Degrowth Economics – Greenwashing Fossil Fuels and Nativism for Authoritarian Autarky?

Is ‘degrowth’ genuine economics theory or astroturfing for greenwashing the status quo i.e. by demanding degrowth that leaves already wealthy or <1% with existing economic and social mobility or status, but precludes upward mobility for 99%> of future generations?

Why? Creates confusion and delay for the economic, industrial and fossil fuel status quo of over a century to transition away from carbon to renewable sources.

Although not cited by either The Conversation or Grist below, the degrowth, steady state and autarkist constructs are not new, see 1930s Italy and Germany, then fast forward to the Club of Rome which promoted the construct ‘limits to growth’; good things like technology grow linearly vs. bad things like emissions and people grow exponentially. 

Aided both the fossil fuel ‘free market’ Atlas or Koch Network and nativist faux environmental movement related to Tanton Network demanding closed borders, immigration restrictions, withdrawal from trading blocs e.g. EU & multilateral agreements in favour of bilateral agreements, that favour more powerful nations and entities over the less powerful; suggests eugenics?

From The Conversation:

If you follow the degrowth agenda, it leads to an economy that looks a lot like the sickly UK

The degrowth movement has become very popular in recent years, particularly among younger people who appreciate its critique of the endless pursuit of economic expansion. The problem with growth, advocates argue, is that it implies the use of more and more resources and energy, as well as ever larger quantities of waste.

Well, the good news for the movement is that one of the world’s leading economies has offered itself up as a case study. If you look past the debate about whether the UK’s recent technical recession is going to deepen or peter out, the economic situation is pretty dire.

One main reason for the UK stagnation is a lack of investment in productivity, which advocates of degrowth would argue is an essential part of moving away from a resource-hungry economy. So what can we learn from the UK’s experiences so far?

The degrowth perspective

Degrowth has become the latest element in a long line of critiques of economic growth. One leading proponent, the Spanish ecological economist Giorgos Kallis, defines it as the “socially sustainable reduction of society’s throughput”, which is “incompatible with further economic growth, and will entail in all likelihood economic (GDP) degrowth”.

Pursuing GDP growth is criticised, both because of its increased use of resources and for “unrealistic expectations” that technological improvement and productivity growth would allow us to stay within so-called “planetary boundaries” (meaning the limits beyond which humanity will be unable to continue to flourish).

Kallis argues that degrowth implies reduced spending on goods and new technology, while distinguishing “good” and “bad” investments:

We will have to do with less high-speed transport infrastructures, space missions for tourists, new airports or factories producing unnecessary gadgets, faster cars or better televisions.

We may still need more renewable energy infrastructures, better social (education, and health) services, more public squares or theatres, and localised organic food production and retailing centres.

Yet this fails to appreciate that a reduction in GDP implies lower investment in technologies across the board, including those underpinning renewable energy. It also misunderstands that modern economic growth is not driven by accumulating and using more resources, but by innovation through investment. Witness what has happened in the UK…

….Degrowth advocates will not welcome this kind of approach, but technological improvement is ultimately likely to be a better way of achieving their goals than impoverishing people.

From Grist:

How to ‘decouple’ emissions from economic growth? These economists say you can’t.

For nearly 200 years, two transformative global forces have grown in tandem: economic activity and carbon emissions. The two have long been paired together, or, in economist-speak, “coupled.” When the economy has gotten bigger, so has our climate footprint.

This pairing has been disastrous for the planet. Economic growth has helped bring atmospheric CO2 concentrations all the way up to 420 parts per million. The last time they were this high was during the Pliocene epoch 3 million years ago, when global temperatures were 5 degrees Fahrenheit hotter and sea levels were 65 feet higher.

Most mainstream economists would say there’s an obvious antidote: decoupling. This refers to a situation where the economy keeps growing, but without the concomitant rise in greenhouse gas emissions. Many economists and international organizations like the World Bank, the United Nations, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development celebrate evidence that decoupling is already occurring in many countries. 

“Let me be clear, economic growth coupled with decarbonization is not only realistic, it has already been happening,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, or IEA, in a commentary published in 2020.

It’s an alluring prospect — that we can reach our climate goals without fundamentally changing the structure of the global economy, just by swapping clean energy in for fossil fuels. But a band of rogue economists has begun poking holes in the prevailing narrative around decoupling. They’re publishing papers showing that the decoupling that’s been observed so far in most cases has been short term, or it’s happened at a pace that’s nowhere near quick enough to reach international climate targets. These heterodox economists call decoupling a “neoliberal fantasy.”

The stakes of this academic debate are high: If decoupling is a mirage, then addressing the climate crisis may require letting go of the pursuit of economic growth altogether and instead embracing a radically different vision of a thriving society. That would involve figuring out “how to design future livelihoods that provide people with a good quality of life,” said Helmut Haberl, a social ecologist at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria. Rather than fixating on growth, he argued, “We should engage more in the question of, ‘What future do we want to build?’” 

The basic idea behind decoupling has been ingrained in mainstream environmental thought for decades. The 1987 Brundtland Report — a landmark publication of the United Nations designed to simultaneously address social and environmental problems — helped establish it through the framework of sustainable development. It argued for “producing more with less,” using technological advances to continue economic growth while decreasing the release of pollutants and the use of raw materials.

Decoupling continues to underlie most global climate policies today. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, for example, has spent nearly two decades promoting it under its “green growth” agenda, urging world leaders to “achieve economic growth and development while at the same time combating climate change and preventing costly environmental degradation.” Decoupling is also baked into the IEA’s influential Net Zero Emissions by 2050 policy roadmap, which assumes that full decarbonization can take place alongside a doubling of the global economy by 2050. 

That economic growth should continue is simply assumed by virtually every international institution and government. Policymakers connect growth with more jobs and better living standards, and use it as the primary measure of societal well-being. They also point to growth as a way to keep pace with the rising energy demands and economic needs of a growing global population…. 

