1. @TimHarford wrote a piece in the @FT arguing ‘that the pandemic is giving us a taste of what an end to growth might look like’, proving that 'hitting demanding emissions targets through crude degrowth would be hopeless'. Some thoughts - THREAD ft.com/content/0b1718…
2. To begin, no one that I know is arguing for the crude, undirected type of degrowth ‘of five pandemics in the next decade' that @TimHarford attributes to degrowth advocates. We are scientists, and generally scientists don’t say nonsense like that. Our argument is more nuanced.
3. @TimHarford cites @r_mastini defining degrowth as “the abolition of economic growth as a social objective”. Right. But then Hartford goes on interpreting this as targeting negative GDP growth rates, by any means necessary (including ‘crude’ ones, such as pandemics). Wrong.
4. Stopping the pursuit and prioritization of growth is not the same as aiming to reduce GDP. And as @jasonhickel explains here, degrowth is not the same as recession or depression nor the pandemic an example of degrowth.
5 @TimHarford writes ‘Degrowth represents the view that sufficiently sharp reductions in carbon dioxide emissions cant be achieved through new technology, pricing incentives or even major investment in energy and transport systems’. There is a word missing at the very end: ALONE!
6. Of course we should decarbonize energy & transport systems. The way to zero carbon emissions is not zero GDP (!) Our claim is that it is easier to decarbonize economies at their present scale or 2/3 smaller, than 11x bigger (the size of the global economy by 2100 at 3% growth)
7. Carbon taxes, massive green and social investments, a basic income, and policies like some of the ones @TimHarford writes about, are part and parcel of a degrowth transition, as we explain in our forthcoming book. 
8. Our argument is also that shifting to lower energy productivity energy sources or supporting less carbon intensive, and less labour productive activities, might as well slow down economies. Hartford seems to accept this possibility. Good. But if so, then ..
9... we have to prepare our economies for managing, and thriving without growth. The pandemic shows that we are far from prepared for this task. Any family can weather a 10% loss of income, but national economies risk collapsing. Why?
10. Those of us working on degrowth/post-growth have put thought on this question, because we believe that it will be both necessary to manage without growth (if we are to combat climate change) & sooner or later inevitable as economies cannot grow at compound rates forever.
11. This is why insisting on 'fairytales of growth’ is counterproductive. Because it doesn’t let us prepare for the challenge at hand. Since @TimHarford likes parallels with the pandemic, the equivalent was the fairytale ‘what pandemics you pessimist prophets of doom ?!’
12. @TimHarford says economic damage is the unwanted side effect of lockdown - there are no ‘degrowth epidemiologists’ wanting to throttle the economy to stop the disease, because there wont be a vaccine. But there aren't degrowth environmentalists arguing the equivalent either!
13. We are not questioning that solar or wind energy can provide low (and eventually zero) carbon energy. We argue that this alone will not be a ‘vaccine’ against climate change - it will be too little to late, if the economy keeps growing at 3% each year (11x by 2100).
14. Our strategies for degrowth also are not crude, but ‘selective’. Activity in certain carbon-intensive sectors such as oil or aviation has to decrease, and to increase in others, such as (health)care or clean energy.
15. The pandemic analogy is this: when confronted with what was at stake we decided to stop activities that would increase health risks, even though this had a negative effect on GDP. And that should be the guide for how to think about the bigger challenge ahead, climate change.
16. @TimHarford is right that the political backlash against the lockdown and the vocal minority against any economic sacrifice, “should unnerve any of us who worry about the far more diffuse threat of climate change”. But...
17. ... likewise, the dominant majority in favour of acting against the pandemic despite the high cost for the economy should encourage us. This sets a good precedent for acting on climate change.
18. So does the renewed credibility of science and scientists. And the realization that those who warn of possible disasters in the future do not do it just out of the joy of being prophets of doom or because they are enemies of progress.
19. End of thread. I will write a separate thread giving my two cents on why this sudden interest on degrowth by commentators in prominent (mostly conservative) outlets and their urge to argue that the pandemic and the lockdown prove 'the misery of degrowth' (sic).
