 Hello, and welcome to the Circular Metabolism podcast. I'm your host, Aristide from Metabolism of Cities. In this podcast, we interview researchers, policy makers, and practitioners to better understand the metabolism of our cities and how to reduce their net environmental impacts in a socially just and context-specific way. On this podcast, I talk with Yorgo Scarlis, a fellow countryman who is an ecological economist and political ecologist working on environmental justice and limits to growth. He's a professor at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies. And I wanted to chat with Yorgo Scarlis about his latest publication of his book on the case of the Gaze IV D-Growth, which he co-authored with Susan Paulson, Giacomo D'Alyssa, and Federico de Maria. Before starting the podcast about D-Growth and this book, I wanted to highlight your academic background because it's important, I think, to understand where you're coming from and why your argumentation is actually quite solid. So you have a bachelor's degree in chemistry, a master's in environmental engineering from Imperial College, and then a PhD in environmental policy at the University of Aegean. And then you have another master's in economics from the Barcelona graduate of the School of Economics. So I can imagine you might be perceived quite as a renegade of economics if you propose that, well, growth is not the solution. With all that being said, welcome, Yorgo. Thank you very much for being part of this podcast. Thank you for inviting me. And please let us know, how would you introduce yourself to others? I'm definitely an environmental scientist. I mean, what motivates me is to understand why are we degrading the environment at the scope and scale that we are doing and how we can stop that and why we are not stopping that. So I think what unites my different perspectives is this concern with environment and environmental justice because I think the way we are degrading the environment is done to benefit a few people at the expense of many others. Now, I think to understand the environment is everything. Is everything that surrounds us is us ourselves. So to understand that, I think you need to approach that from different angles and shed light on different aspects of this huge question. So I think following a little bit my curiosity and my heart, I went into studying different things. So you mentioned what I've studied. I think when I studied chemistry, I wasn't aware of any of that. It was a normal Greek child. Male innocent of environmental justice. Young innocent and also male, you know that we have all this indoctrination that if you're a mom, you have to do other engineering or if you're not good enough to be a medical doctor, that were my parents, then you have to... I see what you mean. You know what I mean. But I think my heart was always a sociology history but this was not what I was supposed to do. I was a good enough student to do chemistry and physics and math and all this stuff. So that's what I ended up doing. So I started chemistry without knowing why, but I don't regret it in a sense because I think training in a natural science introduces you to a way of thinking and the unconscious methodology of thinking and analyzing things that it's useful, although I didn't do anything with chemistry. And I think it's always also good to as an environmental scientist to know the natural science part so that you're not intimidated by it. And in that sense is also why I studied economics because I saw that a lot of the issues we were touching upon were touching on economics. So I studied economics when I was a professor and I was 40 years old. So, and it was a little bit of a sacrifice because I had to do my normal job and study on a very competitive program with exams and all of the usual stuff, you know. So yes, I did it because at the time it was 2012 it was a little bit after the crisis, the economic crisis started in Greece, it was getting big time. And, you know, then all the discussions was like, okay, the euro, the debt, inflation, you know. So, and I felt, I didn't feel uncomfortable debating with economists, but I felt like, okay, I don't know something and this can intimidate me because someone can point to the fact, you know, you don't know what you're talking about. So like, why are you talking about debt, you know? So I said, okay, I'm gonna study it in a good school. So I don't know, I don't think I know about these things because even if you're a professor, you know that you know very little, no? But at least I know what I don't know and I can be, I cannot be intimidated by someone telling me, you don't know anything and then I feel afraid. So it's kind of a way to go against bullying of economists and economists, you know. Economists bully a lot, economists bully a lot. So if you've studied economics a little bit, at least you cannot be bullied around so easily. Especially that they're the ones that do not apply correct science, but anyhow, that's another topic. So great, I mentioned a bit your academic background because I was curious, how do you get to de-growth because you kind of mentioned, okay, the first element is to be really curious about the environment and what degrades the environment and how just and unjust some measures are either when you implement it beforehand and they have environmental implications or afterhand something that is supposed to do good for the environment, but it's just for the rich few. So I started, I mentioned just before like around the 2011 to read about it. I think it was in French with Serge Latouche. He had some very small books about de-growth which is a nice introductory to the topic. Is it like a logical arrival to talk about de-growth when you have your academic backgrounds? Do you feel that anyone who should have more or less done the same path as you would have arrived to de-growth and write this book as you did? Oh, it's a good question. No, I don't think so. I think for me it was a logical arrival but it's a logical arrival. It always has a biographical element in it, right? So same to people can follow very logical steps and arrive to different conclusions because there are some sorts of difference. So I think it's important to think that logic is a method of analysis but you always need premises. So like if your premises are very different, I don't think you arrive to the same conclusion. So for me it was a logical process. So I arrived to it, let's say, I arrived to it through my mind and through my thought I didn't arrive to it by being an activist or by being involved in some environmental conflict which is the way many other people arrived to it. So yes, I studied environmental engineering as my master's then I said, okay, I wanted to do a PhD because I felt I wanted to go deeper. I worked for a year in the European Parliament and what we were doing there was we were supporting parliamentarians with what they wanted. It was called the science and technology option assessment unit. So the idea was like someone who wants parliamentarian who wants an assessment on a particular policy they are preparing, they would ask us to prepare a small study. So we would normally commission it to a consultancy but in my case I did the study myself. So it was at the time we were discussing the water framework directive. What later became the water framework directed in the European Union, our main water legislation at the European level and I was started with a study to assess like certain aspects of changes that they were going to be introduced in European motor policies. So that's what I did but I realized by doing a, let's say a consultancy and working with consultants that you need to really go deeper. You write things on the surface. You don't really get to understand them. So I thought, okay, maybe a PhD is where you do that. So then I did a PhD and water somehow accidentally, there are these accidental tastes but also accidental in life. Not just somehow I was