….Degrowth advocates say that deprioritizing growth could allow countries to redirect their attention to policies that actually boost people’s quality of life: shorter working hours, for example, as well as minimum income requirements, guaranteed affordable housing and health care, free internet and electricity, and more widespread public transit. 

“Degrowth is as much oriented toward human well-being and social justice as it is toward preventing ecological crises,” Vogel said.

Crucially, degrowth advocates mainly promote the concept in high-income countries, which are historically responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions. They acknowledge that many developing countries still need to grow their economies in order to raise populations out of poverty. Those existing inequities, they argue, put even more onus on developed countries to shrink polluting industries and cut their consumption, in order to balance out other countries’ necessary growth.

Several experts told Grist it was a “distraction” to ask whether decoupling greenhouse gas emissions from economic growth is possible, as this question elides many areas of agreement between green growth and degrowth advocates. Both sides agree that moving off fossil fuels will require a massive buildout of renewable energy infrastructure, and that countries need to urgently improve living standards and reduce inequality.

“The goal is to get to zero emissions and climate stabilization” while improving people’s well-being, said Pollin, the University of Massachusetts Amherst professor. “Those are the metrics I care about.”

They also broadly agree that it’s time to move past GDP as a primary indicator of societal progress. But that’s easier said than done. We are “structurally dependent” on GDP growth, as Raworth put it. Publicly traded companies, for example, prioritize growth because they’re legally obligated to act in the best interest of shareholders. Commercial banks fuel growth by issuing interest-bearing loans, and national governments face pressure to grow the economy in order to reduce the burden of public and private debt.

Making any meaningful shift away from focusing on GDP would require dismantling these structural dependencies. “It’s massively challenging, there’s no doubt about that,” Vogel told Grist. “But I think they’re necessary changes … if we want to avert a real risk of catastrophic environmental changes and tackle long-standing social issues.”

For more articles and blogs on Climate Change, Economics, Environment, Fossil Fuels, GDP Growth, Global Trade, Koch Network, Nationalism, Political Strategy and Tanton Network, click through: 

Limits to Growth – Jorgen Randers – Club of Rome

Posted on April 5, 2022

Reposting a 2012 article from Renew Economy Australia from Giles Parkinson on Jorgen Randers of Norway in ‘Randers: What does the world look like in 2052?’

Randers had been a proponent of the Club of Rome ideas including the promotion of the ‘limits to growth’ (debunked by University of Sussex research team in ‘Models of Doom’), resource depletion, climate and population.

Greenwashing – Club of Rome – Limits to Growth – Astroturfing Fossil Fuels – The Guardian

Posted on July 27, 2021

The Guardian in article following, is a victim of astroturfing again on the environment, presenting the Club of Rome and MIT’s ‘Limits to Growth’ model as science, and resurrected by media as contemporary, along with obsessions about Malthusian ‘population growth’ (and ‘immigration’) by non-scientists i.e. ZPG and other related ‘theories’ such as Lovelock’s ‘Gaia’.

Following is an article written by presumably a non science journalist Edward Helmore highlighting KPMG’s Gaya Herrington (econometrics and sustainability studies, again not science) who is a researcher and advisor for the Club of Rome predicting catastrophe.

Tactics Against Bipartisan Climate Change Policy in Australia – Limits to Growth?

Posted on November 30, 2019

A recent ABC article ‘The day that plunged Australia’s climate change policy into 10 years of inertia’, endeavoured to describe how climate change consensus was broken by former Liberal MP Andrew Robb who claimed he had followed the ‘Limits to Growth’ (LTG) theory via the Club of Rome but changed his mind, hence withdrew support on bipartisan support on carbon emission measures.

Degrowth and Steady State Economy or Eugenics for the Environment Debunked

Posted on June 30, 2022

In recent years with pressure on fossil fuels and the need to transition to renewable sources, now compounded by Russian invasion of Ukraine, has seen renewed promotion of ZPG Zero Population Growth with Herman Daly and Club of Rome inspired ‘steady-state economy’ and ‘degrowth’ as scientific theories; part of a crossover between nativist Tanton Network and libertarian Koch Network.

Anglosphere Triangle – Immigration – Environment – Population Growth – Radical Right Libertarians

Posted on August 4, 2021

While the fossil fuel supported ZPG Zero Population Growth, with Malthusian and eugenics based arguments round the environment, population growth and immigration being mainstreamed, especially by the time of Trump, who were the prime movers of the past?

The following article and excerpts of Berger, looking through Focauldian prism, follows some of the history of this movement including now deceased John Tanton (‘the most influential unknown man in America’), Paul Ehrlich (The Population Bomb) et al. and organisations that emerged from ZPG including FAIR, CIS, US English, then IRLI and SLLI with their links to the Koch Network ‘bill mill’ ALEC, leading up to the Trump White House.

Environment – Fossil Fuels – Climate Science Denial – Populationism – Anti-Immigration – Far Right – Tanton Network

Jeff Sparrow in Overland rebuts a counter critique of his book ‘Crimes Against Nature’ by a faux expert Edward Smith who appears to be au faire with faux environmental and anti-immigrant arguments promoted by the US Tanton Network linked NGO Sustainable Population Australia.

One would not bother using high level analysis to rebut low level faux science nativist agitprop inspired by former ZPG Zero Population Growth types, namely deceased white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton whose colleague was Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich, with support from the Rockefeller Bros., ‘limits to growth’ PR constructs promoted by Club of Rome and drawing on Malthus, Galton and Madison Grant.

However, it does show some of the influence that proponents aspire to, whether in media, NGOs, think tanks or politics, constantly reinforce old nativist and white Australia policy tropes masquerading as environmental science, greenwashing both fossil fuels or carbon emissions and eugenics; targets old white Australia sentiments and younger mistaking the movement and proponents as experts.

