austerity/de-growth rhetoric

2 files changed, 128 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/bibliography.bib b/bibliography.bib
index 6fe2b20..32917f0 100644
--- a/bibliography.bib
+++ b/bibliography.bib
@@ -1,3 +1,55 @@
+@report{financial-lives-2024,
+    title={Financial Lives 2024 survey},
+    date={2025-05-16},
+    author={{Financial Conduct Authority}},
+    url={https://www.fca.org.uk/financial-lives/financial-lives-2024},
+    urldate={2026-06-05},
+}
+
+@report{ca-thin-ice,
+    title={Walking on thin ice},
+    subtitle={The cost of financial insecurity},
+    author={Hardy, Gwennan and Lane, Joe},
+    publisher={Citizens Advice},
+    date={2018-02},
+}
+
+@article{nea-nov-2024,
+    url={https://www.nea.org.uk/news-insights/fpad-2024-salford-release},
+    urldate={2026-06-05},
+    title={New data reveals how much it really costs to keep your home at a safe temperature},
+    date={2024-11-26},
+}
+
+@report{hunger-uk-2024,
+    title={Hunger in the UK},
+    address={Salisbury},
+    author={{The Trussel Trust}},
+    date={2025-10},
+    url={https://cms.trussell.org.uk/sites/default/files/2025-11/hunger_in_the_uk_261125.pdf},
+    urldate={2026-06-05},
+}
+
+@article{cosme-2017,
+    title={Assessing the degrowth discourse},
+    subtitle={A review and analysis of academic degrowth policy proposals},
+    author={Cosme, Inês and Santos, Rui and O'Neill, Daniel W.},
+    journal={Journal of Cleaner Production},
+    volume={149},
+    pages={321--324},
+    doi={10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.02.016},
+    date={2017-02-03},
+}
+
+@article{vansintjan-2019,
+    author={Vansintjan, Aaron},
+    title={Degrowth vs. the Green New Deal},
+    url={https://web.archive.org/web/20190502042514/https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/degrowth-vs.-the-green-new-deal},
+    urldate={2026-06-04},
+    journal={Briarpatch},
+    date={2019-04-19},
+}
+
 @report{limits-to-growth,
     date={1972},
     author={Meadows, Donella H. and Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows and Randers, Jørgen and Behrens III, William},
diff --git a/chapter1.md b/chapter1.md
index a872ce6..b0817fa 100644
--- a/chapter1.md
+++ b/chapter1.md
@@ -190,11 +190,82 @@ footprint calculator, which had previously been an obscure concept.
 [@bp-carbon-calculator; @don-miller-bp; @safire-2008; @solman-2008;
 @supran-2021; @kaufman-2020]
 
-Because they have mis-diagnosed the root causes of the problem, they too often
-go on to propose incredible solutions.
-
-The worst is simply to cut consumption. Most of the world's people can't afford
-to cut back.
+Having mis-diagnosed the root causes of the problem, green rhetors too often go
+on to propose incredible solutions. The worst is simply to cut consumption.
+Since _The Limits to Growth_ was published for the Club of Rome in 1972
+[@limits-to-growth], the green movement has frequently emphasised a message of
+austerity or 'de-growth,' echoing the austerity rhetoric which dominated the
+cost-of-living discourse in the 1970s and since that time
+[@climate-change-class-war, pp. 158-159].
+
+So, in 2006, George Monbiot set out his manifesto for putting the UK through a
+90% cut in greenhouse gas emissions. While Monbiot acknowledged that austerity
+rhetoric was a hard sell, repent did he not:
+
+> I have one purpose in writing this book: to persuade you that climate change
+> is worth fighting. Failing that, I have one last hope: that I might make
+> people so depressed about the state of the planet that they stay in bed all
+> day, thereby reducing their consumption of fossil fuels.
+> [@heat, p. \[WHICH?\]]
+
+More appealing still, Monbiot suggests cutting yourselves off from your loved
+ones to save the climate:
+
+> Perhaps the most intractable cause of global warming is ‘love miles’: the
+> distance you must travel to visit friends and partners and relatives on the
+> other side of the planet. The world could be destroyed by love.
+> [@heat, p. \[WHICH?\]]
+
+Two fans, Sharon Astyk and Miranda Edel, inspired by the book, set out in 2007
+to reduce their household consumption to 10% of the US average. In response to
+Monbiot's observation that 'people don't riot for austerity,' they called their
+personal austerity campaign a 'Riot for Austerity' and blogged about their
+efforts online, finding hundreds of people from around the world joining them in
+their 'riot.' As Chris Rootes observed, in spite of their impressive efforts, the movement had very little impact.
+
+> This action, interesting though it is, scarcely resembled a riot, or, indeed,
+> any other form of collective action. It was a series of individual efforts to
+> minimize carbon emissions for a limited period of time. \[…\] insofar as
+> knowledge of the experiment was shared, the take away message was how hard it
+> was to drastically reduce consumption whilst living in mainstream society.
+> [@rootes-2016]
+
+As hard as it is for relatively affluent people to cut back on their carbon
+emissions, it is harder still for the overwhelming majority of the world's
+people, who have very little discretion in what or how they consume goods and
+services. Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac implore their readers:
+
+> Reduce daily energy use, bike instead of driving a car, switch your energy
+> supplier to 100 per cent clean \[…\] Challenge your consumerism. Look at what
+> you have bought, and ask yourself whether it brings you joy. Question your
+> impulses to buy more, and begin to see how liberating it is to buy less.
+> [@future-we-choose, pp. 171-172]
+
+'How will a working class that often struggles to pay for basic services like
+heat and electricity respond to such demands?' asks Matt Huber
+[@climate-change-class-war, p. 170]. According to the Trussel Trust, in 2024,
+10.4 million adults and 3.8 million children in the UK skimped on food or had no
+way to re-stock an empty cupboard [@hunger-uk-2024]. National Energy Action
+estimated that in 2023, 15.2% of UK households were setting their thermostat
+dangerously cold, more than double the rate from the year before
+[@nea-nov-2024].
+
+Millions more stand on the precipice of hardship. Citizens Advice reports that
+the mean UK household can only afford to set 5% of their income aside for
+savings – and that's the mean. The result is that since the advent of austerity
+in the early 2010s, households have been draining their savings, leaving them
+exposed to financial shocks, like not getting as many shifts as they hoped, or
+having to call the plumber out [@ca-thin-ice]. The Financial Conduct Authority
+classifies as quarter of UK households as having 'low financial resilience' and
+estimates that barely half have enough cash to make it 3 months without
+borrowing if their main source of income were cut off [@financial-lives-2024].
+
+For many, the prospect of 'buying less' is not 'liberating,' it's the gaping
+fear of an empty stomach or the knock of the debt collector. It's hardly
+surprising that the de-growth movement has remained largely academic, with
+little impact on politics, and indeed a vague grasp on what de-growth policy
+would actually mean in practice or who you could possibly convince to make it
+happen. [@vansintjan-2019; @cosme-2017]
 
 A little better is proposing market-based policies like carbon taxes. But there
 is no credible route to implementing and sustaining an effective carbon tax,