I'm increasingly interested in degrowth-oriented politics as well as a career as an environmental scientist, so when I saw an article in Nature (a well-known science journal) titled "Degrowth can work—here's how science can help," I was excited to read it. It wasn't the first time a major science outlet has gone here: the IPCC Sixth Assessment explicitly discussed degrowth, too!
While the Nature article certainly introduces some concepts of degrowth well, I found that with regards to specific actions it fell into a realm that I generally think anyone can do, not just scientists or those who work in science. The core ideas of the article are the following: Remove Dependencies on Growth; Fund Public Services; Manage Working-Time Reductions; Reshape Provisioning Systems; and then, in my words, Make It Politically Feasible. These are all good goals and there can be science in support of these, but I wouldn't call "Manage Working-Time Reduction" and act of doing environmental science. "Doing Environmental Science" today is the work of getting to know particular places/systems, stitching together data-rich and data poor landscapes and processes, marrying correlation with mechanism to describe causation of physical processes, navigating peer review & publishing & outreach. But the the list from the article felt like a list that anyone could implement in the quotidian managerial, communicative, and political actions that we perform every day of our lives.
So I've been thinking about what environmental science work towards degrowth might look and feel like. I find degrowth mindsets relatively common amongst my peer scientists, who have often become interested in sciences out of a desire to live better with nature, more sustainably, and to study it more closely. I would love to hear your ideas, too, or responses to these thoughts.
1. Publish and celebrate publishing negative or neutral results. Studying nature means we are always studying open systems, with many potential unknowns and messy intertwined influences. While I believe every individual scientist knows that some results lead nowhere or may not pass various checks of significance, it is often discouraged or impossible to publish these investigations in peer-reviewed ways. This limits the extent of knowledge sharing between scientists, teams, and institutions (what was tried? what didn't work?), leading to unnecessary repetition. Additionally, the bias of primarily publishing positive results creates a tone in science of a false sense of control and wisdom. This false confidence in the understanding and precise quantification of natural phenomena has fueled hubris in environmental engineering and management, twisting the knot of environmental systems tighter and straining our resources. The negotiations of the Colorado River Compact are a prime example.
2. Develop science of the local. Much of the natural sciences rests on an epistemological stance that the laws of the universe are universal: that a behavior observed here is should be replicable there. (I'm not a great philosopher of science and could use to learn more about how to explain this!) While I agree with this in principle, when this expectation is applied to the environment (as opposed to, say, laboratory chemistry) it can get a bit awkward. I collaborate with environmental scientists who work hard to abstract their results beyond the particular place they are studying in order to get it published, or to get better employment; it is seen as less prestigious to share results that are unique to a place. Abstracted science does not need to die, but I believe that we need to work to celebrate equally the work that fights against the environmental damage that abstraction permits. Environmental impacts are not abstract: they are essential elements of the history of place, and we need to support people doing the work to understand the particular dynamics of particular places in order to build sustainability into the future.
3. Write and refine life-cycle analyses. I have mentioned life-cycle analysis (LCA) in a few newsletters now: it's the act of determining the (typically environmental) impacts of all of the stages of an industrial process. For instance, the carbon LCA of some asparagus on your dinner plate could include the carbon the asparagus sequesters as it grows; the carbon emitted during production of the fertilizer used on the field; the emissions that resulted from the irrigation the plant required; the vehicles used to transport the asparagus to processing facilities, the grocery store, and then, ultimately, your plate. There are varying degrees of what gets included in LCA, and the broader the inclusion, the more difficult the analysis, generally. (Should we include the carbon emitted to pump the water used to flush your toilet after you've excreted the remains of the asparagus? I'm not sure, but you could.) LCA is a very messy but technical business, but there is hard work being done to standardize elements of it. It helps us grapple with the scale of impact of various decisions we make as consumers, and it is work that environmental scientists and engineers are well-equipped to handle.
Those are my first three ideas to orient environmental science work more towards degrowth. Of course different choices will be relevant to other kinds of scientists, from nuclear physicists to psychologists. If you're an economist, incorporating a pro-degrowth orientation into your work should be more self-evident.
