If the right to fly was equally divided among everyone, this would give us 0.6 flights per year.
Of course it is not. In fact, only very few people flies.
10 countries account for 60% of all flights, with the UK, the US, China, Germany, and France alone representing 33% of all flyers.
In England, half of people never flies, and out of the people who do, most of them fly once a year. But when looking at flights, only 20% of them are taken by these majority who flies only once a year. Most flights are taken by people who fly several times.
The richer you are, the more you spend on flying.
The top 20% richest households account for 52% of total expenditure on air travel in the EU.
The richer you get, the more planes you take, and this regardless of nationality.
Take-home message: aviation remains a luxury service, and we should take inequalities into account when we discuss the (necessary) degrowth of that sector.
Karma moment in science. Two weeks ago, @IvanVSavin & @ProfJeroenBergh published a (flawed) review of the degrowth literature arguing that there were « very few studies using formal modelling ». This week, Lauer et al. published a study showing that this is wrong. 🧵
Systematically reviewing the literature from 2000 to 2023, Arthur Lauer and his colleagues identify 75 modelling studies.
Savin and van den Bergh (2024) argue that « the fraction of studies undertaking modelling or data analysis fluctuates in the range of 0-15% over tiem shows no clear trend » (p.3). Wrong again.
Today is Black Friday, a nonsensical ritual invented by for-profit businesses for the sole sake of moneymaking. By shopping today, you are willingly enriching a small class of business-owning super-polluters who bath in ecosystem-killing profits.
The top 10% richest humans own 76% of world wealth and generate 50% of all carbon emissions. The footprint of the world top 1% equals the one of the poorest 66% of humanity.
We are told that consuming forever more is part of human nature. Bullshit. The seemingly inescapable rat-race for positional prestige is constructed by an army of influencers, growth hackers, and ads designers. Read it again: the destruction of life on Earth is designed.
Of course that's your contention. You're an economist who just heard about degrowth. You just got finished reading some quick-and-dirty critique – the latest piece in The Economist probably – and you’re convinced that degrowth is unnecessary because we can green growth.
You’re gonna be convinced of that ‘til next month when you read "Decoupling Debunked", then you’re going to admit that decoupling has never happened in the past but you’ll say that it could sure happen in the future.
That’s going to last until next year when you’ll be regurgitating Andrew McAfee, Sam Fankhauser, or Alessio Terzi about how price signals and technological progress can solve any environmental issue.
Summary of my talk at the #BeyondGrowth conference on the impossibility of green growth and the necessity of degrowth. 🧵
There is a rumour that is picking up speed in the media, affirming that it is possible to both produce more while polluting less. Some people call it “green growth.”
This rumour is not only a rumour, it is also a belief deeply embedded within our current environmental strategies. Problem: The idea of an economic growth fully decoupled from nature is scientifically baseless and it is distracting us from more effective transition strategies.