We Can Only Produce So Much…

Degrowth as a Solution to the Ecological and Social Crisis

Drawing on Timothée Parrique’s Ralentir ou périr (2022)

Most of us can picture the end of the world: a meteorite striking the planet, tsunamis, a flooded coastline. But asking yourself to consider an economic system where increased production is not the goal is a difficult image. Fredric Jameson’s line “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” (Jameson, 2003) reflects a dark reality, this system has become anchored in our way of life, even shaping how we behave. Western societies are bound up with it in every dimension, more is better.

Degrowth is the attempt to fill that silence. It’s a theory that originates through Georgescu-Roegen (1971) and Serge Latouche (2007), but Timothée Parrique put it in front of a mainstream audience with Ralentir ou périr (Slowdown or Perish). He defines degrowth as “a reduction of production and consumption with the aim of lightening the ecological footprint, planned democratically in a spirit of social justice and with a concern for wellbeing” (Parrique, 2022). It is a solution to many of our society's biggest issues: an ever-growing wealth gap, an ecological crisis and growth for growth's sake.

Quantifying the unquantifiable

The main tool we use to measure growth is a flawed one. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is too simple an indicator to capture the economic situation of a country, because it counts money not time. US GDP was measured at roughly $30 trillion in 2025 (International Monetary Fund, 2025), which did not stop well over a million American children from experiencing homelessness that year (National Center for Homeless Education, 2026). In Parrique’s view the economy exists to answer the needs of a population, not for aggregates to keep rising. GDP measures quantity so quality is absent from the equation. The idea that more is better has seeped into every aspect of our lives.

We live in a world of finite resources, so at some point we will not be able to produce more. The standard solution suggested by the political system is “green growth”: keep expanding the economy while decoupling it from its ecological footprint. Some decoupling does happen, but it is far too slow to solve the crisis that we have on our hands. In the authors view, this does not work as even if the unitary population goes down as long as there are more units the issue will remain unresolved. As Parrique puts it, “the infinite is not possible in a finite world” (Parrique, 2022).

Time is a critical element to this theory. He uses the idea of the “sphere of reproduction”: everything that contributes to the care and maintenance of our labour force. Time is also a finite resource. There are twenty-four hours in a day, a natural limit to production. Technological progress is usually pointed at as the solution to this, but innovation comes from the education and labour of individuals, which is time just invisibilised by the innovation itself.

Living within our means

Degrowth does not mean having less. There is already enough wealth and enough goods to answer people’s needs; to eradicate poverty we do not need to produce more, but better distribute what exists. The obvious objection to this theory is the one taught in Econ 101: negative growth means unemployment, because less output means less demand for labour. Degrowth is not a recession. A recession is a sign of a failing system, not a total revamping of the system. Rather than manufacturing demand for work, it reorganises work. People will have shorter and redistributed hours, and work that is currently not considered as such (raising a child, volunteering etc.) will be considered true labour, as it replies to a human need.

Degrowth is not a reduction in our quality of life, it is a fall back to reality. How we live now is neither sustainable nor maintainable, and so a drastic systemic change is necessary. The goal is a “post-growth” society: production reduced until it sits in harmony with what nature can give, and then held at a stable level.

References

Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1971). The entropy law and the economic process. Harvard University Press.

International Monetary Fund. (2025). World Economic Outlook: October 2025. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2025/10

Jameson, F. (2003). Future city. New Left Review, 21, 65–79.

Latouche, S. (2007). Petit traité de la décroissance sereine. Mille et une nuits.

National Center for Homeless Education. (2026). Education of children and youth experiencing homelessness in the United States: Data summary for school years 2021–22 to 2023–24. U.S. Department of Education. https://nche.ed.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Education-of-CYEH-in-the-United-States-data-summary-for-school-years-2021-22-to-2023-24.pdf

Parrique, T. (2022). Ralentir ou périr : L’économie de la décroissance. Seuil.