Content uploaded by Alberto Garzón
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Alberto Garzón on Oct 03, 2022
Content may be subject to copyright.
The Limits to Growth
Ecosocialism or Barbarism
ALBERTO GARZÓN ESPINOSA
Introduction
It has now been fifty years since the scientist Donella Meadows led the
publication of a report titled The Limits to Growth, which aimed to analyze
the physical impacts of economic growth patterns on the planet. A com-
puter model was used for the assessment, which looked at, among other
things, the effect of economic exploitation on soils, the exhaustion of
non-renewable resources such as minerals, and the resulting climate dis-
tortions. Various scenarios were put forward, the worst case being that, if
no action were taken to correct the trajectory being followed at the time,
industrial society would collapse in the mid–twenty-first century.
The report became an international reference point and highlighted
the ecological consequences of the dynamics of growth that, until then,
had been seen as positive. The scientific team’s model, together with its
findings, was nevertheless fiercely contested by economists.1
Economic growth is indeed habitually seen as something desirable, lim-
ited in space and time, even as a reflection of the natural evolution of
societies. The very notion of economic growth is intrinsically connected
with the social notion of progress, both of which arise from the Enlight-
enment and have suffered from forced, equivocal analogies with the nat-
ural sciences, particularly based on Darwinist theory.2 In short, we have
firmly internalized and naturalized the notion of economic growth.
Thirty years later, Meadows herself maintained that economic growth
should be understood as a tool and not as an end in itself, that it was
necessary to question the rationale of such growth, who benefits from it,
and whether there were sources and sinks on the planet to make it pos-
sible. This had similarities with what the economist Simon Kuznets had
suggested when he designed the gross domestic product (GDP) indicator
and put it forward to the U.S. Congress. According to Kuznets, it should
not be inferred that this indicator, which measures the monetary value
of production, could also be an expression of social well-being. More and
Alberto Garzón Espinosa is an economist, leader of United Left Party (Spain), and
minister of consumer affairs in the Spanish government.
This article is part of a project of the Party of the European Left. It is adapted from an
article by the same title published on April 20, 2022 by LaU: Revista de Cultura y Pensamiento.
monthlyreviewarchives.org
DOI: 10.14452/MR-074-03-2022-07_2
35
more voices have been raised since then, warning that GDP is not a good
tool for measuring human development and social well-being.3
The main problem underlying conventional economics is its reliance
on a conceptualization of the economy that deliberately ignores the phys-
ical context of which it is necessarily part, including the most elementary
laws of physics. This means combating the assumption that resources and
energy are unlimited, without even considering the fallout of the activity
or the planet’s limited carrying capacity. In view of the hegemonic na-
ture of economic thought and its ability to mold the framework of social
thought, this is crucially important, because it makes finding effective
solutions to the eco-social crisis virtually impossible.
Defective Economic Models
Economic growth can be seen as the result of greater production ca-
pacity on the part of a particular society. To simplify, this means that
a society that produces a larger quantity of product than it did in the
previous year is said to have grown economically by an amount equal
to the difference between the two levels of output. In this way, a coun-
try that produces ten units of food in a particular year and produces
twelve units of food the following year is said to have experienced a 20
percent growth in food units. These two new food units are considered
as economic surplus. The systematic buildup of economic surpluses lies
behind the development of societies, inasmuch as historically it has en-
abled societies to become more complex.4
Capitalism as an economic system emerged around five centuries ago.
It introduces a series of incentives, through competition, to discipline
companies and force them to grow in each period, as well as to rein-
vest profits in order to raise their production capacity to a higher level,
awarding a growing share of those profits to the people who supplied the
capital. In this way, under capitalism, the whole entrepreneurial fabric is
pushed toward boosting production capacity. This is what, under specific
institutional arrangements, has driven the spectacular increase in eco-
nomic activity, infrastructure, and the living standards of people over the
past two hundred years.
The historical reality of capitalism has, however, demonstrated that the
process of economic growth is neither constant nor spared from seri-
ous upheavals (leading to phenomena such as unemployment and lack
of paid work for large sectors of society). Economists have also devoted
themselves to the task of untangling the difficulties of economic growth
for more than two hundred years. Most of them, however, have used a
set of theoretical instruments that neglect the ecological issue—that is,
36 MONTHLY REVIEW / JULY–AUGUST 2022
the ecological prerequisites for economic growth and the ecological con-
sequences of that growth.
