Let me first say what I’m gonna say. Then I ll say it later. Hickel and I agree on what societies need to do at this time, but not what to call it, nor how to speak solutions into reality.

Ok!

One of Arne’s many areas of expertise was interpretation and preciseness in the theory of communication.

There he introduces the concepts of pseudo-agreements and pseudo-disagreement.

Let’s say in a Naessian thought experiment that two people, J and P, believe themselves to be in disagreement, but after deeper interpretation and argumentation they may eventually realise that they do indeed agree. They were in pseudo-disagreement.

Let’s say that person “J” says “Degrowth!” and “P” says “Healthy Growth!” Are they then in real disagreement, or pseudo-disagreement?
My starting point today is that Hickel and Stoknes are in pseudo-disagreement. Mostly.

Hence the outline for my talk today is to

• 1) clarify what we do agree on, which is a lot,

• 2) explore key differences mainly in communication and theory of change ,

• 3) I’d like to share some recommendations to proponents of degrowth

• 4) End with 6 concise conclusions.

First - all the things we agree on;

-from Less is more: “how we can shift from an economy that’s organised around domination and extraction to one that’s rooted in reciprocity with the living world?» . Thanks to Jason from the depth of my heart for formulating and raising that question. And dedicating your life to dealing with it. Me too!

I Also enjoy Giorgio Kallis’ quote: “Sharing and enjoying a limited planet is what degrowth is all about. “Degrowth” marks a ruthless critique of the dogma of more – the dogma of economic growth.” Wow - count me in!

-We share the outrage and grief over the utter tragedy of the ecological breakdown, The trauma of climate disruption, worsened by an insane inequality, particularly impacting the global South as a consequence of colonial, and ruthless industrial- & financial resource extraction. Here, I cry too.

-I totally agree with the need for degrowth in material footprints in rich countries. I’m a true degrowther, a disciple of Hickel here as long as we always qualify «degrowth» by adding “in footprints”. All we have to do to be in full and total agreement is to add “in footprint” after each mention of degrowth, or “degrowth in throughput”; then we’re brothers in arms.

-“another quote, Hickels definition of ‘degrowth’ – “a planned reduction of excess energy and resource use to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a safe, just and equitable way.” (page 29). Indeed, bro!

-Further, while mainstream economics sees itself as the science of efficient use of scarce resources, rather the point of economic policy and theory must be “to meet everyone's needs within the means of this planet”. Ohhhh, yeah!

-We agree, I think, on taking a very critical view on mainstream economics. It really is, as our bro prof Steve Keen puts it: “Mad, bad and dangerous to know”. 2 examples: Helge Lund - Statoil supports global co2 tax (but BAU until so) and then macroeconomist Nordhaus: 3C is optimal and delay action to 2050.

Conventional economics is ignorant of its own political, ethical and philosophical history. It carries a huge burden, being complicit in Ecocide. An alternative is desperately needed, and the heterodox fields of ecological economics are crucial going forward.

-of course we also agree that GDP growth is not an ultimate goal. Even mainstream economists agree to that upfront. Putting GDP as a ultimate societal goal, is at the level of Trump stupidity. Our ultimate goal is to improve The Wellbeing - of humans and all more-than-human life that we two-leggeds are entangled with. Ref Arne Self-realization in a Spinozian holistic sense

-I also totally support Degrowth of destructive extractive industries and in planned obsolescence !! We should simply ban coal, oil, gas as well as disposable non-recyclable products from given future dates. And how do we achieve that? We replace them with smarter provisioning systems with much higher resource productive, with supplies coming from regenerative industries. We move From oil to solar, from extensive fertilizer driven monoculture agriculture to regenerative ag and permaculture, we stop deforestation and restore forests and marshes and seaweeds, invest in rewilding nature, investing in renovating wasteful buildings into plus-houses, etc, etc

-NO disagreement here!

-we share the enthusiasm for Spinoza, Wendell Berry, Robin Kimmerer, Monica Gagliano, Suzanne Simard, the love of nature, the naturalist, conservation, bio-centric world views, for radical animist and relational cultures and ontologies, the inspiration from indigenous cultures like the Achuars of Ecuador and critical eco-philosophy in the vein of David Abram particularly. I’m delighted to have such an eloquent proponent of the vision at our side as Jason Hickel.