really motivated to study water but I've never been motivated to study food. I don't know why. Although I like eating and I like food but like people tell me, let's do a project on food sovereignty. Somehow it doesn't, I don't know why though. No, it's, these are like- You're that kind of a person. Okay, I understand. I don't judge the more into construction but sure, okay. So, yes, so I did my PhD. I started working on water and the thing I did was like a little bit similar to your research and to your podcast in the sense that I was studying water management and water planning issues in Athens. That's how it started. But then over time and through European project and the collaborations I had there, I started looking at these questions much more critically. So we were looking at Athens and Athens at the time had a big drought. So there was a discussion whether Athens should construct and develop a new dam or focus on demand management and water conservation as it was called in the American literature at the time. And me, as like, let's say a green person I was very much in favor of water conservation. I thought there was room for Athens to manage the mud and not necessarily build more dams as was the dominant idea at the time. How was that perceived? How was it? Sorry. How was it perceived, this type of idea? Because I guess there were two kinds. It was discussed a lot in England. It was discussed all over the place, you know, like demand management and even in Greece, like people understand it. But then I started getting more and more into the logic of how the whole dynamic of the water system was working. And on the one hand, you had engineers very much trained and always thinking, OK, there is a lack of something. People want more, so we have to provide it. We're not going to question whether people why they want more. And in one sense, these people were also creating the desire for that more, you know, because it was like, OK, you were building bigger dams, so then you had a lot of water. It was very cheap. So you could have suburbs exploiting in Athens. You had the city getting bigger. You had half of the water of the country going to Athens. So of course, half of the population also of the country was in Athens. So then I started understanding this link between, let's say, supplying water with big dams, creating water demand, growth of a city and growth of the resources going to that city. You know, and there I understood that demand, what was called water demand at the time, but we can think about energy demand. You can think about other stuff. It's not something that it's exogenous only, you know, because planners, engineers, they tended at the time to take it into exogenous, but you would see in their work that they were not just analyzing demand. Let's say they were they were making these projections. Now, how much water will Athens made in 10 years? And they were making these graphs. But then you would see that they were these were ideological graphs because they were assuming it to the school that would continue and everybody just wants to consume just a bit more, right? Yes, everyone wants more water and the city must grow. Like, who are we to say that the city of Athens should not grow? Who are we to say that people cannot have? I think Donald Trump said that yesterday, actually, was it was in a it was in a he started the ranting and people have put it on the YouTube but they run, but he was talking about it. Who is to tell me that I can't open the water tap and the water doesn't flow on full on. He was talking about removing some water restrictions in Iowa that he was talking, you know, he was very proud of saying no more water restrictions, no more water demand measures. Who is to tell me that my sour is not going to be on full, full blog, you know. So that was the logic. Now we can't tell people they want more water, the city has to grow. So this is where I realized that that's an ideological thing. So when I started working more and more on that, then I started a little bit water issues in California where these things play out on a much bigger scale and there is a lot more written. And then you realize how, for example, the growth of Los Angeles was predicated on securing water resources from the north of the state at the massive scale. And you see also the organizations of elites, of growth interest to make that happen. So again, it wasn't just a natural process of people wanting more water. So by the time I arrived in Barcelona, then when people introduced me to the idea of the growth because it wasn't something I read, but it was the conference 2008 in Paris and then people from my group went there and came back, they were very excited. And they started introducing me to the growth. For me, all this made sense now because I realized that the driver of... It was just the missing word somehow. You really had everything, all the pieces of the puzzle together and someone just put it there for you, I guess. Exactly, because for me it was like, okay, we have to talk about is this growth of Athens necessary? Is this growth of water used necessary? And we have to satisfy it or can we change what we do in order to have big growth? So the world felt pretty well there. Yeah, I have to admit it's also, I mean, when I started reading about urban metabolism back in the day, I read a paper that was from Matthew Gandhi, who is a political ecologist and he writes a lot about what is the infrastructure that provides services and all of that. And he mentions in the case of New York, I think about what were the water infrastructure and how they had to privatize upstream some elements and all of this. And for me, I was a bit shocked because I was like, but this is not urban metabolism as I thought it was. Or I thought, you know, just the flows you measure them and that's it. You just analyze the flows, but and that kind of opened up a whole area which is difficult to digest because for a engineer, let's say, it's kind of new territory and you have to open your mind and kind of be patient about understanding all of the other disciplines that are attached to just optimizing one flow. But yeah. No, for me, it was similar. It was funny you mentioned Matthew Gandhi because it was a similar group of people that influenced me. Because I started with my supervisor at the time in the University of the Aegean that I was starting doing my PhD in Greece. We started the European project. So we, you know, that you have five, six partners and we were studying urban water and cities. And I was sort of coordinating it under his guidance now. And I mean, I didn't create the network, but you know, networks in European projects is you ask someone, you know, someone, you know, then you find people working on the issue. And out of coincidence, we ended up with a group that now are my very good friends and I think they influenced a lot myself. And it's the same group where Matthew was a PhD student at the time. So it was Eric Zvingedau, who was a professor of geography working on water in Oxford with Maria Kaika, who was his PhD student also at the time. And she was working also on water in Athens from a different perspective than mine, but also that influenced a lot my type of thinking. And I remember the same kind of feeling. It was the very first meeting we had of the project. I was an engineer. I was trained. Okay, how do we solve that? How do we plan with multiple criteria? What's best to do for water in a city? And then Eric came there and started making some crazy graphs, mentioning the word capitalism. It was a bit of a culture shock for me at the time. But at hindsight and over the years that we collaborated at the beginning, I think I reacted a lot to it. It was like, okay, what's that? But reading and reading more, it was a matter of convincing. I mean, I got convinced by their arguments that you have to understand the relations of political economy and power to understand what's going on with water. You have