brainwashed to believe that Capitalism is “what there is”, that, in the infamous slogan of Thatcher: “there is no alternative”. EU GDP growth is very low in any case and that affects everyone’s economy.
Ask in China or even the USA for a counterpoint, the “pro-growth” segment should be much higher. It’s definitely not just a European issue but a global capitalist ideological one.
It’s interesting (but not at all unexpected) that Spain is the most pro-growth country, even if it’s also one of the most advanced in terms of renewable energy generation. Not just unemployment is high (and has been so since the 70s) but also salaries and job security are very low. It’s a country in perpetual social crisis and, in such circumstances, the environment is a secondary concern.
Spain’s groaf is mostly about adding warm bodies to its population. Strip away its enormous population growth and you see it starkly laid out even in conventional economic terms – pathetic productivity growth, low gdp per capita growth, wages barely keeping up with inflation, relatively high unemployment (huge unemployment in its southern half), huge and rising housing costs, growing congestion and spiralling living costs in the cities where the growing “opportunities” in labour intense low productivity jobs, especially tourism are located and are being filled mostly by immigrants. The result is that a widening disconnect between the so called economic boom shown by the stats which is mostly about benefiting the property speculators and slum lords and the banksters financing them, and everyone else, and this is priming a social bomb which will go off in the next big downturn. And people are holding this model up as some type of way forward? What a joke.
I can say one thing for go-go economic growth, it sure is good for climate change. If you are a fan of rising temperatures and unpredictable weather, wild fires and algae in the reflecting pool, an ice free Arctic ocean and a collapsing Thwaites glacier, then you love economic growth. Remember sports fans capitalism, like the neocons, has no reverse gear and no brakes. Enjoy the ride.
Neo-liberalism, expressed as financial capitalism, is a death trip.
I recall that the yellow vest movement was set off by Macron declaring climate change poverty for ye, wealth for me – i.e., if the economic cost is not shared (neo-liberalism), then it seems all a sham to shift wealth.
This is very basic psychology – give one kid a cookie and nothing to the second, and the second wants no one to have a cookie. Partying billionaires have trouble selling poverty to the masses in the name of climate change.
I did a search for the word “fair” in the article. Nada. Ivory tower indeed.
Here’s a set of proposals from degrowth advocate, Jason Hickel, that would satisfy anybody’s idea (other than a billionaire) of what’s “fair:”
We’re getting a preview this summer, thanks to the Iran War and a super El Nino, of what it feels like when the slope of the production curves for food and other goods turns negative. People with money will be fine, and those with a lot of money will probably benefit, but for most folks, it’s getting harder answering questions about how to allocate scarce resources when food keeps going up right along with electricity rates for running the air conditioner in a heat dome. Degrowthers advocate first for an honest assessment of our polycrisis situation, a crisis driven by the increased energy use and materials throughput that comes with economic growth. Then the goal shifts from “how can we keep doing what we’re doing” to “how can we land this plane.”
Obviously, degrowthers are up against some powerful forces with Business As Usual interests, as noted by Yves above. In the rich West, they’re also working against generations of acculturation to consumerism. But it’s hard to argue that there’s a lot about this culture worth preserving.
The poll highlights a tendency that’s apparently quite old. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is quoted as saying:
So the author of that passage observed that humans can persist in denial until it’s too late. We seem to have arrived at the place where the goal shifts from how can we avoid collapse to how the survivors can rebuild a better society, one more in harmony with the planet that gives it life.
Actually, the whole point of that passage is that it was far from obvious that the catastrophe was coming soon (‘But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man …’ etc.). So it is not a case of people ignoring the obvious signs (‘being in denial’), it’s a case of there being no obvious signs. It’s not as if Yahweh had put up a large neon sign in the sky with a countdown to the deluge or something like that.
First of all, where the writer of that passage got the idea about how people reacted to Noah in the story of the Flood is unclear. There’s nothing in Genesis about it. Book I of the Sybiline Oracles includes a story about YHWH commanding Noah to preach repentance, but that may not be the source of the story, but it at least is confirmation that stories about Noah and his contemporaries were floating around when “Q” was being put together.
More importantly, you’re missing the long tradition in the Hebrew bible of the “hardening of the heart.” The most well-known example is Moses’s demands to Pharaoh. The more Moses demanded that his people be let go, the more the plagues piled up, the harder Pharaoh’s heart became and the more irrational his refusals to accede to Moses’s demands. The example that illustrates the process with respect to a broader group of people is the call of Isaiah in isaiah 6:
And he [YHWH] said, “Go and say to this people:
With that context, Noah becomes another preacher of repentance whose preaching serves to further harden the hearts of its hearers. It was a way of putting YHWH in ultimate charge of the process that certainly looks like a rejection of the message YHWH gave the prophet. Without that need, we can simply say that human denial in the face of a clear need for a change of course is nothing new.
“Climate denialism” is a preposterous and anti-scientific lable that does no credit to the writer who, it must be acknowledged, has fully earned a great deal of credit. Was Einstein a Newton denialist?
Hmm, perhaps you have an alternative choice of words for those who argue climate change is a hoax?
Suggested reading; Wump World by Bill Peet.
Hint; the space ship is a metaphor.
Why is there any need to introduce overtly political word choices and (enjoyable) children’s books into this discussion? That was my point.
This is interesting:
https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3115576/1/2021-Hogarth_et_al_Prog_in_Oc_UK_Tide_gauges_long_200_years.pdf
Maybe you have a point of sorts. For the paid liars who peddle denialism to be right will certainly require a completely new physics.
Yves Smith: “You would think that Europeans, with their greater general receptivity to the reality of global warming and perhaps some memory of better lifestyles under more democratic socialist regimes, would be willing to entertain the costs of groaf and settle for less.”
I will speak for Italy, which, as ever, is unique. And on the map, I see Italy in eye-popping green.
The reason Italians favor growth is simple: For more than 30 years, European austerity economics have caused wage stagnation and very slow economic growth. The Italian governments of types like Berlusconi, Renzi, and Draghi have used austerity policies and EU diktats as excuses for pauperizing the working class, privatizing the national health service, privatizing other industries, eliminating worker protections, abusing unions, shutting off Russian gas supplies, buying expensive U.S. liquid natural gas, cutting pensions, raising the retirement age, and generally turning Italy into a subservient member of the EU.
In Italy, a yearly growth rate of 2 percent would be considered healthy after so much stagnation.
So the authors are not dealing with local conditions.