‘Climate Politics – Against Populationism

Jeff Sparrow 15 August 2022 

Edward Smith, an advocate of what he calls ‘sustainable population’, has circulated a lengthy critique of my book, Crimes Against Nature. I’m writing this response because his piece exemplifies the populationist methodology, extrapolating from an abstract ‘common sense’ in a fashion entirely impervious to historical or theoretical argument. Further, despite his repeated protestations, his article demonstrates the relationship between populationism and the far right—a relationship centred on a hostility to ordinary people.

‘Population matters,’ Smith says, ‘because the smaller the population, the lower the ecological footprint, all other things being equal. … Eating only as many fish as are spawned is going to be easier with fewer people in the first place.’ The argument appeals because of its childlike simplicity. Why, think of your own home. Does each person there eat a certain quantity of food? Yes? Well, then: if you added a billion or so new folks, where would you get all the fish? QED, natalists! Simple physics alone determines that a material world can hold only so many sweaty physically bodies.

Of course, just as we shouldn’t model economic policy on our personal budgets, we can’t—or, at least, we shouldn’t—develop political theory by scaling up individual experience. 

The world is not a household writ large and quite different laws govern the behaviour of human societies.

Unfortunately, though Smith praises my book effusively, he clearly hasn’t understood any of it. Crimes Against Nature does not argue that business exerts ‘a malign influence … on public policy’. Rather, it contends that capitalism, a distinctive and relatively new social system, fundamentally changes the human relationship with nature, commodifying our ability to labour so that our interaction with the natural world manifests as a force entirely outside our control.  

That’s the basis of the environmental crisis, a development that can only be understood historically.

Smith posits a straightforward opposition between humanity and nature, so that ‘any population growth at all means more demand for environmental destruction to feed, clothe and house extra people.’ 

His simple binary, taken from nineteenth century biology, misunderstands the relationship between people and the natural world. Humans might be distinct from nature but we’re also part of it. From the dawn of what we call ‘culture’, , we have manipulated the environment to which we belong. The name for this manipulation is labour: to survive, people must secure food, construct shelter, clothe themselves and so on.

Our labour can destroy nature but it can also sustain and foster it. Though racist Europeans once imagined the native populations of Australia and the rest of the ‘New World’ as almost part of nature, we now know that their societies fundamentally reshaped the land on which they lived for thousands of years. Without the commodification of labour power, they could deliberately and consciously alter their surrounds—and they did so, by and large, in ways that generated flourishing, diverse ecosystems.

Contrary to Smith’s schema, the presence of the Indigenous populations did not mean automatic ‘environmental destruction’. On the contrary, animals and plants flourished precisely because of human beings and their labour. We know this because the arrival of the Europeans almost everywhere brought both massive depopulation and ecological crisis.

If, as Smith contends, humans destroy nature just by existing, the huge drop in the Indigenous population after European settlement (some estimates suggest that the number of people in Australia did not reach its pre-1788 figure until the 1850s) should have been good news for the environment. But, of course, that wasn’t the case at all. On the contrary, because colonisation replaced the traditional systems of land management with the logic of capital, the Europeans spurred massive (and ongoing) environmental devastation.

What makes capitalism so uniquely destructive? It’s a system that directs labour (that is, the means by which people interact with nature) to meet the requirements of exchange rather than for immediate and concrete use. Capitalists must create commodities to sell. Competition fosters a relentless and inexorable expansion of value, only tangentially connected to human need and completely divorced from the cycles that govern natural ecosystems. Capital grows with a large population. It also grows with a small population (using techniques like planned obsolescence, conspicuous consumption etc).

Smith grasps none of this. Like most populationists, he attributes the expansion of the economy to the needs of consumers, and so assumes that, by culling the population, he can render the system sustainable. But that entirely reverses the causal sequence. The necessity of economic growth stems from the internal logic of capital, not the requirements of the populace. Quite obviously, capitalism doesn’t respond to human need—for, if it did, the starving, who desperately need sustenance, would be fed.

That’s why the populationist argument is so muddled. The environmental crisis cannot be attributed to kindly capitalists straining every nerve and sinew to keep every new baby fed and housed. On the contrary, the owners of capital ignore the urgent needs of most the world’s people, since the impoverished don’t provide a particularly attractive market.

‘Population matters,’ says Smith, ‘because the smaller the population, the lower the ecological footprint, all other things being equal.’

But, of course, all other things aren’t equal—and never will be. A theory emphasising pure numbers entirely fails to capture the reality of a social order in which Taylor Swift takes a private jet for minor errands while ninety per cent of the world’s population barely flies at all.

‘There is nothing,’ declares Smith, ‘that … anybody … could say that will change the fact that getting the number of fish caught to equal the number spawned will by physically and politically easier if there are fewer people.’ This is an overt declaration of faith, a credo impervious to an actuality in which the impoverished people of the developing world barely see any of the fish harvested by giant corporations. These corporations, in turn, expand year after year not in order to feed the world, but because the logic of competition means that if they don’t accumulate, they’ll go broke.

In Crimes Against Nature, I describe how Thomas Malthus developed populationism not to preserve the environment, but to argue against social welfare (on the basis that it would prevent the poor from starving to death). I also write about how the revival of populationism by environmentalists in the seventies) pushed activists into grotesque alliances with the far right.

Smith objects to what he calls ‘insinuations that concerns about population are a racist, eugenicist, white supremacist plot.’ He also dismisses the history of his movement on the basis that ‘the events detailed … happened before I was even born’.

This is not remotely serious.

As I argue in the book, the association between populationism and the far right is not accidental but stems from an analysis that identifies people themselves as an existential threat, leaching away at the world’s resources merely by being alive. Population theorists look at the teeming masses and say, quite literally: These people should never have been born!

It’s not difficult to grasp the horrific conclusions that might be—and repeatedly have been drawn—from such an argument. If the masses truly threaten the well-being of the planet by their existence, would, say, the emergence of a new and deadly pandemic be such a problem? The more morally squeamish of the populationist crowd might not like to follow that train of thought to its ultimate destination but plenty of others will.