to understand how capitalism works if you want to understand what's happening with water. You have to go outside of the city and look how the city is bringing in the periphery. You have to understand the global capital flows that they are investing in the city. So in that sense, they influenced me a lot. But sorry, I forgot to say that, but I said there is biographical. So I said the premises depends. So I came from a family that, okay, let's say it was staying along the same lines politically. And also my mother was one of the founders of the Green Party in Greece. So a lot of... I know a lot of... So my premises started there. I didn't come, let's say from a... Okay, you cheat. Yeah, that doesn't work. Yes, I didn't come from a hydraulic engineer background. Doctor was my both parents. And then very much, yes, inclined in this way of thinking, though I think I got in a particular direction. So this I think ties quite well with Summer in the Books you mentioned that you talk about common sense and you talk about how perpetual growth and compound growth seem senseless on a finite planet, but still plenty of people think it's common sense. And I'm asking this just after the question, you know that engineers and what if people had done the same path as you, would they have arrived to the same stage from your statement and the statement of your colleagues in this book? It seems that no, because it seems common sense that we can still have growth in a finite planet. So how do we change or I don't know if we need to indoctrinate people but how do we make this a common sense? I mean, it seems logical in a scientific but not all scientists think the same, but you also say later on that we have all the scientific facts that are there, right? That are there to prove that we cannot move forward. How do we change this common sense? Yeah, that's a, I mean, common sense sounds like an easy term, but it's an idea that Jacomo D'Alyssa brought in our book and it's from reading Gramsci. So it's a core idea in the work of, in the book, we try to keep things simple. So we don't, because it was supposed to be a short book communicating to a wider public. So we don't go into deep saying, oh, we take this from Gramsci and it comes from a particular theory of political change. But we have a longer article with Jacomo D'Alyssa which is called The State and Big Growth where we explain a little bit more or why we emphasize this idea of common sense. So Gramsci, and what is interesting there is that the Gramsci is not talking about a common sense. He's talking about common sense says. So he's using it in a plural form which our English editor always want to correct but we're saying no, in Italian he was using it like that. So we have to fight for using the plural of common sense. But he was saying that there are multiple common senses and in a way they are fluid and they are in a competition and they are ordered, they are ordered. So. Order in like hierarchy, like top one, top two, top three or what do you mean? In a kind of hierarchy, yes. In a kind of loose hierarchy, you might say. But then there is a common sense that it's like you can grow forever in a finite planet, right? But then there is also a common sense that says without growth we're getting poor, we don't have jobs. So they are both common senses and people including ourselves can't hold both at the same time. So it's not contradictory to think both. So when in the whole cultural political game is like how this, let's say, how do you make an overall sense of this common sense that you create a hierarchy or order of this which is something that changes. Now, the key thing there is that this is a cultural process. So it's about the type of stories we say, the conversations we have, the messages that they are circulating. So it's something that happens in the day in, day out. It's like a conversation we're having right now. It's also what the media are saying, it's also what you encounter, no? But it's linked also to the political system. Gramsci was distinguishing between civil society where the common senses are articulated and discussed and where civil society institutions are important and then political society where power is coerced, like where the mechanism of coercion are, where the state is. So these mechanisms also have a lot of power on creating the conditions from some common senses to be legitimated or to be favored and others to be suppressed. And it's a double game of, I mean, it's a negative chicken as is everything in life. So you have to change the common senses, but at the same time, you have to organize politically in order to create the conditions for the new common senses. Yeah, for the new common senses to be realized. And that's why in the book, in the book we emphasize, because a lot of writing I think up to now in the growth is of the type like, okay, growth is not good and it's like catastrophic for one, two, three, four reasons. And then we could do one, two, three, four big things and policies, you know, that's a lot of how it goes. Instead in this book, I don't know if it's appreciated by the reader, but at least that's what we wanted to do. We want, and this was what Giacomo brought to the project was, we wanted to start differently and say like, okay, let's start from the people who right now on the ground are embodying and trying to circulate common senses that they are speaking to the growth. It doesn't have to be the growth per se, but it's like ideas that they are affiliated. Let's start from these people and from these groups and these collectives. And then let's think how their projects could scale up and become something bigger. So that's why our first chapter, I mean, after the introduction and a short chapter on, okay, the problems with growth we had to do, then the next thing we straight go to commons, people creating new commons on the ground. So perhaps for the people who don't know what is degrowth, you kind of explain at the preface that the goal of degrowth is to purposefully slow things down in order to minimize harm to humans and earth systems. Yeah. So is that definition the one you generally use or what do you use as a definition? In every instance, I give a different definition. My most cited one is a 2008 one, which I think is the worst we gave because it was the very first one we gave. But that's the one that is science, like equitable reduction of throughput or something like that, I don't remember. Very engineering, yeah. Very engineering, yeah. And then people who are more from social science and more politically motivated with degrowth hate is definition because they say, what is this here? It's like, what do you mean, yeah? No, I think on every instance, I give a slightly different one, but I think this is fine. I had a debate with my colleague, Yurim Vandebergen, we exchange also articles because he's very meticulous. I'm like, okay, how do you exactly define it? How are you measuring it? You see here, you're inconsistent, you know? And I think like that the world is- Is he an engineer or a natural scientist? He's an economist, but I learned now that he studied operational research. So if you've done this type of thing, you think in terms of maximizing, minimizing particular variables, et cetera. Which I think is good, this is pushing you to be rigorous and consistent. I'm not denying that. But at the same time, as I argued with him, there are some words like equality, for example, that of course you operationalize it on particular context, but there is not the perfect definition of equality. But when you hear the word equality, you kind of understand what it talks about, right? You understand what is inequality, for example. And then of course, there are all sorts of different theories of what is equality about. There are like roads down. Of course, you can have like a quality that still is growing the economies and you have equality that is still exploiting people. So I mean, this is how people manipulate