Assessing the carbon footprint of this email,
Lukas
p.s. Thanks to everyone who helped me raise money for City Surf Project; International Surfing Day was really fun, and together we met our fundraising goals!
While the Nature article certainly introduces some concepts of degrowth well, I found that with regards to specific actions it fell into a realm that I generally think anyone can do, not just scientists or those who work in science. The core ideas of the article are the following: Remove Dependencies on Growth; Fund Public Services; Manage Working-Time Reductions; Reshape Provisioning Systems; and then, in my words, Make It Politically Feasible. These are all good goals and there can be science in support of these, but I wouldn't call "Manage Working-Time Reduction" and act of doing environmental science. "Doing Environmental Science" today is the work of getting to know particular places/systems, stitching together data-rich and data poor landscapes and processes, marrying correlation with mechanism to describe causation of physical processes, navigating peer review & publishing & outreach. But the the list from the article felt like a list that anyone could implement in the quotidian managerial, communicative, and political actions that we perform every day of our lives.
So I've been thinking about what environmental science work towards degrowth might look and feel like. I find degrowth mindsets relatively common amongst my peer scientists, who have often become interested in sciences out of a desire to live better with nature, more sustainably, and to study it more closely. I would love to hear your ideas, too, or responses to these thoughts.
1. Publish and celebrate publishing negative or neutral results. Studying nature means we are always studying open systems, with many potential unknowns and messy intertwined influences. While I believe every individual scientist knows that some results lead nowhere or may not pass various checks of significance, it is often discouraged or impossible to publish these investigations in peer-reviewed ways. This limits the extent of knowledge sharing between scientists, teams, and institutions (what was tried? what didn't work?), leading to unnecessary repetition. Additionally, the bias of primarily publishing positive results creates a tone in science of a false sense of control and wisdom. This false confidence in the understanding and precise quantification of natural phenomena has fueled hubris in environmental engineering and management, twisting the knot of environmental systems tighter and straining our resources. The negotiations of the Colorado River Compact are a prime example.
2. Develop science of the local. Much of the natural sciences rests on an epistemological stance that the laws of the universe are universal: that a behavior observed here is should be replicable there. (I'm not a great philosopher of science and could use to learn more about how to explain this!) While I agree with this in principle, when this expectation is applied to the environment (as opposed to, say, laboratory chemistry) it can get a bit awkward. I collaborate with environmental scientists who work hard to abstract their results beyond the particular place they are studying in order to get it published, or to get better employment; it is seen as less prestigious to share results that are unique to a place. Abstracted science does not need to die, but I believe that we need to work to celebrate equally the work that fights against the environmental damage that abstraction permits. Environmental impacts are not abstract: they are essential elements of the history of place, and we need to support people doing the work to understand the particular dynamics of particular places in order to build sustainability into the future.
3. Write and refine life-cycle analyses. I have mentioned life-cycle analysis (LCA) in a few newsletters now: it's the act of determining the (typically environmental) impacts of all of the stages of an industrial process. For instance, the carbon LCA of some asparagus on your dinner plate could include the carbon the asparagus sequesters as it grows; the carbon emitted during production of the fertilizer used on the field; the emissions that resulted from the irrigation the plant required; the vehicles used to transport the asparagus to processing facilities, the grocery store, and then, ultimately, your plate. There are varying degrees of what gets included in LCA, and the broader the inclusion, the more difficult the analysis, generally. (Should we include the carbon emitted to pump the water used to flush your toilet after you've excreted the remains of the asparagus? I'm not sure, but you could.) LCA is a very messy but technical business, but there is hard work being done to standardize elements of it. It helps us grapple with the scale of impact of various decisions we make as consumers, and it is work that environmental scientists and engineers are well-equipped to handle.
Those are my first three ideas to orient environmental science work more towards degrowth. Of course different choices will be relevant to other kinds of scientists, from nuclear physicists to psychologists. If you're an economist, incorporating a pro-degrowth orientation into your work should be more self-evident.
Assessing the carbon footprint of this email,
Lukas
p.s. Thanks to everyone who helped me raise money for City Surf Project; International Surfing Day was really fun, and together we met our fundraising goals!