-I mostly agree with Hickel, Kallis, Alisa and Victor and z and… on the main policy tools we should put in place, such as setting a global minimum wage and public job guarantee. Also universal healthcare, education and affordable housing, paid for by a raise in corporate taxes and more progressive taxation on wealth, tax transparency, green taxes, stricter environmental regulations with caps on resource extraction, a basic universal income, shorter working hours, job sharing, and a shift towards more meaningful and fulfilling work for all, and so on… you find them all in my book on Tomorrows economy, creating a healthy green growth.

-Yet another lovely quote: “High-income countries don’t need more growth in order to improve people’s lives. What they need is to organise the economy around human well-being, rather than around capital accumulation.” Hurrah, bro. But here i would have added an important qualification: we need to organize for maximizing wellbeing through a accumulating a broad set of capitalS, including natural and social capitalS.

Now, let me turn to the more thorny issues, in the spirit of being a brother. But also remember that I grew up in a family of 4 brothers and 1 sister. As brothers we were teasing and debating and fighting and supporting each other all the time. So, when I’m in the following will pick apart the “degrowth” framing, I’m doing it in the context of this brotherly, but tough love. OK?

-First, in the context of GDP, Lower growth rates are happening anyway in rich countries, since 1990. And not because of any impacts from degrowth movements. In Poor countries however it still correlates strongly with wellbeing and achievement of SDGs. So it makes sense as an intermediate goal for low-income countries, even if clearly not an ultimate goal. But I hope to avoid a conventional technical debate here around the GDP-metric and its many faults and weaknesses. It is a very difficult and defective metric. But it is still, what we currently have long time data-series on, and should re-learn how to use it wisely into the future, not delete it.

My main and substantial disagreements that I’d like to address is that “degrowth”, as presented by Hickel is:

conceptually muddled

Practically infeasible framing in business and policy making. It only pays lip service to innovation, and puts off most policymakers from low-income countries

Huge distraction as a framing for engaging concerned citizens and activists as an effective theory for systems change

Provides no credible solution that is acceptable to a majority of today’s societal main actors-players. The alternative to degrowth framing is to redirect markets and investment cash-flows towards healthy growth in a broader wealth consisting of a set of natural and social and productive capital stocks, not just as today maximizing rentier profits for the elite. That’s what a healthy growth is and a credible solution to both conventional grey growth or its opposite degrowth.

1.Conceptually muddled

Growth in what? Degrowth of what?

When using such words; ALWAYS specify: growth in wellbeing; degrowth in material footprints, or growth in broad wealth?

Then what type of growth? Exponential or logistical (ie J- shape or S-shape?

Or: according to Hickel we could say we really need growth: Rapid growth of wellbeing for the 99%, more Solidarity, Social equity, Clean, cheap, accessible energy, Locally produced food and rapid growth of regenerative agriculture and soil organic matter

So, the question is: what do we really want to grow? My answer is Green growth solutions

-But There is no definition of green growth in the book Less is more, So anything that Hickel doesnt like is lumped into the derogatory frase of “green growthers”, creating some straw-men that are then easy to shoot down. Arne Ness had some principles for communication and effective discussion, one key one: “Principle Two: Avoid Tendentious Renderings of Other People’s Views” I dont recognise the green growth critiqued in the book. What is critiqued is not green growth but “grey linear industrial growth”: or what can be aptly be named as the “neoliberal neoclassical orthodoxy”.

Genuine green growth means growing the green solutions in the economy so quickly that they outcompete and replace the grey solutions, leading to absolutely lower footprints in the aggregate. Or quantitatively speaking ; Any entity, company, city or country demonstrate genuine green growth, when its rate of change in resource productivity is significantly above 5% per year.

-What the concept degrowth obscures is that the Problem is not economic activity as such, but the material wastefulness of that activity: or more precisely the existing systems of wastefulness in material resource use.