as well in terms to- No, I'm not talking only about manipulation, but I mean, like once you start, once you want to get to the specifics of what is equality, you can have all sorts of different theories like from liberal theories to conservative theories, to Marxist theories, to a different understanding of equality. But at the same time the word, if I tell you, you know, we are in an equal society or inequalities are increasing, more or less you understand what it means. Then we can debate the numbers and have. So I feel with the growth is a little bit the same. Like when you hear the growth, more or less you understand what it talks about now. Then I can give you a specific- What is it? Is it a concept? It's a political ideology? Is it a research field? What is as well, you know, de-growth because you can give me a definition, but also sometimes it's, you know, it stays in the air between things. And I don't know if we need to anchor it or it's good that it has a loose element into it. I mean, I try to anchor it. That's what I would say in its paper. I'm trying to anchor it and I give a definition, but the definition tends to be different from paper or book to book precisely because there is a different purpose in this, so I want to emphasize a particular aspect of it. But at the same time, it's like, again, the example of equality, you know, it's a political ideal. It's a critique to something which is inequality, which is the opposite now. So it's a critique to something that is happening. And at the same time, it sets a research agenda. So there are people like Piketty or Milanovic or many others in social science that they're studying inequalities and equality. So, and there are people who are making normative theories of equality. So in that sense, I see de-growth in the same sense. So just to not sound so vague, yes. I see de-growth first and foremost as a critique of the craziness of the madness of economic growth, which is something specific. It's the idea that GDP can grow 3% every year to infinity because 3% growth per year means 12 times the growth of the economy by the end of the century and infinity in two centuries. So the first and foremost is a critique to this, no? And second, it captures this idea of slowing things down, like producing and consuming less, which doesn't mean producing and consuming less of everything, but producing and consuming less of things that we up to now have thought it's important to produce and consume more, no? Like extract more materials, produce more, construct more roads, have more airports, fly more, fly faster, move faster. So all these things slowing them down. And of course, at the same time, producing more of things that we need right now, like healthcare infrastructures or renewable energy, which is crucial, et cetera. So perhaps you mentioned it just before that you wanted to make this book more accessible to people and this was the main rationale of the book. So why did you choose to write this book in particular with your colleagues? What is the rationale behind it? What is the added value that you wanted to bring that you think previous de-growth books or research didn't bring? Yeah, we wanted to write a short book that's not a manifesto because like manifesto sounds a little bit too ambitious, no? I had another book that I called the mini-festos, you know? So like a moderate manifesto. So we wanted to write something like that always since we finished because the first book we edited together with Federico and Giacomo was in 2014 was the vocabulary of de-growth where we brought all the different people writing on de-growth to define some core concepts together make like let's say the panorama of de-growth. But that was a very different project because it was like in the cover of the book we had a garden, a community garden. But what we were saying there is that de-growth is like a garden. So there are many plants, there are many ideas that they are together and the way we had designed this book was like we were making cross references like Wikipedia from chapter to chapter because it's chapter defining one core term of de-growth was using many other core terms that there were elsewhere in the book. So our idea was like, okay, you can read the book, start from any single chapter and then move to the others and then you get a sense of what de-growth is. Okay, but that was too, let's say open and plural. So we said, okay, we need to write also something shorter where we define a little bit of, okay, how do we see it, you know? And then Susan is someone we knew and we worked throughout the years and she brought perspectives that we didn't have. She has worked with racism and gender inequalities in Latin America. So it was an aspect that we hadn't put so strong within de-growth up to this book. So we collaborated with Susan for that. So yes, the purpose of this book is like a short statement that everyone can understand without too much theory, without too much references and going straight to the positive agenda. And I think the difference is that we start, I think some people haven't liked that. I mean, some people know. A reviewer of the book wrote like, we live a catastrophe, it's a disaster instead of being realistic and talking about this disaster that we're living and we will have to survive and scrub by your too rosy, you know? Yeah. But I think even within a catastrophe, you have to be rosy. I mean, the world doesn't add from one day to the end, you know, like people keep living and for something to be better, you have to do things better. So we start with a positive aspiration, which is like, not we want all the economy's coming to an end. Oh my God, pulling our hair up, growth is coming, limits to growth, disaster. Okay, yes, sure, but we want to limit growth anyway. So the question is, the positive vision, why do we want to limit growth and why do we think that's a good vision and who are the people who are already living in different ways and why are they doing it and why are they happy with it, you know? So we are starting by building a positive vision for the growth and I think that's a little bit different from previous books. Yeah, I have to admit that there was something very romantic or poetic about your book because you kind of say that the growth should focus about care, about solidarity, about well-being and it really feels as, well, you know, the critics would say that the growth is just people that will go towards forced malnutrition and forced deprivation and all of that. And over here you kind of, well, say, well, I mean, you don't necessarily put numbers to things by saying we have to reduce to that quota and we have to have specific, let's say, what it means to have a modest living for everyone because as soon as you put numbers, I think people get a bit tense because they say, well, wait, that would be a fraction of what I have today. Instead, I think you bring some, well, you know, universal positive values about care and well-being and all of that and I think it's really attractive but I don't know if that's common for degrowth or this is something that you wanted to put forward. I think it is common. I think Cerslatus that you mentioned in a way, okay, he was writing big critics of development and growth but he also had like a positive, let's say, friends, good living aspect in his work and in his personal life. So I think it is always there in the growth. It wasn't meant to be a call for deprivation. It wasn't meant to be like a prophecy of doom, that a lot of the limits to growth thing is a prophecy of doom, which I think is important to show that the world is going bad. I don't mind epidemiologists telling us since January that the disaster is coming. They did their job well and of course Western societies, Eastern did pretty well now. Western societies didn't listen to them and we see where we are. So you need profits. I'm not against profits but also apart from profits, you need to think like, okay, what are