Smith himself provides a good example of how identifying humanity as a curse pushes in a right-wing direction. ‘Australian’s emissions per capita are,’ he tells us, ‘about 17.1 tonnes per person whereas our main sources of migration have much lower emissions (PRC 7.4; India 1.9; UK 5.55; Philippines 1.2; Viet Nam 2.2).’

Now, per capita figures aren’t particularly useful, since they’re predicated on the assumption that emissions are a response to consumers—which simply isn’t true. But, leaving that aside, Smith and his co-thinkers could, in theory, respond to the difference between Australia and other nations by investing in a fleet of ships sufficiently large to transport them, their families and all their friends to a new low-carbon life in the Philippines.

Of course, they don’t. As always, the onus gets placed instead on the less privileged to adapt themselves to inequality.

‘[W]e need,’ Smith says, ‘people to stay in lower emitting countries not because it is fair but because the politics of a lower carbon lifestyle is hardest in high emitting countries. Fewer people with an expectation of a seventeen tonnes of carbon a year lifestyle is useful for the politics of making our planet sustainable.’

Though Smith says he doesn’t oppose refugees, he ends up with the ‘Keep Them Out’ policies familiar across the far right.

He claims to be against coercion, and yet his argument reeks of state paternalism. ‘Our migration program, and so our population policy, is,’ he explains, ‘principally about skilled migrants and New Zealanders—there is nothing wrong with them not migrating. There may even be some benefits as any unfulfilled desires they have in their countries of origin will only add useful pressure to domestic political reform.’

Think about that. If ‘we’—presumably, the Australian state—forcibly prevent migrants from travelling, their resulting unhappiness may add ‘useful pressure’ in their home country to reduce birth rates.

There’s nothing left-wing about this.

As a socialist, I’m for providing people with everything they need to control their fertility. But the key word is ‘control’: that is, the exertion of agency by ordinary women and men, rather than limitations on reproduction imposed by misanthropic ideologues.

That’s because the alternative to capitalist environmental crisis lies in socialist planning. The choice isn’t between economic growth or economic degrowth so much as between a system geared to exchange and one dominated by use. If Indigenous societies could direct their labour to improving the natural world, we can do the same, with modern science and technology guiding our interventions.

In that process, people aren’t the problem. On the contrary, they’re the basis on which a new society can be built.’

For related blogs and articles on Australian Immigration News, Demography, Economics, Environment, Immigration and Population Growth:

Immigration Restriction – Population Control – Tanton Network

Excerpts from an article by Brooke Binkowski in Unicorn Riot outlining the history of the population control movement of Tanton Network which informs migration policies in the Anglosphere and parts of Europe.

55 Tufton Street London: US Koch & Tanton Networks’ Think Tanks – Radical Right Libertarians and Nativists

Of late, UK investigative journalists especially centred round The ByLine Times and New European have discovered the ‘architecture of influence’ at 55 Tufton Street, used to keep the Conservative Party in power, and achieving Brexit. 

Australia – Indigenous Voice Referendum – Atlas – Koch Network – CIS – IPA – Murdoch

Australia has had its Brexit or Trump moment on the indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum, being usurped by a proxy election campaign, with outcomes being divided society, communities and no real solutions.

Further, the ‘architecture of influence’ and modus operandi are the same as Brexit and Trump including Koch Network think tanks at Tufton St. London and Washington, Tanton Network’s NGOs promoting former ZPG Zero Population Growth nativist tropes versus the ‘other’, whether refugee, immigrant, ethnic minority including native and population growth, with Murdoch right wing led media and related social media campaigns, targeting older voters. 

John Tanton – Australia – The Social Contract Press

John Tanton – Australia – The Social Contract Press. Many people in the Anglo world and now Europe may ask where does the current transnational white nativist or white nationalist ideology, promoting eugenics and immigration restrictions, come from?

Trump’s White House Immigration Policies and White Nationalist John Tanton

The aggressive anti-immigration sentiment and policies that are promoted by governments in the US, UK and Australia are not new and have been in the making for generations, John Tanton described as the ‘most influential unknown man in America’ appears central in modern day manifestations.

Global Population Decline and Impacts

The developed world zeitgeist, especially Anglosphere, is that population growth has been one of the key issues of environmental sustainability and nativist conservative politics, left and right.  However, as the article from First Links below explains, we are in fact approaching peak population, due to below replacement fertility and to be followed by ageing and decline, or balance?

Many are realising that ‘population growth’ is not such an issue, it has stalled with long term fertility decline (below replacement), while recent analysis suggests peak mid century (Lancet etc.) while researchers Bricker & Ibbitson (‘Empty Planet’) predict precipitous decline after the peak.

The headline number is not the issue but as the late Hans Rosling said, it’s the make-up and how the population is managed at different life stages e.g. oldies now outnumber youth which has electoral repercussions when voting for short term horizons aka Brexit.

Population obsessions, have also been used to support an unsubstantiated environmental link of ‘sciency sounding’ PR that deflects from carbon regulation, fossil fuels, often blames ‘immigration’ to at least preserve the status quo; from the time of Malthus and Galton through ZPG, and the UNPD (whose formulae are used by ABS & UK too).

The issue is not just skills gaps nor is demanding all retirees continue to work (involuntarily), but how to fund budgets when we are dependent upon taxes from working age and temporary churnover via PAYE system, but these cohorts are in decline viz a viz increasing numbers of retirees?

OECD demographic data, i.e. medium to long term trends of working age/retirees + kids, is more informative and gives comparisons with other nations, vs. our obsessions with short term headline NOM net overseas migration data snapshots that make for media headlines (but normally dominated by students and backpackers).

Quite obvious, like elsewhere, temporary churn over is important, as ‘net financial contributors’ to support budgets, when more retirees/pensioners are tugging on the same with ageing declining tax payers.