-in communication, degrowth movement is Barking loudly up the wrong tree: at a nebulous “growth”, sometimes at an ill-defined “green growth” rather than wastefulness of the grey growth, at GDP rather than the parasitic model of wealth extraction. [Show chart throughput, well-being, ] Also sloppy economics and science: no specification of RoC for these trends. ]

Please, could you stop complaining about “green growth” and if you want to use “missile” words, please name it with a more appropriate qualifier for what it is: “Stop Grey growth” or “No to neoclassical growth” or “Kill material growth”

Further, I know that degrowthers, like Kallis, say “The degrowth goal is indeed social and environmental transformation, not a reduction in GDP.”, p xxx

And Hickel: “Let me emphasise that degrowth is not about reducing GDP. GDP is not a dial we can turn.” Ok? These quotes Indicate that degrowth also can support growth in GDP or output. To most people this is conceptually confusing: degrowth is also economic growth? Yet; in chapter 3, Less is more, you argue forcefully against gdp growth, and you point to the need of reducing economic growth.

My point: A name is important. Words matter. Words are power. So the choice of the framing of “degrowth” for a certain theory of systems change has social consequences, .

Let me illustrate:

Let’s say you go into a KFC, then anyone’s immediate expectations is that I can buy a fried chicken there. It’s in the name. Imagine the surprise if the worker there replies: “what? We’re KFC, let me emphasize that we’re not about frying chickens here. Get real! And we’re certainly not from Kentucky.” Similarly; imagine waking into a seminar about “degrowth» then you hear the lecturer say: “Degrowth is not about reducing economic growth” this is almost Orwellian newspeak: war is Peace. Freedom is slavery. Degrowth is growth. Degrowth is both not about reducing GdP and Degrowth means reducing GDP.

Also, the human intuitive or our fast brain, as Kahneman calls it, doesn’t really understand no or “de”. Psychological Research shows that using “no” and “don’t” particularly to children, is counterproductive. ((Rather than saying no thirty times to a child to not play with China vase, you give the child some other safe toy to entice and distract into another play))

I, as an academic and philosopher, do certainly get what Jason & company is trying to get across with “degrowth”.

It is to deconstruct the self-perpetuating and dogmatic discourse of growthism. I support that.

But in putting “de” in front of an ill-defined growth is a clumsy confusing frame / word outside a narrow left-Wing academic bubble, or the French intellectual philosophical Foucauldian discourse analysis and word-splitting deconstructivist Derridaian bubble.

This happens also with the word “capitalism” - there is no or little conceptual distinction in Less is More between USAs capitalism, the Chinese state-capitalism and the Scandinavian welfarist social-democratic versions of capitalism. There are so many shades of capitalisms, in the plural.

Just painting “capitalism” as the big boogey-man doesn’t bring us forward. Also by attacking this monolithic capitalism as driven by private capitalists, you position degrowth in a polarized way on the far left side of politics. This will and is arousing the conventional counter-defence & attack from conservative right-leaning forces, and we’re back in the left VS right polítical trenches. Nothing moves. Polarisation is worsened.

In Less is More, Degrowth means a lot of different things, but in general it is used as some saviour approach to all kinds of bads: “Degrowth” is against capitalism, enclosures, colonialism, consumerism, inequality, exploitation, deforestation, racism, classism, nationalism, modernism, imperialism, neoliberalism, polluting extractive industries and finance. Me too, i certainly dont like those isms. But rhetorically, ALL BAD THINGS ARE LUMPED INTO this fuzzy bad monolithic growth-concept. Then, on the bright side of life we find DEGROWTH as the all-encompassing label for all good things. In this sense Less is More is pretty Messianic, Puritanistic and dualistic and separationist in itself. It’s either HELL (anything Growth-ish) or HEAVEN (all things degrowth-ish).

I hear the echo of the Evangelist preachers: “wide is the gate and broad is the road of {growth} that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life”. That easily resonates with to the subtitle of Less is More. “How Degrowth will Save the World”. If ever there was someone with a psychological saviour’s complex, here it is right in the open.

Back in 1972, Ltg was a Huge success in drawing attention to the impossibility of endless growth, both on the physical resource and the sink side (here the Less is more interpretation missed the point). But a huge failure in getting its real message into political and economic decision making, or address the middle-class, the moderates, the “movable middle”.