we doing for the better and how do we live and how do we organize our lives? And I think the growth movement in France, because France people also have, I think this strong aspect of cultural values of living well, you know? So it's not, they don't have a little bit, okay, I'm over-generalizing but there is an Anglo-Saxon protestant thing about how we have to live with less and we have to sacrifice, you know? The France have no, we have to live well and simply, you know? And I think to agree this resonates because we have a little bit this ancient philosophies coming to us since we were children and that was my previous book, Limits, was about this, about culture of limits and ancient Greece was strong there. A lot of ideas that, you know, the good life is a simple life. A good life is a life within limits. Only money doesn't have limits and this is crazy, you know? Like we have to organize life around limits. So for, may I say, southern people or southern Europeans or southern of the world, even southerners living in the North, like southern as a mentality, you know? This idea of a simple life makes sense and this is where we want to base the growth. We don't want to base it on a prophecy of disaster and then like, ah, now you'll see, now you have to live like we were telling you, you know, this doesn't resonate with me and doesn't resonate with the majority of people and definitely doesn't resonate with the majority of Greeks that I know. So it's not part of our culture. Our culture is like we can live well and simply, you know? Which is very different. This is also perhaps because, you know, we're a recent generation. So let's say our parents or grandparents still were, you know, I mean, people flock to Athens for two generations, perhaps, just before, you know, there's the tradition of going to the village and there's a tradition to go back to the original place and living slowly and all of that. But perhaps in two generations time, this will have completely disappeared and even all of the southern Europeans or in the rest of the world will have so much be indoctrinated by capitalism for more than two or three generations that this, you know, desire for a good life and a slow life might disappear from everyone. I mean, we see it ourselves how hectic every day is and how you have to do so many different things. Even in academia, how much you need to frantically publish and do a bunch of things which at previous academic, like two generations ago, would not have had the same pressure. So I don't know if there is a time period into what you're saying, into the perception of a good life or does this tend to disappear as well if they're gonna destroy all of our imaginaries somehow? Could be, but yeah, I mean, I see your point, but I'm not sure, you know. I mean, I fully agree with you with the diagnosis you're making that like the times we're living are times of acceleration and that's what we're saying. The book like growth is not only growth of GDP is like a whole, it's a whole logic of the system and it's the need of the capitalist system. So we experience it at very different levels. Not just the growth of GDP is like we're saying we have to grow our CVs year after year, no? So it's, everyone has to grow in their particular, yesterday I read, I saw an article about a guy who is boasting in gambling studies. He's boasting that he publishes one paper every two days, you know, it's like. Oh boy, what a great life that is, though. How does he do it, of course? You know, I mean, I saw first a tweet there. We don't care about that, but you know, that means that this is a good life though. You know what I mean? That is something to be proud about, you know. Yes, I mean, well, why would he have to do it? Then like, okay, that's catchable. I see what you're saying, but yes, these values are the strongest they've been. But on the other hand, I have to say that I'm not so sure because there were other periods where also these values were probably in the retreat. And then I think these are values that they have been civilization and philosophy for centuries. But always they've been, was a nice book that I don't remember the title now, which it's the idea of frugality through the ages, you know, and then it shows always that there's been like a dialectic between philosophers arguing for frugality and civilization. And of course, the dominant powers going a different way, you know, but with back and forth, but Christianity at the beginning, early Christianity was a defensive of these values, you know, then of course things change, et cetera. But I think these are, may I say, universal or fundamental values. And there is something fundamental in them that we all feel as human beings. So I think there is a human base for what we're saying and it's relevant now. It's gonna be relevant tomorrow and it was relevant also centuries back. So is there something that- I think you're right, I mean, the values are there, but the kind of the illustrations and manifestations in everyday life, like, well, you know, the grandma that makes a big feast of food or I don't know what, you know, these are kind of, or perhaps we tend to idealize them as past and not wanting to see that they're still here. I don't know, perhaps it's just my point of view, yeah. No, but it's a good point. It's a good point. And I think what we would like ideally and what we are arguing of the growth is like we want to precisely construct the new ways of what you were saying, the family or the neighborhood meal of one generation before, maybe it's not happening anymore. Though in Spain, they do have a lot of neighborhood meals still around, so we have to protect the neighborhood meals that are happening, but make this the base of what we are constructing rather than thinking how do we attract fast food chains or restaurant chains to invest and chains completely are high street. So I have to say that I very much like, I lived in London for a while and I very much prefer the way Barcelona is where there is still a lot of space for neighborhood meals and fiestas compared to London where every neighborhood or every English town basically looks the same with the same stores everywhere. For me, these neighborhood meals and festivals are the growth. So this is where we start from talking about the growth rather than just the material throughput, let's start from the neighborhood meals and the family meals now. So this is a bit what you call a personal or communitarian elements. I'll get back to that in a second. I'm just curious about, because probably you have tackled this in the previous book. I don't know if you think this was tackled as well in this book. I was wondering whether de-growth is just a contemporary ill or it's addressing a contemporary ill or de-growth could have been applied at any periods of civilization. I mean, is it just after the Industrial Revolution that de-growth becomes relevant? Well, I don't mean that the future era was much, much better but do you think that the core principles of growth and that we need to grow and all of that were there for everywhere or de-growth is really a contemporary concept that we need to focus on today? De-growth as a word is contemporary because it's a reaction to something, right? It's a reaction to economic growth as an ideology and the ideology of economic growth is relatively recent. Let's say the actual economic growth starts with capitalism but it starts becoming an ideology. I think it becomes an ideology in the 20th century and it's an ideology that cuts through capitalist and societies that we might call them socialists that they try to organize in different lines but they still kept this ideology. And I think it solidifies as an ideology after the 1930s and 40s when also the measures of growth like GDP we start measuring the economy in the 1930s and we start thinking of the economy as a thing, as a system, as a national economy that can be measured and can be analyzed. This is a thinking that