1. There is a weird chart circulating, which supposedly shows that covid-induced ‘degrowth’ (sic) is an order of magnitude more expensive in reducing carbon emissions than clean energies. There are so many things wrong with this analysis, that I don’t know where to begin….THREAD 
2. First, as Jason Hickel has argued for the nth time, degrowth is not the same as recession or depression. -
3. Does anyone seriously think we would call for sustained depression to reduce carbon emissions, if need be by a pandemic? That's pure madness. We aren't mad as those who expect the global economy to grow 3% per year, that is 11x by the end of the century, and all be cool.
4. In relation to climate change, we have pointed to the obvious fact that it is much easier to decarbonize an economy that is the size of the current one, or two thirds of it, rather than one that is 11 times larger by 2100 (what 3% growth each year amounts to).
5. We have also argued that moving away from fossil fuels is likely to slow down the economy as we will be moving to energy sources with lower energy returns. And this is fine.
6. (If you wonder, can’t a Green New Deal act as a stimulus? A Green - and care - New Deal is needed one way or the other. I doubt that a shift to lower productivity activity is recipe for growth. But who cares? People and planet wellbeing should come first, not GDP growth.)
7. While the current, pandemic and over-indebtedness inflicted economic depression has nothing to do with degrowth, this does not mean that what we have been calling for is not relevant - now more than ever (as we explain here )
8. Now, to the strange chart itself, which compares apples to elephants. The lost output from a recession is not a ‘cost’ in the same way investing to clean energies is a ‘cost’.
9. To give an example: it does not cost anything to me when airplanes to stay grounded. It might cost billions to Richard Branson, but to flyers it does not cost anything. Actually they save money that they can spend elsewhere.
10. Likewise, the ‘cost’ of say installing million more windmills is not merely a ‘cost’. It is also an investment that creates new jobs, circulates money & resources, etc. So, it is not clear what is being compared here. If RE is a cost, then all productive activity is cost.
11. With this twisted logic, the fact that the economy one year grows 1% instead of 3% ‘cost’ us -2% of GDP. Actually it doesn’t ‘cost’ us anything. We produce more.
12. Even if we followed the weird logic of this chart and consider that Covid had a certain ‘cost’ of lost output and a ‘benefit’ (sic) of avoided emissions, then we should consider all other ‘benefits’ (sic) in the numerator.
13. It's not only carbon that isn't emitted, but also water and air not polluted, secondary health effects avoided, fewer accidents, etc. Clean energies don't have such 'benefits'. But anyway, that would still be an absurd comparison, pointing to the futility of the exercise.
14. Point is: this chart is meaningless. END OF THREAD.