Maybe the warnings from LTG could have been more effective if they had more clearly distinguished between the two main markers of growth: intangible money on the one hand, and physical materials on the other. It is possible to have continuing growth measured in money (which is now really just immaterial, intangible numbers stored electronically somewhere in the cloud), but one can never have infinite growth in material resource use nor its associated ecological footprint.

-Currently, Degrowth-label also is a fad, riding on another wave of outrage from the far left at capitalism and climate destruction; but a sort of Intellectual laziness; simply triggering and repeating a lot of the unproductive ltg debate from 1970: simply polarizing pro vs anti-growth, having learnt nothing about framing.

I wish a resounding success to supporters of the “Degrowth” label in implementing its (our!) set of policy recommendations, but I fear that Degrowth-framing will repeat the legacy of LtG, and be like water off a duck's back in politics and business. Because it is:

2.Practically

infeasible

in business and policy

- as a theory of change the degrowth framing is Politically infeasible to attract what political pollster call the “movable middle”.

-also, Politically impossible: at this time in modern democracies a gov can’t pass orders even to increase gdp, and even less propose national budgets to slash it. And even if a Degrowth government did pass wide ranging orders that lead to decrease the GDP, any degrowth-party would be ousted from power immediately or at next election.

-“Degrowth” is furthermore unwanted in business circles, and to business boards and their General Assembly. Its dead on arrival. I did a scan of Less is more, and there are next to none positive or constructive references to Business, and all mentions of “corporations” are scathing rebukes. Zero references to regenerative business opportunities.

-imagine you Go to meet an investor, a cfo or fund manager; you consult him on “degrowth” which in fund manager ears sound like reduction of assets; loss in other words. Then you argue: degrowth is good for you - go and reduce and lose your assets as quickly as you can. Now repeat after me: “degrowth is good - I should lose all my money or the money of my clients.” Then when you’ve done so, you can come back and follow me.

-We really do need the business sector onboard and motivated, if the swerve is to happen quickly enough.

Not because boards necessarily disagree with the vision of a flourishing earth, but because they see their primary job as increasing their market share and money value, strengthening their balance sheet.

-the theory of change that I tend to align with has been well formulated by Buckminster-Fuller: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” The new model outgrows the old, just as Electric buses are outgrowing diesel ones, and solar power is outgrowing coal power.

So, my first substantial disagreement can be condensed into two words. They are: “Words matter”

And “degrowth” is the wrong word for motivating enthusiasm in mainstream, in the movable middle, for accelerating deep systems change in the type of society we currently have.

You touch on the problem in your book: “growth sounds so good”. But then you go ahead bashing it anyway. And you say at the end: “I was worried about the frame of degrowth” and yea - you should have listened to that worry. It’s a great frame for firing up left-wing academics, but fails miserably in business and politics.

It’s so politically easy to shoot down degrowth:

“Actually: it will be a lot like the pandemic; jobs and shops closing down, people working from home. You want financial crashes and more pandemic-like shutdowns?

This guy Hickel is coming for your jobs, vacations and travels, confiscating your goods and hard-earned money”- He wants to push a new stock-market crash, financial crisis, pandemic-response and unemployment on you, planned!

Now we totally agree that our societies can’t go on with more “grey growth”. But is there another type of growth we could replace it with? And what do we call that alternative?

There are many competing candidates out there already; green growth, Ecological economics,

Charles Mann has written an interesting book on the topic of mindsets and comms: the Prophet and the Wizard. Prophets see humans as living in a finite world with constrained limits imposed by the environment, while wizards believe human ingenuity gives us an endless array of tools to manage the environment for our needs. Given that these are archetypes that don’t fit exactly to neither mine or your style, I’d still maintain that your communication frame comes across to mainstream audiences as more of a prophet that is pontificating and moralizing people’s overuse of precious resources , while mine approach to generating societal change is probably closer to the Wizard.

Is the prophets position justified on scientific grounds? Oh yes!

Is it effective in changing mindsets of mainstream? No. Witness jimmy carter vs Ronald Reagan, or Al Gore vs g. bush, most environmentalist prophets that run for power, fail end up in opposition. Now Norwegian elections: the parties embracing full speed on oil at x%

It is really depressing, in many ways, that the world is full of humans. Sometimes, some humans are and act rationally, but mainly we don’t.