starts in the 30s and really takes off in the 1950s. Takes off when economic growth is at its highest and it's also at the time that governments get preoccupied with the economic growth, they measure it, they talk about it. So it's an ideology of the 50s and 60s that continues to our date in a while metamorphosizing, not changing also in the way. So the growth is a reaction to that and it's an alternative to that but the ideas that we mobilize to create an alternative to that. Yes, they were there before, as I mentioned, no? There are ideas of a simple life or a slower life or a meaningful life that we can trace them to, if we take the Western civilization, we can trace them to Greek or Roman antiquity but of course the Western civilization is not the center of the world. There are Eastern civilizations, there are Southern civilizations and you can find a very parallel and interesting ideas there. If you take Gandhi, Gandhi on economics, for example, has a lot of thinking that's similar to what the growth is now or my personal influence was reading Tolstoy as a, no, I wouldn't say teenager in my early 20s now so I loved his books and I realized now someone presented about Tolstoy and the growth in a conference and I said, ah. I knew it, I knew it. I didn't know why but something was wrong there or something was right. Yeah, something was right but that's how I was influenced because she always had the kind of the growth character in his book that saw the light, you know, and kind of retracted, tried to find meaning, et cetera. It was his personal preoccupation. So I'm saying these ideas were there now. These ideas were there and they were circulating but not in contrast to what I think is the dominant ideology of our time which is economic growth, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You briefly mentioned just now that growth, well, growth was more or less coming from a capitalist roots but we saw it and in your book you also mentioned how in the communism regime in the USSR, they also had these mega plans of growth. So today probably most, if not all political families, even the green, in many cases they are pro-growth and we fell in the trap of growth even if we want to save the planet somehow but later in the book you mentioned redistribution, redistribution of resources, of time, of work hours, you know, coming and all of that. So would that be a new form of communism? I write one that doesn't care about the growth or what is the political family than de-growth could be adhered to or attached to or thrive within or is it a new one? Or yeah, have you thought about this? Yeah, but I think it's different. Like, and I think between each of the four co-authors who might have a different answer to that, I think Giacomo for example would say, yes, a new type of Euro-communism Italian type of, I'm a little bit more agnostic to that and I think people in the de-growth community also have different ideas that you would say come from anarchist, communalist, socialist, eco-socialist, eco-socialism is also a very big stream within de-growth. I think we should remain also open to people with conservative ideals that might speak to some of that of course, keeping our differences now that there are also people with conservative political ideas that understand that the current system and the obsession with growth is problematic and catastrophic. Not to conservative myself and I would never go in this direction but I say, I personally tend to think of a bigger umbrella that brings different people together in new ideas and in ways that perhaps are not the same as before. I think the commons for me is a core word, but I think it's good because it's not communism that has a particular historical legacy that it's difficult to disassociate from the way the project developed. So commons I think keeps what is good from these ideas but also gives it a different direction which is like both of something of creating something new right now which is being created but also the commons that have always existed that this mutual aid, solidarity sharing has always been part of human condition and of human societies. And I think has been at the root of civilization and at the root of whatever progress we might have had. So I think I would emphasize these aspects around the idea of the commons with a very strong green dimension to it, of course. Yeah, I'm asking this because in the book you have like three main ways to implement degrowth which is personal, communitarian and institutional or political, I don't know how would you put that? What could you just briefly elaborate on what would be like the top tricks, top hits to really implement degrowth in these spaces? You as a person, what could you do to implement degrowth in your everyday life, for instance? No, that's what we're saying that sometimes if you only isolate one of these levels it's problematic, you know? Like so if you're just saying, oh eat less meat or fly less, it starts sound like preaching and moralizing and also can it be easily criticized that okay, what you do doesn't change the big picture or like this is the easy things that people who are against degrowth will pick against or they will say, yes you do that but then you have money in the bank or so you are a hypocrite no matter what Greta Thunberg does you will be charged as being a hypocrite. She either took a very expensive boat to go to the other side that not everyone can take or she flew and against it was a hypocrite. So you can't do anything unless you're Jesus Christ and you go to the cross, you know? That's a very strong idea in our society, you know? Unless you die and then you don't mind. So then you are out anyways. So basically people force you either to go out. You lose anyhow, there's no way to win. No, there's no way to win, exactly because either you sacrifice and you go out and then maybe we take your example which is the Jesus Christ story or you know, which really plays out because it's like, okay, you don't have to use your cell phone, you don't have to do this, you don't have to be on the internet. So you go out so we don't hear from you so then we don't care. Or if you're staying, you're a hypocrite, you know? So that's the, okay, sorry for the digression but sometimes this thing of hypocrisy and we have something in the book about it, you know? That everyone can have up to, we say, I don't remember how many, two to four contradictions in your life is fine. Like if you have zero, you're a fanatic, you know? If you have 10, then you are a hypocrite indeed, you know? So somewhere in between we have to be. Okay, good. Two, three, that's fine then. Two, three, two, three is fine, you know? So the first is the personal level but it's not the personal level only of consumption. It's also the personal level of creating the type of relations we want to see scaling up. So it's also being part of the commons in your city, you know? So for example, have the example in the book of the city of Barcelona, there are many commons being formed around new commons, commons of sharing cars, commons of cooperatives. For example, I get my energy from a cooperative that supplies 100% renewable energy. You can have cooperatives of health, of mobility, of where you get your food from. So like becoming on the personal level part of this networks, not just to feel good because you do feel good, but also to start creating these networks because unless you become part of them and you leave it in your daily life, it will never happen. They will not just happen by dictate by some government that will come out of the blue and say, everyone now cooperatives, you know? It won't happen this way. So first of all, you have to create the cooperatives. Then of course you have politically to organize so that there is a government that comes and says at least don't close these cooperatives, you know, protect them or give incentives so that you have more of them or give incentives so that people can eat well and