Classical economists, the founders of political economy as a discipline,
have nevertheless undoubtedly been aware of what we might call the
social metabolism: the relationship between nature and the economy.5
Their predecessor, the physiocratic school, whose principal exponent
was François Quesnay, had already interpreted the economic question in
the eighteenth century on the basis of agrarian flows and concluded that
any surplus is possible thanks to the gifts given to us by nature. David
Ricardo, in turn, was aware of differing soil fertility and put together a
theory of decreasing land yields that led him to think that capitalism
could not grow indefinitely. Reverend Thomas Malthus introduced his
now famous thesis on population growth as a constraint on economic
growth. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, too, considered that capitalism
would come up against limits to its own development due to the down-
ward trend of the rate of return. Marx was extremely interested in the
scientific advances of his time and accorded considerable importance to
the concept of social metabolism, which he is widely credited with having
introduced into social science.6
In the twentieth century, in striving to make the discipline more scien-
tific, economic thinking moved further away from the physical and even
social conditions under which any economy must necessarily operate.
Neoclassical thought, as reformulated by Léon Walras, Alfred Marshall,
and William Stanley Jevons, among others, permeated economic science
as a whole and led to a break with the previous political economy, giving
rise to notions of production and wealth completely disconnected from
a natural base. Meanwhile, the search for theoretical explanations of eco-
nomic growth and its possible failures continued with the economists Roy
F. Harrod and Evsey Domar, who developed a model that concluded that
economic growth was fundamentally unstable and that meeting the con-
ditions for stability was extremely complicated.7 This Keynesian-inspired
model provoked a response from neoclassical economists such as Robert
Solow and Trevor Swan, who laid the foundations for the paradigm of
economic growth and whose models are still being studied as a priority
in every economics department around the world. These are the models
that, in the end, define to a large extent economists’ scope of thought.
The cornerstone of every model of economic growth is the aggregate
production function. This function represents the economic production
process and, in its most basic formulation, only involves capital and la-
bor, while resources and energy are always considered as fully available.
In this way, capital and labor are taken to be the only production resourc-
THE LIMITS TO GROWTH 37
es that, together, generate the surplus of an economy. This surplus, in
turn, makes up the amount to be distributed between wages and profits.
This is the basis of a large proportion of policy discussions around ac-
cumulation and distribution in capitalist societies. Ethical and political
issues as important as the level of wages or profits or, even more, their
relative share of income, are addressed from the standpoint of the effects of
those changes on economic growth. Each model belongs to a distinct school of
thought due to its specific configuration, determined by different starting
assumptions. In general, neoclassical models consider that restrictions on
growth come from the supply side, so they suggest that profits must be
increased to encourage accumulation, while post-Keynesian models focus
on restrictions from the demand side and usually suggest changes in the
distribution of income and increases in wages (or public expenditure) to
support demand. The large majority of current discussions of economic
policy fall within one or the other of these perspectives. Nevertheless, the
general paradigm is always shared, and the debate really turns on ways to
maximize economic growth.
Students of economics are often surprised when studying these mod-
els, especially the most basic ones, that there is apparently no possibility
of unlimited growth. For example, Solow’s model establishes that the
production factors, capital and labor, have decreasing returns, which
supposes that each additional unit provides an ever-smaller quantity of
product. In its dynamics, the model tends toward a stationary state where
there is no economic growth. Nevertheless, when technical progress, in
whichever possible formulation, is incorporated into these basic models,
it is then possible for potentially unlimited growth to exist. This is what
happens with the AK growth or endogenous growth models, as well as
all models incorporating growing returns in the aggregate production
function. In effect, students soon learn that unlimited economic growth
is technically possible thanks to technology and, in the case of certain
heterodox models drawing inspiration from Allyn Young, Gunnar Myrd-
al, Nicholas Kaldor, and Anthony Thirlwall, also the central role played
by the industrial sector.8
This brief review of the relationship between economic models and
public policy should make it clear above all that economists, past and
present, generally tend to think within analytical and conceptual frame-
works defined on the basis of the search for maximum economic growth.