Too often we, meaning the modern mainstream don’t think well, or take scientific facts rationally into account. I suggest that we rationally take the irrationality of humans into our theory of change. So, it would be rational for humans in rich countries to degrow their material consumption. But in reality they won’t, voluntarily, neither as consumers, citizens or as owners.

I view the core of the problem, then, as one of pragmatic linguistics, communication and the popular attractivity of effective economic tools. How can we reach across the aisle, from scientific doomism, philosophical deep ecology and puritanical anti-consumerism and degrowth, the typical pontificating environmentalist bashing of mainstream people?

In psychological or cognitive linguistics, it is well researched what happens when you say: “Dont think of an elephant”. You cannot have properly read George Lakoff’s important research and work on framing in political communication.

How can we feasibly reach out to and engage both business and policy side, both left and right, address the movable middle and not just entertaining the academic-environmentalist audiences and echo-chamber of Ecological Economists . This question is not answered by Hickel and co, because “degrowth” lacks the pragmatic feasibility. Yet.

3. Distracting discussions

Hence -as a theory of change, degrowth is today a click- and rage-bait for outraged climate activists and old leftists angry at “unfettered capitalism”, and then funneling their energy away from engaging in effective political change strategies. We don’t have time for such distractions, and unfortunately my bro Jason Hickel is a very eloquent cheerleader for such distractions which will not get us into the halls of power soon enough.

• a) Our real intellectual work, brother, is - not simply tearing conventional industrial capitalism, neo-classic economics and philosophical dualism apart. That’s easy. It’s been done 100 times before. Already in the 1800s there were so many pamphlets and books criticizing industrial capitalism and homo economicus that it could fill entire libraries. And Arne Naess too did a thorough philosophical job in his Spinozist Gestalt ontology and 1970s deep ecology. No, the hard work is creating constructive useful frameworks, guidelines and tools that will delight todays business workers and policymakers and engage mainstream citizens in supporting them.

• b) Intellectually dishonest: Your 2019 article is meaningless. I’m astounded that the reviewers and editors let it through. To prove their point Hickel looking for green growth in a time period before it was even announced, and also without defining it.. We all know that the linear extractive great growth we had during 1980s and 1990s was gray. If you look for green growth inside gray growth then, no surprise, you don’t find it. In a logical equivalent, I can just as easily claim: “Degrowth is impossible” I’ve looked at thousands of studies of economic development from 1950 to 2000, and all of the show economic growth, not degrowth. None show sustained degrowth (except Russia under Jeltsin&Putin, or Venezuela since Hugo Chavez). I’ve now proved that degrowth is impossible unless under ruthless dictators. The key point is; most governments haven’t even really tried genuine green growth policies until very recently. (Maybe with exception of IRA in USA, and EU commission Green Deal now in recent years, even if still patchy as we enter the mid 2020s) Our shared thrust, bro, should be to accelerate the green and inclusive policies we now work on. Make them for real, not just rhetorics. We should not spend time fighting about pro- or anti-growth in the level of economic activity measured at market prices, or about the “impossibility” of future green growth.

• C) Intellectual dishonesty three: to pretend that degrowth would be good for the poor. Just as saying that there is no evidence for green growth, I could easily point out and document that there is no empirical evidence at all that degrowth ever worked well for the poor, wether in high- or low-income countries. Each time there is a down-turn in economic activity, sometimes referred to as a recession, this always hits the poorest hardest. Yes, the rich lose some of their wealth and incomes too, but they are well buffered and can use their funds to defend themselves, and actually profit much more when cycles turn upwards again.

So can we have Real Genuine Healthy growth? Changing from extractive to Regenerative and inclusive capitalism? Again: We haven’t really tried it yet, globally. Most politicians and executives speak some blabla about sustainability, ESG or green growth, then proceed to deliver grey and unfair growth through greenwashing BAU (show slides capro). They lack the tools, the courage and the deep motivation due to lack of knowledge and tools to deliver sufficient systems change.

Nevertheless: many recent trends are really positive, and we should speak much more about them. Let me show that green growth is possible and plausible into the future: Some charts.

The theory of change that I support, in the spirit of Arne Næss, is a healthy growth. It’s healthy because it can regenerates nature and restores socital fairness and trust.