eat less meat, but eat nutritionally, you know? Or don't fly and then have a nice time in the summer where they are or have conferences without flying and being meaningful, you know? So I'm saying you need like a big scale intervention to make your personal choices possible and you need the personal choices so that you embody and create the common sense for fighting for the bigger political change. So we see the two related. The in-between level that you mentioned is yes, is the communitarian level, which is like organizing at your neighborhood scale at your city scale for making these things happen, you know? Yeah. So I was wondering you had also proposed some policies like UBS, UBI and the Green New Deal that's a bit more recent, but there are other ones. And of course we can be critical about it because, you know, I mean, they're old ideas. It's not new ideas. UBI exists now for, I don't know, 60 years or something like that or 40, I don't remember. So why would that now be the case, you know? Green New Deal, well, there is a number of things that have precipitated in order for this to arrive and you mentioned the difference between the U.S. Green New Deal and then the European one, which has a bit of a more de-growth vibe to it because it says that it's for things that matter. It's for well-being and health. And I think this is the real main difference, perhaps, of all of this, even if, you know, limits to growth exist since the 1970s. Now you attach it with, well, we also have more or less a shitty life, you know? How can we have a better life at least, you know, and not be like trapped within an economical system but that doesn't even make us happy. Before at least they sold us on the fact that we were happy with consuming and now we kind of have the manifestation of this is not happening. I think that that might appeal kind of an urgency to go towards them. I mean, there are two different questions. I think the first question is like, okay, why these policies that they are old and why were we putting them again together and why is this something new and it's about de-growth? I mean, one critic of us, Ted Northhouse, the co-modernist told me at some point, oh, you're just like putting standard social democratic policies and you're just calling them de-growth, you know, like you're not saying anything new. So we are responding to that in the book and we are saying like, it's not a negative thing to work with existing proposals and common sense and things that are already happening and being discussed in political parties, but we give them a different logic. So it's very different to think of a universal income in the sense of growth. Like, oh, how do we give money to people so that they start consuming more? It's very different if you think of it in terms of de-growth. So like, because then you start thinking, okay, like we give people more money so that they can satisfy their basic needs with a basic or a care income, we call it a universal care income. But then how do we make sure that this doesn't go into more resource extraction, which is the problem in carbon emissions? So then you need also perhaps a carbon tax or something that closes it off in the other direction. So we're trying to think holistically there of how these things, but yes, they are reformist in a way. So in one sense, these ideas have been there for a while, but also they haven't been implemented. So they've always been the same reforms, but they are almost revolutionary reforms. Now like a basic income is something of yes, proposal is there, but no one has ever done anything with it apart from experiments in villages of a thousand people now. But again, how do we think of them in a de-growth context? And we're trying the book to think of how they make sense in a de-growth context. So one thing is this, the second question I think is why now, why could this happen now? And I think the why now is that because we are in a different context where the objective of growth itself is faltering, is collapsing, you know, and it's getting harder and harder to sustain and that's the other argument of our book. So the argument of our book is not just that we have reached limits to growth and we can't have more growth. Our argument is like, yes, we can't have and in order to sustain just a little bit more growth, there are huge sacrifices committed right now. There are social sacrifices committed through austerity and there are environmental sacrifices committed through bringing new lands and new ecosystems into a circulation of capital. So, and this all is just to sustain something that it's unsustainable. So wow, how and we see that it's becoming almost impossible to, so growth is not our experience. Let's say in our parents' generation growth was the experience. That's what they experienced in the 50s and 60s and 70s. And we have an experience, so it's not our experience. So I think in our time, it makes more and more sense of thinking of these different ways of maintaining or sustaining or improving well-being by sharing, by redistributing, by doing things better rather than by expanding. Before, I think that the last question I had for the book and then I had the last question after that. You had the last section, which was the FAQ, which is more or less kind of a, I feel that questions that you have received over Twitter or over the years or annoying questions that come at the end of conferences where you kind of debunk myths and people asking questions like, why shouldn't we reduce population at the end of the day? And you're like, oh no, not this again, but is this like the questions you get all of the time and this is why you put them at the end, just please read the FAQ and if not, just contact us afterwards. Yeah, it has a little bit of this feeling and especially for Twitter, because on Twitter, like last week, there was again an academic from Copenhagen who was saying, oh, why do we need the growth? We can just have more efficiency and like, okay, yes, we were starting from point zero. But I don't, let's say, so there is a little bit of this feeling in having them at the end and very short answers because we have elaborated so much these conversations over the years. But I don't want to underestimate these questions because I don't expect everyone to read everything about the growth, know the answers. And also, I think these are valid questions. So in my previous book, 2000, sorry, I mentioned many books. So like I had one book on the growth 2018, one book on limits and culture of limits 2019 and now this book 2020. So in my 2018 books, we need time to read them as well. So just please, you know. I'll take it, I haven't read them myself. I just wrote them. So you can, in the 2018 book, which was a little bit bigger, it was like at least three, four times bigger than the current book and it was more supposed to be an exhaustive look at different questions. I treated these questions very differently. So there was a last chapter which was called controversies and debates. And instead of one paragraph response to each, I developed, I had like three or four pages and I engaged with a different research and the type of research we would have to do to set more light on this type of questions. So like, is green growth possible? Can we have absolute decoupling and reduce? So I'm not our population, like what's the take about population? So these questions there, I take them seriously and I devote four pages and I say the different parts of the debate. Also uncertainties I have in our responses, et cetera. So that's one approach we can take to them. The other is the one we take in this book which is, this is what we answer in this book that it's supposed to be like a strong statement in support of the growth. So when we support the growth, that's how we respond to these questions. They came at the end, which is good. It wasn't supposed to be like that. So at the beginning, I had them as I always do like chapter two was like the critic