Click through to see OECD Australian working age demographics with other comparable nations. 

All have passed the ‘demographic sweet spot’, hence, how can budgets be supported further? Increase taxes for low income types and/or retirees (mooted in the US by some in the GOP), or cut services and health care, or privatise more services for user pays (political suicide)?

From First Links Newsletter Australia:

‘Embracing the bright side of population decline

Emma Davidson   30 March 2022

A growing body of research is showing that global population growth is slowing down and will likely drop into negative territory within the next few decades.

One study predicted that the global population would peak at 9.7 billion people in 2064 – up from around 7.9 billion currently – before falling to 8.8 billion by the end of this century. If this is true, it’ll be the first sustained period of world population decline since the Black Death.

But what’s worrying some experts today is that many countries are already seeing natural population growth come to a standstill. Here in Australia, the lack of immigration contributed to population growth of practically zero in the year to March 2021 . Similar stories are playing out in the UK, the US, and many other developed countries.

Shrinking populations and financial markets

What economic impact will these demographics shifts have? After all, we can’t ignore the human aspect of our economies. Financial markets are complex, interconnected ecosystems, and our attitudes and behaviour are key to how they perform.

Well, when it comes to population decline, many analysts are bearish.

They say lower birth rates create ageing nations, with fewer people available to look after the elderly. These stretched workforces limit innovation and productivity. Growing economies need growing populations, it is claimed.

However, I believe this is an overly pessimistic view. I’m far more bullish about the impact of declining populations. There are many possible benefits to having fewer people in the world. And I suspect even the negatives aren’t quite as bad as people suggest, given humans have an incredible knack for adapting to change.

Wage growth

It’s widely thought that a smaller working-age population could lift wages. Fewer workers give the labour market greater bargaining power, leading to better working conditions.

There would also likely be more opportunities for women and ethnic minorities, increasing workforce diversity. Research shows that diverse organisations tend to financially outperform their less inclusive competitors. They are also six times more likely to be innovative and agile.

Economic growth might slow, but it is my hope that the above changes would lead to healthier, happier, and more engaged workers – and a more even wealth distribution.

The late Swedish statistician Hans Rosling argued convincingly for bringing the world’s final 1 billion people out of extreme poverty to limit population growth and provide better opportunities for millions of families who are struggling.

I’m confident that humans can adjust to a ‘new normal’ where economic growth is still a goal, but not the only goal. Instead, perhaps we can focus more on creating a world where living standards and wealth distribution are our barometers of success.

Then, freed from poverty, some people will inevitably go on to become the scientists, entrepreneurs and leaders of tomorrow that we’ll need when populations decline.

Innovation and productivity

The conventional logic is that bigger is better when it comes to population and innovation. More people means more researchers and innovators (as well as more consumers to sell to). And yet, only three of Bloomberg’s top 10 most innovative economies have populations exceeding 10 million people (South Korea, Germany and Sweden).

So, it’s clearly not just a numbers game.

Investing in education and encouraging more people to work in research and development also facilitates the flow of new ideas. Furthermore, automation can accelerate innovation and productivity by performing all of the tedious, time-consuming tasks that would usually fall to humans, freeing them up for more value-oriented work.

Initial predictions for automation were bleak. The ‘rise of the robots’ would mean job losses, economists said, as employers replaced workers en-masse with machines that never get sick or tired.

More recent research is challenging that theory. One study found that each robot per 1,000 employees boosts employment at a firm by 2.2%. Essentially, automation makes companies more competitive and profitable, helping them to grow the business and swell their ranks.

Sustainability matters

It’s common to hear industry commentators make statements like “ignoring the environmental benefits for a moment” or “sustainability aside” when talking about population decline. But we can’t simply forget about the environment. It’s too important. Ever-growing populations continue to put a strain on the world and its resources.

Declining populations can help

Researchers recently calculated that having one child fewer saves approximately 59 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. “Having one less child saves each parent more than 20 times (of CO2 emissions) as living without a car, or about 70 times as much as eliminating meat from the diet” Sustainable Population Australia says.

To be clear, I’m not advocating that people should stop having children. I have written previously about the potential repercussions of a ‘baby bust’ if rising infertility rates are ignored. In addition, and as things stand right now, the global human population begins to decline at the end of this century and is likely to continue along the decline trajectory.

What I am wanting to highlight is the environmental benefits that are associated with population decline.

Finding the right balance

Of course, there are some roles that robots simply can’t fill. Ageing populations will place more pressure on our healthcare and elderly care systems, for example. And it’s hard to imagine artificial intelligence ever having as good a bedside manner as a real doctor or nurse.

Australia’s healthcare and superannuation systems are excellent, which should relieve some of this burden. But we must also find ways to make certain roles, such as elderly care, more rewarding.

Automation is therefore just one piece of the puzzle. We must also recognise there are complex services that only humans can provide.

There are undoubtedly challenges we face with declining populations, and I don’t pretend to have the answers.

But do our narratives have to be so gloomy? There is far more room for optimism based on the human capacity to adapt.’

Emma Davidson is Head of Corporate Affairs at London-based Staude Capital, manager of the Global Value Fund (ASX:GVF). This article is the opinion of the writer and does not consider the circumstances of any individual.

For more articles and blogs on immigration, population growth, demography and economics click through:

Limits to Growth – Jorgen Randers – Club of Rome

Hans Rosling – GapMinder – Factfulness – Human Development – Adult Education

China PRC – Fertility Decline – Peak Population?

Population Growth or Decline?

Population, Environment and White Nationalists in Australia – US Links

Ghosts of Galton and Eugenics Return – Society, Population and Environment in the 21st Century

We have already looked at some other key players of the past related to eugenics, population via Malthus and liberal economics of Adam Smith, now we look at Galton, if not in detail, a broad sketch of his life and later impact on society, especially in the Anglosphere.