That means achieving a Genuine Green growth through = positive social tipping points (check SystemiQ report / Lenten)

How do we engage consumers, citizens, policymakers and business investors in accelerating the system,s change we need?

I agree with Jason on most of the criticisms of industrial colonial linear grey growth, and society’s addiction to growthism. It’s a psycho-pathological addiction to a trajectory that is suicidal in the long term.

But I take a different more pragmatic perspective on how to engage growth-addicted people on a new direction and roadmap. Here I’m more of a psychotherapist than an economist.

Imagine you’re a therapist and you see patients with pathologies: one is in alcohol addiction, another has patterns of anorexia, a third is suicidally depressed. Should I rationally tell them to a) stop drinking, b) eat more protein and healthy fats? And c) look at the bright side of life, man! Don’t worry be happy!

I could - but psychological science tells us it in-effective intervention. Worse, they will disengage in their relationship with you. They rebel, and won’t come back for the next appointment. Why? You just told them the truth, the rational correct factual response they ought to take. But rather than engaging you Shut them down. You triggered their inner resistance to change. Now they avoid you.

Rather a therapist will work with the symptoms, not fighting or moralizing against them.

So maybe underlying the addiction is a deep repressed grief, a huge loss creating an inner emptiness that must be filled with something. Or the eating disorder- may come from a unconscious self-loathing and self hatred that expresses itself through denying anything good to your inner self. Or the depression is maybe the consequence of a fear of never being good enough, however fast you run to satisfy the expectations of other, to please them. Ok - now growth addiction:

The problem then isn’t “economic growth”, understood as increasing aggregate economic output at market prices.

Our 3 most acute & real problems are the 1) fossil fuels and captured energy politics. 2) the wasteful and extractive agri-industrial complex, and the skewed subsidies it gets. 3) our unfair and biased tax-system which only makes the richest even richer.

Common for all three is the need to build the political will across the spectrum to implement the solutions that we agree upon-

Our shared goal and focus, bro, should be to build the political will to

• Slap a ban on fossil fuels and

• Raise the taxes on wealth and enclosure of the land and the commons. Then this could be paid out to everyone as a Universal Basic Dividend.

If we do A & B, then we start turning the system around in an healthier direction. I prefer to call that healthy growth, not Degrowth.

We should join forces on these goals, rather than you wasting time barking at economists and peoples wish for growth, and rather than we-two wasting time arguing about “growth” among us.

In summary it’s an inconsistent, illogical, negative and counterproductive framing.

The content is full of Good intentions - but bad wrapping! With such a wonderful and brilliant vision, So well formulated policy recommendations, how on earth could you end up with such a unhelpful and polarizing label?

Arne Næss left the bashing of growth and consumption to erik Dammann, from the 1970s. Future in our hands was the degrowth movement in Norway, led by Dammann on the basis of the book.

Arne however came up with something better in my mind; he said increase quality of life with simpler means. Or shorter: Rich in ends, simple in means. That’s a positive frame around a degrowth in material footprints.

Here are three personal career recommendations, bro:

1. get yourself a real job in business; help turn it around to deliver more value and more impacts to those who need it, with a growing regenerative handprint or footprint. Then come back with practical tools and framings you have personal experience in using in business and use your energy, intellect and eloquence to share them with policy makers based on the real messy market world. OR:

2. Test it in mainstream: Go into politics, Start a “Degrowth” party, win the majority in parliaments and install a degrowth government. I promise I’ll vote for you when polls show more than 10%! OR

3. Change framing from the root metaphor of degrowth to “sufficiency” or maybe “regeneration” or “flourishing” or “thriving” or simply wellbeing economics or doughnut or Earth4All. Or at least add a qualifier: footprint degrowth, material degrowth, when you speak of it.

Conclusions:

1. Rather than opposites, Degrowth and Genuine Green-Growth are brothers: what separates us is mostly pseudo-disagreement. Both approaches aim for the same ultimate goals / vision: max wellbeing with a footprint well within planetary boundaries asap. We share most of the same policy tools to get there. Two most important things: We want to ban fossil fuels + raise corporate taxes on resource use and excessive wealth.

2. We also share the same enemy: the extractive mindsets and practices of grey, linear, wasteful economic growth, driven by short-term post-colonial extractive finance, supported by a decision-making-as-usual political system of parties established during the industrial post-wwII period

3. I support nearly all Hickel’s solutions, but not the framing. Hickel’s framing of De-growth unnecessarily throws conceptual wrenches into the work of the allied movements for systemic changes. It’s great content but bad marketing. Suddenly we are confused and fighting internally (pro or anti a some foggy growth-concept, or polarized in leftist vs right) rather than joining forces - shoulder to shoulder- in changing the pathological economic system with its suicidal material consumption and the colonial mindsets that sustain it. ((It resembles the problematic choice that Arne Næss did with naming approach as deep ecology vs shallow ecology. This was felt as an accusation by others that they were shallow, so it polarized the environmentalist movement)) Currently I’m seen as suspicious by many in the Green Party and environmentalists because I speak about green & healthy growth, rather than the “obvious” degrowth we must take. My position is rather that we need to accelerate the growth of positive social tipping points to counter the suicidal effects of grey growth on climate and wildlife negative tipping points. We need rapid growth not “degrowth” of solutions.

4. The alternative and more effective communication roadmap to real systems change then, isn’t helped by the degrowth-framing, but can be more impactful by a “healthy growth” or restoration/ regenerative -framing among non-ecophilosopher and non-environmentalist audiences. Framings must be Positive : give something more to peoples who feel bypassed, not pulling up the ladder and calling the end of growth and curtailing their opportunity. We must engage these groups in replacing the extractive, cancerous and suicidal growth we’ve seen since 1950s. To use a metaphor: to survive cancer we need to outcompete the cancerous cells with healthy growing cells in our societal body. Not stop the growth of all cells. Or with another metaphor, in our new Club of Rome, updated limits to growth study called Earth4All, we call for a Giant Leap with 5 large turnarounds; It actually results in a little bit higher near-term economic growth rate, because of all the investments needed in the rapid growth of green and inclusive solutions. (more investments in better public services, retraining, innovation funding, solar power everywhere, smart grids, public transport, efficient and nourishing food systems, electrified industries etc)

5. In ending, what is the core difference between us, in a slogan?, the real disagreement between us brothers? You say: “Less is More”. I say “More from Less” or More quality with less quabtity. Or more value from less materials. Why? Given that humans are not (mostly) rational but gullible and emotional, I think the puritanical-leaning framing of “less is more” is mostly effective among the choir of anti-consumption and anti-capitalism converts, the echo-chamber of alarmed academic environmentalists (of whom I’m also one). There are an highly active minority of them or us in environmental discourse, and Jason gets much more likes on social media from his crowd of followers than I do. However, it’s all mainly from the bubble of already alarmed and converted 5-20% of citizens, the anti-capitalist, deep-Green left-leaning degrowth crowd, which is drawn to fringe events such as this one here. The essence of our disagreement is that I think we can engage broader audiences, not with negative (or zero-sum-game) framing of “less is more” but with the constructive (and plus-sum-game or win-win-win) message: “more from less” and green growth is smart

6. Finally, the main problem with the “Degrowth” framing is that it doesn’t signify an alternative, the word gives no direction for people in economic jobs. It’s like getting into a taxi and saying; when the driver asks; where are you going? I’m not going anywhere! The word Degrowth signals “Fried chicken”, but there’s nothing there. It’s a huge nothing-burger. An alternative is : let’s do a “giant leap” together, get out of this hole we’re digging and create, yes lets GROW a more healthy economy with a broader wealth of natural and social capitals. And here are the steps of how we can do it, together ! We can take A giant leap toward a healthy economy by reducing unfair wasteful practices and replacing them with healthier and better ones. We know what is needed, everyone is wanted and are needed on board now, each in their own roles; all hands on deck. Let’s stop de-ing ourselves; de-pressing, de-laying, de-basing, de-growing, de-spairing, de-flecting, de-fensive, de-energising, de-ranged, de-scending, de-activating, diminishing ourselves. Rather: 
There is no room for despair or delay. Come on folks, Let’s grow the renewables energy systems fast enough for staying below 2C! Let’s go big in regenerating nature, yes to more growth in wellbeing, yes to growth in social trust, equity and growing more wildlife, and let’s have hard fun while doing it!