to growth why green growth is not possible, et cetera. And then when we worked it with my co-authors, then we said like, okay, do we have to repeat again this structure or could we do something different and do what I told you? Like start directly from people on the ground doing something which is in the direction of the growth and then put all these arguments which is like why growth is not possible or desirable, put them at the end of the book in case someone wants to go back to them. And I think it's, I like it this way, you know? Like let's start from what we propose and then let's see at the very end why we think this is necessary, you know? Yeah. I think I mean, you could also redirect people directly to the FAQ to have a broad idea before they even read the book. Sometimes I really kind of enjoyed this. Perhaps, so we have three quick questions now. The podcast is, our podcast is mainly focused on cities, right? So what would the city look like if they applied de-growth principles in your opinion? I think they would look much more diverse, much less corporatized, a lot of emphasis on public spaces and on cheap interventions that, cheap but beautiful interventions that can make a difference in the everyday life of citizens. Green spaces, but not in the sense of green spaces that can lead to gentrification, but like opening spaces in all neighborhoods especially in the working class and the lower income neighborhoods of creating spaces where people can interact, targeted interventions there, much less money on the huge, massive branding oriented interventions of attracting capital to the city and much cheaper and much more well thought interventions of improving the everyday life of people. And I think there are great architects, great minds around. There is a lot of possibility of aesthetic interventions, things of making things more beautiful, but right now they are not implemented because the dominant logic is the logic of capital which is how do you attract more money to the city? All right, so what's next for you? Well, what is the one single exciting thing that excites you in the very near future for the year to come in 2021, let's say? Not much to excite me for being on a total lockdown. It excites me that I have two twin daughters that smile all the time and they make me very happy, but the rest is not very exciting, you know, we can't step out of the house. Intellectually, I don't know if it excites me, but I mean, I have a pending project which is to write a book on eco-modernism and a measured and balanced critique of eco-modernism. And I think that will be my last thing bringing to an end the work I've been doing the last five or six years. It's the last thing that remains to be written. I have a lot of material, we've done a lot of research with my collaborators, some beliefs on that, but it remains to be written. So in one sense, it is exciting, but it's not also, you know, because it's like, my God, we haven't still done it, we have to do it, you know how it is. But I think I'll bring something- And it's about eco-modernism, so oh boy. It's about eco-modernism that I don't love them, but I also want to do a fair job of recognizing where is it coming from and why it has valid points to add. So I want to write a good, with some, we want to write a good book on that. So that's what's coming. And it excites me a little bit to think of a bigger project in the future on thinking about cultures of the growth. Not so much economic, but thinking more about, develop a little bit more the idea that we said in this book, like, which are the people that they are already organizing and embodying in their everyday life the principles of the growth. Why is this happening in different places? How is it taking place and how can it, could it be scaled up? So I think I would like to highlight and elevate a little bit more what's already going on in the ground to open up our thinking. It's a little bit of a parallel project to what Gibson Graham did with communities, community economies. What they said, you know, start, stop thinking just about capitalism and the reaction to capitalism and start seeing also that people are already organizing differently on the ground. Okay, and last question. What would you recommend for the people listening and watching about books, articles, videos, films? What is something that you think they should be looking at or read? Well, there are many good books. I mean, apart from our books, our book on the growth, there are many other good books on the growth this year that I would strongly recommend it. Jason Hickels, Vincent Ligee in the Neatranetsons, also exploring the growth. Mattias Meltzer has a good book. So there are many good books. On Offrio Romano, a book that unfortunately hasn't got so much attention because it's one of the expensive books that Fruglitz publishes. A Sociology of the Growth, and he has like a very unique perspective there on basing the growth on the idea of expenditure or the pants, or sort of batai, which is something that I find very interesting. And on my free time, I read batai which drives you crazy because he's a difficult philosopher. But he has this whole idea that the main question is like expenditure, where we expand our surplus. This is where we get our pleasure, what structures the society. So yes, if you want to have a little bit of fun, read batai with a three-volume book on expenditure and sovereignty, et cetera. What else would I recommend people to read? Or any videos or art? I mean, you know, whatever, perhaps a movie that struck you and said that's an interesting take on the topic or another topic, you know, perhaps something. The documentary is a very good one made by an ex-student of ours, The Fairy Tales of Growth. I think it's a very good documentary to watch if you want to have an introduction to the growth thinking. Definitely a very good one. Yeah, you can read some Tolstoy if you haven't. And keep an eye to these anchors because D-Growth's character is a... Yeah, Alaka, for example, which we wouldn't expect to find D-Growth there. You can read also the Stagiavsky if you haven't, I don't know what he has to say about D-Growth. The movie I mentioned in my previous book in Limits, it's a movie I engage a lot with... It's the legend of 1900, or the pianist has been translated in some words, which is about a guy who lived all his life in a boat and plays piano there, from which I get a lot of inspiration about thinking of limits and freedom. I won't tell you how, you can watch the movie and see what you think about it, and then read my book. And science fiction, I mean, Ursula Le Guin, if you haven't read, she died last year and a lot of attention has gone to her, but I loved her work. I loved her science fiction work, social science fiction. I didn't like so much her... her kind of imaginary Tolkien type of fairy tales with dragons, et cetera. But I like a lot The Dispossessed, what's the other... All the books I've read of Ursula Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson is another science fiction writer that I like a lot and I know he shared with me an early manuscript of his book that it's coming out this year, which is about climate change. So I think people should read it. And I think it's a novel that I think kind of articulates in a nice way a lot of the scientific thinking about responding to climate change. So I won't tell you what it is. It hasn't been published I think yet. So I think it's called Ministry of the Future. I think that's gonna be the title. Gonna be a good read. Okay, thanks so much, Jorgo. Thank you for spending so much time with me. I know you have two small daughters that you need to attend to as well. So thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for the book as well. Hopefully we're gonna meet anytime soon. And thank you everyone as well to listening until the end. I'll see you all one into our next episode. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure.