Paper short abstract:

The current ideology of progress is reduced to economic growth and measured in GDP. I argue that economic growth is irreconcilable with the survival of the human race. I point toward two elements of a political ecology after progress. They are centred on commoning in degrowth.

Paper long abstract:

What does it mean to live in a world so unwell, that the human race has to confront the threat of extinction? I make a case that living in such an unwell world logically can only mean that we have to abandon the modernist ideology of progress. I briefly review ideas of societal progress and note the decline in arguments relating to progress in the writings of political and social commentators. However, alive and well, and hidden in plain sight, is the current dominant ideology of progress – the central policy goal of governments to achieve growth in Gross Domestic Product. If we have a chance to survive we must abandon this twisted ideology of progress. Speculating on the best possible future for living and surviving in an unwell world I point to two interrelated elements of a political ecology of after-progress – degrowth and commoning. I outline a political ecology of degrowth as one centred on sustaining the commons, and contrast this with current arguments for green capitalism, centred on the idea of a Green New Deal and based on a technological fix. Competitive individualism is the central social relationship of capitalism and is a social relationship that leads to the destruction of the commons. By contrast, commoning should be seen as the central social relationship of a degrowth economy. It is simultaneously a social relationship and an ecological relationship. It is a social-ecological relationship to sustain a commons in degrowth.