This has been exemplified by how eugenics theory never went away, even after the Nazis post WWII, but reemerged via the US using an environmental and climate prism, with a focus upon Malthusian population obsessions; supported by ZPG, UNPD data, Anglosphere media and think tanks to avoid regulation and business constraints, while encouraging xenophobia.

Background of Galton

Francis Galton was born in 1822 a Quaker in English Midlands, to a iron related trade then later banking family, while he was something of a polymath he had a personal interest in data and weather, plus fingerprinting for crime suspects (UCL, 2020). According to Diver (2005) he may have been influenced already by Malthus‘s work on purported need for population control but while Malthus viewed population growth as problematic for class order, Galton went beyond the quantitative impacts and focused upon biology of the lower orders, on behalf of elites (with a desire to conserve their position).

Galton’s theories

Galton’s theories were seeded while at UCL University College London, linked into or were inspired by the previous work of Malthus and included focus upon traits as inherited or genetic based, to support the idea as a right of the upper classes. This led Galton to promote socio-Darwinism with the now familiar descriptor of the ‘great replacement’ and need for ‘population control’, but hidden behind more civilised themes, as it still is today e.g. the environment or employment (APA Staff, 2014 & UCL, 2020). Dyrbye (n.d.) went further in describing eugenics as more about biology and race with the need for ‘positive eugenics’ or the encouragement of good breeding from good parents; negative eugenics was needed to discourage those with sub-optimal traits and breeding.

20th Century Influence of Galton, Malthus & Social Darwinism

Galton had observed how the US and Germany used ‘negative eugenics’ regarding race while in the early 19th century he had created a ‘Eugenics Records Office’ in London, later supporting the foundation of a ‘German Society for Race Hygiene’ in Berlin (Galton Institute, 2020).

Meanwhile eugenics took off in the US, including state policy level and related to ‘positive eugenics’ and avoiding more e.g. ‘feeble minded’ and imprisonment for many. In the US early 20th century this was manifested in obsessions emerging on Malthusian population growth, immigration, borders and again the ‘great replacement’; diluting Anglo Saxon stock. However, even when discredited before and during World War II, and avoided any public profile post Nazi Germany, eugenics never went away (Oleson, 2016 & Leonard, 2005).

Mazumdar (1980) went further in claiming that Galton focused upon ‘positive eugenics’ for the need to outbreed lower orders who he deemed to be an economic drag but in the US this evolved into the practise of negative eugenics and avoidance of genes which were defective. More disturbing, according to Diver (2005) was how these US initiatives on eugenics inspired even worse from the Nazis e.g. the ‘Sterilization Law’ and the infamous ‘Nuremberg Laws; indirectly supported by research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute supported by Rockefeller and Ford Foundations.

Present day symptoms of eugenics

Although most would dismiss any idea that eugenics or related exists in this supposedly modern and enlightened age, but it does under different guises as cited earlier, especially in the Anglosphere of the UK, US and Australia. According to Fenley (2020) this emanates from ZPG Zero Population Growth founded by Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich (and the now deceased white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton. The focus would be familiar, traffic congestion, pollution (and now climate), unemployment etc. but Ehrlich focused upon the global south or poor, while ignoring the developed world of higher consumption and fossil fuels (APA Staff, 2014).’

Again, the 20th century eugenics movement not only supported Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Germany but Planned Parenthood (of Rockefellers & Sanger), the pre WWII American Eugenics Society and the Population Council. Meanwhile the supposed issues of the ‘great replacement’ or ‘race suicide’ have reentered political, media and social narratives in the 21st century backgrounded by ageing monocultural electorates and the emergence of more diverse, educated and empowered younger generations, the latter are viewed as an existential threat to conservatives.

Ageing, monocultural and less tolerant citizens have been targeted with negative agitprop about population growth, immigration and net overseas migration (NOM) as climate and environmental issues of our time yet little if any compelling scientific evidence has ever been offered, but supports the ‘great replacement theory‘. Meanwhile the United Nations Population Division (UNPD), plus its NOM formula preferred by Australia and the UK, has been central yet misunderstood (with valid claims that it artificially inflates population vs. OECD data which parses out temporary churn over for more reliable long term demographic analysis).

Interestingly eugenics and its modern day manifestations also seem joined at the hip with radical right libertarian ideology represented by ‘whatever it takes’ attitude, ‘ownership’ of conservative parties and ‘dog whistling’ eugenics tropes via legacy and social media; channeling ideology and PR of Koch Network globally linked Atlas Network think tanks, seemingly in tandem with both Tanton Network and News Corp; witnessed via recent Covid19 ‘World Wide Freedom Protests‘, with familiar symmetry.

For more related blogs and article click through below:

Malthus on Population Growth, Economy, Environment, White Nationalism and Eugenics

Adam Smith – Classical Liberal Economics or Conservative Calvinist Christianity or White Christian Nationalism?

Anglosphere Triangle – Immigration – Environment – Population Growth – Radical Right Libertarians

NOM Net Overseas Migration – Immigration – Population Growth

UNPD Global Population Growth Forecasts Debunked

Reference list:

APA Staff. (2014) The Problem With the “Population Bomb”: Eugenics and Population Control [online]. APA NYU [viewed 2 November 2021]. Available from: https://apa.nyu.edu/hauntedfiles/the-problem-with-the-population-bomb-eugenics-and-population-control/

Claude Moore Health Sciences Library University of Virginia. (2004) Origins of Eugenics: From Sir Francis Galton to Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 [online]. [viewed 21 August 2021] Available from: http://exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/eugenics/2-origins/

Diver, K. (2005) Network of top scientists helped ‘Angel of Death’ Mengele. The Guardian [online]. [viewed 30 September 2021] Available from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/mar/22/research.germany

Dyrbye, E. (n.d.) “Eugenics” coined by Galton [online]. [viewed 21 August 2021] Available from https://eugenicsarchive.ca/database/documents/51509d16a4209be523000008

Fendley, C. (2020) Eugenics is trending. That’s a problem. Any effort to slow population growth must center on reproductive justice. The Washington Post [online]. [viewed 21 August 2021] Available from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/17/eugenics-is-trending-thats-problem/

Galton, D. & Galton C. (1998) Francis Galton: and eugenics today. Journal of Medical Ethics [online]. 24(2) 99-105. [viewed 21 August 2021] Available from doi: 10.1136/jme.24.2.99

Galton Institute, The. (2021) Eugenics and Final Years. The Galton Institute [online]. [viewed 21 August 2021] Available from https://www.galtoninstitute.org.uk/sir-francis-galton/eugenics-and-final-years/

Leonard, T. (2005) Retrospectives: Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era. Journal of Economic Perspectives [online]. 19(4) 207–224. [viewed 14 August 2021]. Available from https://www.princeton.edu/~tleonard/papers/retrospectives.pdf

Mazumdar, P. (1980) THE EUGENISTS AND THE RESIDUUM: THE PROBLEM OF THE URBAN POOR. Bulletin of the History of Medicine [online]. 54(2) 204-215. [30 September 2021]. Available from https://www.jstor.org/stable/44442948

Oleson, J. (2016) The New Eugenics: Black Hyper-Incarceration and Human Abatement. Social Sciences [online]. 5(4), 66. [viewed 14 August 2021] Available from: doi:10.3390/socsci5040066

UCL University College London, (2020) Inquiry into the History of Eugenics at UCL – Final Report [online]. UCL [viewed 30 October 2021]. Available from:

Click to access ucl_history_of_eugenics_inquiry_report.pdf

Anglosphere – Radical Right Libertarian Socioeconomics and Authoritarianism

Another article from Lucy Hamilton on John Menadue’s ‘Pearls & Irritations’ titled ‘Think tanks’ call for ‘freedom’ really promises authoritarianism’ (13 Nov. ‘21); backgrounded by media narratives round Covid19 with demands for, using the Americanism, (Kochian) ‘freedom & liberty’ from regulation and government, with much authoritarianism.

Very complex ecosystem of relationships and dynamics, hence, understanding almost requires an ever evolving 3D helix to show the dynamics, interwoven relationships, ideology, etc. over time, as it’s a long game that transcends politics, parties and electoral cycles, especially the Anglosphere of Australia, UK and US, plus less developed democracies.

‘Ideological think tanks campaigning for ‘freedom’ are really pushing us further into a competitive authoritarianism regime.’ and ‘public choice theory’….

Demographic influence of social-Darwinism or eugenics of Galton and concerns about humanity of Malthus, equates with authoritarianism,  while  ‘freedom’ fits with Adam ‘invisible hand’ (of God) Smith, later Hayek, Friedman et al. morphing into Chicago School of Buchanan’s ‘public choice theory’ i.e. racial Kochonomics*; survival of the fittest, protecting themselves from (disruption by) the lower orders, presented as freedom of choice but needing authoritarianism to ensure the right choices are made.

*According to Bethany Moreton in a review of Nancy MacLean’s ‘Democracy in Chains’, titled ‘Kochonomics: The Racist Roots of Public Choice Theory:

‘Virginia’s nationally prominent stand against desegregation and voting rights was the inescapable context of public choice theory.’

A disturbing example was Chile, post ‘70s coup and during the Pinochet regime, had the required military backed autocracy, domestic security services and social class division for their Chicago School experiment.  However, this experiment suggests that radical right libertarian economics requires autocracy, without constraints i.e. no society, no community, no unions, no free press, control by security services, no empowered middle class, low regulation, low taxes and small government, to function?

Soft authoritarianism, ageing electorates, eugenics, environment and ‘Big Oil’ 

Galton’s eugenics and Malthusian Population control movement reemerged after the embarrassment of pre and WWII experiments with eugenics and the Nazis; strategic in making population and immigration an environmental ‘hygiene issue’ to both deflect from fossil fuels and use as a dog whistle (to channel eugenics sentiments).

Key people in ZPG Zero Population Growth were falsely described as ‘progressive’ i.e. Tanton and Ehrlich (plus Watson of SeaShepherd fame); all had visited Australia from the early ‘90s, or before, to develop an Australian version of ZPG, post white Australia.  This was well before population was spiked by the (2006 UNPD defined) NOM Net Overseas Migration temporary churn over inflation (with below replacement fertility in the permanent population), climate science pointing to carbon emissions’ negative impact on the environment and post PM Howard, carbon mitigation policies being denigrated and voted down. 

How does nativism fit into authoritarian yet supposedly libertarain socioeconomic practice? 

ZPG in Australia morphed into SPA Sustainable Population Australia.  In addition to deflecting from mooted fossil fuels and carbon regulations or constraints by accessing naive or complicit media in platforming immigration, NOM and population growth as environmental issues of our time….. 

‘The fight against the masses …. allowing the worker the freedom to associate was dangerous.’

Again a feature of the eugenics movement informing radical right libertarian socio-economic policies to oppose an equitable electoral franchise, unions, workers’ rights, welfare, higher education and empower citizens; achieved by clever agitprop under various guises in legacy media by influencers and commentators using memes, ‘sciency’ PR, local vs. immigrant workers, and general disruption of social narratives.

We have observed often in Australia, with declining union membership, the ongoing demands for constraints on unions, including proxies such as union or industry superannuation funds.

Products of PR Meme factories, repackaging old theories, tropes and agitprop

It’s been alleged that in Delaware there exists a meme factory that is an assembly line of memes designed for traction in both legacy and social media. If not to help the libertarian radical right libertarians, but used by fringe media, far right, white nativists and conspiracists to oppose progress and importantly, disrupt joined up narratives.

The following memes to be opposed would be familiar to all in the Anglosphere i.e.  PC political correctness, empowerment, CRT critical race theory, BLM black lives matter, women, minorities, LGBT, curricula, education, learning, assessments, science and research, especially universities and higher education.

Autocracy and censorship in the public sphere round media, informing, secrecy and communicating

Australia has witnessed many of its ‘top people’ in an egalitarian society use their power for self protection whether LNP Ministers, MPs, business or even some journalists, to shut down or nobble reporting, discussion and analysis.  

The popular tools to threaten investigative journalists, civilians, whistleblowers, lawyers, innocent bystanders etc. are: claiming freedom of speech to denigrate, spiking articles, journalists losing jobs, removing article comment functions, but more recently, wanton use of authoritarian power via defamation laws for vexatious suits i.e. SLAPPs, according to The Conversation in ‘Slapps: the rise of lawsuits targeting investigative journalists’

(October 27, 2021):

‘A type of legal action is increasingly being used by powerful people to shut down criticism from activists, academics, whistleblowers, and journalists. This is known as a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or Slapp’

Electoral campaigning, astroturfing, imported tactics and ideology

The US Koch related State Policy Network is another web of think tanks including the ‘bill mill’ ALEC American Legislative Exchange Council which externally lobbies mostly GOP Reps who are insiders, to vote for or oppose specific bills e.g. oppose environmental regulation of fossil fuels. 

However, one would argue that the now nominally agrarian based National Party in the Australian LNP Liberal National Party coalition government, acts like ALEC, but from inside the coalition.  This is to oppose Liberal and National moderates following climate science and demanding more done for achieving Net Zero; seemingly informed by think tanks.

More recently ALEC’s and the Atlas Network’s influence emerged to promote Voter ID under the guise of solving a non-existent problem, but in fact to suppress votes.  This was introduced by news media into both UK and Australian political narratives, simultaneously; unlikely to have any short term impact, but likely to be mooted again.  At minimum it acts as a distraction to solve a non-existent electoral issue, but one day may come to fruition and follow the US GOP tactic of voter suppression; threatened by emerging younger working age demographics, more diversity, plus voters more educated and empowered, hence, unlikely to vote conservative.

White Australia policy, refugees, immigration, NOM, population and borders as a security issue for autocratic solutions or a ‘Trumpian but ‘virtual wall’

Something achieved in post white Australia is having rhetoric or PR aka the GOP, policies and proxies to deliver similar agitprop, satisfy sentiments of many ageing Anglo-Celtic, European heritage Australians, dog whistling and appear to be ‘not racist’.  Accordingly, we had fossil fuel supported ZPG imported from the US, with liaison of deceased racist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton with Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich, later becoming SPA Sustainable Population Australia.  It’s role has been to focus upon the ‘virtual wall’ aka incoming NOM then conflating with permanent migration, then spruiking alarm about population growth as an environmental ‘hygiene’ issue.  

The eugenics based focus upon humanity avoids scrutiny of fossil fuels and needs for environmental etc. regulation, by using (non science/data literate) media to inform social narratives or word of mouth; the latter is the most powerful form of messaging and reinforcement because it’s trusted (like organic search engine results vs. paid ads).

SPA access media under the guise of ‘environment’ and patrons too, who include former NSW Labor Premier & Federal Senator Bob Carr, Tim Flannery and Dr. Katherin Betts who has collaborated with ‘Australia’s best demographer’ Dr. Bob Birrell at APRI Australian Population Research Institute. Both of the latter contributed to John Tanton’s journal TSCP The Social Contract Press which is part of what is known as the Tanton Network, described by SPLC Southern Poverty Law Center in John Tanton’s Network as:

‘The organized anti-immigration “movement” is almost entirely the handiwork of one man, Michigan activist John H. Tanton.’

Not only have there been allegations of the Tanton Network sharing donors and networks with the Koch’s SPN, related to Tanton Network and SPA, former Australian Labor MHR Kelvin Thomson attended an event in the US by PFIR Progressive for Immigration Reform.  PFIR is part of the Tanton Network.  Described by ADL Anti-Defamation League in 2012 in ‘Progressives for Immigration Reform Conference Attracts Major Anti-Immigrant Figures’:

‘Despite claims by Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR) to be a “progressive” and “environmental” organization, the appearance of several anti-immigrant activists at PFIR’s third annual conference in Washington, DC, earlier this month, further confirms that the group is firmly entrenched in the anti-immigrant movement.’

Thomson’s participation is cited here in 2011 on Philip Cafaro’s website, who is also a key member of Tanton’s Network and presented:

‘Progressives for Immigration Reform panel discussion with Vernon Briggs, Ben Zuckerman and Kelvin Thomson on US Population and the National Environmental Protection Act. October 4, 2011.’

One hopes Thomson realises that PFIR is more about astroturfing and white ‘patriots for immigration restrictions’, i.e. not a progressive environmental organisation, nor is the Tanton Network, which nobbles the centre and left to support the far or alt right.

Australia has become embarrassing with its obstructive policies and behaviour, recently highlighted with COP26 and few concrete measures for the LNP government’s ‘Net Zero’ policies; too easy for ‘owned’ governments in catering to donors and radical right libertarain ideology.

Further Reading:

Lucy Hamilton’s article follows, as do related blogs posts:

Think tanks’ call for ‘freedom’ really promises authoritarianism

Climate Confusion, Astroturfing, Pseudo-Science, Population Movement and Radical Right Libertarians

Past Literature & Ideas on Roots of Radical Right, Nativism & the Great Replacement Today

Eco-System of Libertarian Think Tanks and White Nativism in the Anglosphere

Anglosphere Triangle – Immigration – Environment – Population Growth – Radical Right Libertarians

Lobby Groups, Policy, Government and Influence

Dumbing Down and Gaming of Anglosphere Media, Science, Society and Democracy

Radical Right Libertarain Economics or Social Populism?

Koch Industries: How to Influence Politics, Avoid Fossil Fuel Emission Control and Environmental Protections