The responses given are dependent on the use of a set of theoretical in-
struments that, whether explicitly or otherwise, are limited by their own
deficiencies. Bearing in mind the fundamental role played by economists
in framing public debate, disseminating their own ideas, influencing the
38 MONTHLY REVIEW / JULY–AUGUST 2022
decisions of public institutions, and, as in the case of central banks, di-
rectly holding absolute control of particular levers of power, it is neces-
sary now more than ever to go to the source of these limitations.
What all these trends and schools of thought have mostly ignored, both
in their methodological foundations and in their policy proposals, is the
connection between productive activity per se and the natural founda-
tions on which it sits, and which it cannot do without. In other words,
there is absolutely no vision of the social metabolism, which entails start-
ing from a worldview where the economy is seen as a subsystem of the
biosphere and not the other way around. This lack, wholly illegitimate in
our times, relates to the physical aspects of the economic process, the use
of energy and natural resources, and the ecological pressures and impacts
of the production process.
Natural Resources and Energy
The economist Nicholas Georgescu-Rogen was one of the first to warn
of the serious deficiencies in traditional ways of thinking about the econ-
omy. In particular, he highlighted the gap in economic models regarding
the consumption of energy and materials. Both components restrict the
possibilities of economic growth in ways that economics had ignored un-
til just a few years ago.9 In fact, planet Earth is a closed system of materi-
als so that, aside from the very exceptional arrival of a meteorite or the
removal of a human artifact, neither of which are significant in quantita-
tive terms, the mass of materials is always the same. In the case of energy,
Earth is an open system inasmuch as we receive energy flows from solar
radiation, but, even then, the laws of physics impose limits on energy use.
These days, we accept that most of the products we use in our daily
lives are made from a combination of energy, water, and other materials,
and that we need energy sources in order to extract and process those
materials for the production process. We also know that they come from
the geochemical cycles of Earth and most originated millions of years ago
due to plate tectonics, which not only generated but also geographically
distributed resources across the planet, although obviously not uniform-
ly.10 For this reason, some regions of the planet are rich in petroleum
and natural gas, while others are rich in other minerals—all have clearly
shaped the historical development of societies and, of course, have led
to wars over resources as well. These resources are in large part non-re-
newable, meaning that they exist in fixed quantities and their natural
regeneration occurs over a time frame inaccessible to human beings. Any
resources that do renew themselves cyclically are limited by their own
pace of regeneration.
THE LIMITS TO GROWTH 39
Moreover, every human process involves the use of a series of energy
sources governed by the laws of physics, particularly the laws of thermo-
dynamics. The second principle of thermodynamics establishes that the
quality of energy usable by human beings is decreasing and that, in con-
verting energy (for example, converting the energy from solar radiation
through photosynthesis or generating electricity through photovoltaic
panels), it is not possible to maintain 100 percent of the available energy.
Much of the energy is dissipated as heat, so conversion presupposes the
transformation of high-quality, low-entropy energy, such as carbon, into
low-quality, high-entropy energy such as heat. The history of technologi-
cal development is the history of a constant struggle to improve the ener-
gy efficiency of such conversions.11
Flows of materials and flows of energy can be understood as two dis-
tinct aspects of the same process. In fact, a continuous flow of materials
is only possible if there is a continuous flow of energy at the same time.
In addition, these two restrictions on economic growth interact in very
diverse ways, and the ecological pressure and impact of productive activ-
ity also show up in the alteration of geochemical cycles.
It is common, however, to differentiate between pressure and impacts
deriving from productive activity. On the one hand, productive activi-
ty exerts pressure on the environment, for instance through the emis-
sion of carbon dioxide resulting from burning fossil fuels. On the other
hand, the impact of productive activity on the environment shows up in
phenomena such as climate change or global warming resulting from
the sustained build-up over time of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Over the last few decades, the availability of information has significant-
ly improved and many indicators have been put together with a view to
measuring the level of pressure and impacts exerted by the production
and consumption model on the natural environment.
The Planetary Boundaries
There is no doubt that human beings have lived on Earth for at least
two hundred thousand years, although most of the time they did so in
hunter-gatherer social groups. The end of the last ice age, which occurred
some twenty thousand years ago, gave way to an extraordinarily warm
climate that, in turn, enabled human beings to develop new economic
and social practices, such as agriculture (developed some twelve thou-
sand years ago). Scientists have agreed to call this warm era the Holocene,
in which current civilizations developed.
Since the Industrial Revolution, the use of resources and energy by hu-
manity has, however, increased to a marked degree. Many studies on en-
40 MONTHLY REVIEW / JULY–AUGUST 2022
vironmental history describe these transformations very well. This inten-
sive use of resources and energy, especially energy from fossil fuels, has
brought about a rise in living standards and with it an increase in popu-
lation throughout the world. These trends have sped up, especially since
the mid–twentieth century, as can be seen in Charts 1 and 2 in this article.
The period beginning at that time has been called the Great Acceleration.12
In more general terms, the scientists Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stormer
recoined the term Anthropocene more than two decades ago to refer to
the change from one geological epoch to another, meaning that, these
days, as a consequence of the development of the global economic sys-
tem, humanity mobilizes more land and sediments than any other nat-
ural process.13 Other authors have used Capitalocene instead, to point to
what is ultimately responsible for all of these transformations: the type
of economic system.14
In 2009, a group of scientists developed the framework of planetary bound-
aries, with reference to the main ecological thresholds that, if lowered, could
entail significant planet-wide alterations in natural cycles.15 The main vir-
tue of this framework is that it extends the range of attention beyond glob-
Chart 1. Earth System Trends
% DECREASE IN MEAN
SPECIES ABUNDANCE
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
TEMPERATURE
ANOMALY •C
-0.30
-0.10
0.10
0.30
0.50
0.70
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
SURFACE
TEMPERATURE
% LOSS (AREA)
5
10
15
20
25
30
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
TROPICAL FOREST
LOSS
ATMOSPHERIC CONC.,
PPM
290
310
330
350
370
390
410
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
CARBON DIOXIDE
ATMOSPHERIC CONC.,
PPB
250
260
270
280
290
300
310
320
330
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
NITROUS OXIDE
TERRESTRIAL
BIOSPHERE
DEGRADATION
HUMAN N FLUX,
MTON YR-1
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
COASTAL
NITROGEN
HYDROGEN ION, MMOL
KG-1
6.5
7.0
7.5
8.0
8.5
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
OCEAN
ACIDIFICATION
MILLION TONS
20
40
60
80
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
MARINE FISH
CAPTURE
ATMOSPHERIC CONC.,
PPB
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
1800
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
METHANE
% LOSS
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
STRATOSPHERIC
OZONE
MILLION TONS
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
SHRIMP
AQUACULTURE
% TOTAL LAND AREA
0.05
0.10
0.15
0.20
0.25
0.30
0.35
0.40
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
DOMESTICATED
LAND
Source: Ian Angus, “When Did the Anthropocene Begin…and Why Does It Matter?,” Monthly Review 67, no.
4 (2015): 1–11.
THE LIMITS TO GROWTH 41
al warming, much more generally recognized, to encompass other envi-
ronmental impacts such as the loss of biodiversity, acidification of oceans,
and contamination due to excess nitrates or plastics. Nine biogeological
phenomena were identified that, if specific limits were exceeded, would
trigger irreversible processes threatening life itself. This understanding is
based on the existence of a safe space, with boundaries determined by the
specific biogeological parameters of the Holocene, within which human
beings could live with a degree of security. At the moment, five of the crit-
ical thresholds for life are thought to have been passed, highlighting the
urgency of a forceful response to these imbalances.
One of the main problems with the planetary boundaries framework,
however, is that it looks at social metabolism in an essentially technical
way. If the analysis is not broadened, the framework seems to place respon-
sibility on abstract notions such as humanity or the human being, when it is ob-
vious that neither the causes nor the consequences of the ecological impact
are symmetrically distributed across class or geography. There is in fact no
global ecological crisis that means the same thing for all people. Therefore,
it is much more appropriate to talk of an eco-social crisis, because it helps
to highlight the importance of sociopolitical relationships when assessing
environmental degradation processes and seeking solutions.16
Chart 2. Socioeconomic Trends
TRILLION US DOLLARS
10
20
30
40
50
60
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
EXAJOULE (EJ)
150
300
450
600
YEAR
1750
1860
1890
1920
1950
1980
2010
THOUSAND KM3
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
4.5
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
MILLIONS TONS
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
BILLION
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
BILLION
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
THOUSAND DAMS
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
BILLION MOTOR
VEHICLES
.2
.4
.6
.8
1.0
1.2
1.4
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
URBAN
POPULATION
PRIMARY
ENERGY USE
FERTILIZER
CONSUMPTION
BILLION
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
1.2
1.4
1.6
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
WORLD
POPULATION
REAL GDP FOREIGN DIRECT
INVESTMENT
MILLIONS TONS
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
LARGE DAMS WATER USE PAPER
PRODUCTION
BILLION PHONE
SUBSCRIPTIONS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
BILLION ARRIVALS
.1
.2
.3
.4
.5
.6
.7
.8
.9
1.0
YEAR
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2010
TRANSPORTATION TELECOMMUNICATIONS INTERNATIONAL
TOURISM
Source: See Chart 1.
42 MONTHLY REVIEW / JULY–AUGUST 2022
Some authors, such as the English economist Kate Raworth, have add-
ed a social dimension to the sphere of planetary boundaries. The result,
popularly known as the circular economy, points to the need for people in
modern societies to live above decent minimum living standards (social
floor) and below the planet’s biophysical limits (ecological ceiling), there-
by establishing a safe, fair space for humanity. This contribution is useful
in that it allows for the incorporation of aspects such as inequality, pover-
ty, and decent work into an understanding of biophysical limits.
The Impact of Consumption
Since the publication of Limits to Growth, the close link between eco-
nomic growth and the heavy ecological pressure and impacts threaten-
ing life on the planet has been generally acknowledged. For this reason,
the United Nations developed the Sustainable Development Goals. Target
Chart 3. Planetary Boundaries Update
Source: “Planetary Boundaries Update: Freshwater Boundary Exceeds Safe Limits,” Potsdam Institute for Social
Research, April 16, 2022. Designed by Azote for the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
THE LIMITS TO GROWTH 43
8.4, for example, is to “improve progressively, through 2030, global re-
source efficiency in consumption and production and endeavour to de-
couple economic growth from environmental degradation.” The Europe-
an Union also adopted this agenda and has, since then, approved a large
number of standards designed to achieve those goals.
The scientific work built up over the last few decades has resulted in
the proliferation of indicators to measure the impact of economic activity
on the planet, which has facilitated the pursuit of these commitments.
The general public, for example, has become familiar with indicators
measuring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and is even aware of the
impact of their carbon footprint on daily life and consumption decisions.
Nonetheless, as we have already noted, environmental impacts go be-
yond climate change and also require other indicators.
One of the most advanced approaches in this regard has to do with the
flow of materials involved in the production and consumption model. The
extraction and processing of resources is responsible for approximately
50 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and more than 90 percent of the
loss of biodiversity on the planet. It has been proved that there is a direct,
close relationship between the consumption of materials and economic
growth.17 This is basically the result of the impulse to consume.
Consumption (referring here to aggregate economic demand, that is
consumption plus investment plus government, and not simply consumer
spending) is the main driver of global ecological impact, far ahead of other
demographic factors such as age, household size, cultural capital, or hous-
ing structure. It must be stressed that consumption is required to close
the capital cycle—that is, for production to be sold and economic growth
to exist. Consumption and production are, in this sense, two sides of the
same coin.18 After all, under capitalism, production is geared toward eco-
nomic gain rather than satisfaction of human need, so that economic ac-
tors are disciplined to ensure that their production is sold and consumed,
and the profits are reinvested in greater production (growth). If aggregate
demand were insufficient to cover production and stocks in a particular
period, the system would be facing a crisis. Thus, under capitalism, the
incessant consumption spiral mirrors the incessant production spiral.
It should be remembered that any product coming onto the market
carries with it a baggage of both visible and invisible resources, meaning
that any product involves the use of the materials it is made of, but also
the materials necessarily consumed in manufacturing that product. For
example, a single smartphone is made up of dozens of mineral substanc-
es such as lithium, aluminum, silicon, copper, and nickel, but its produc-
tion also relies on the consumption of huge amounts of water—according
44 MONTHLY REVIEW / JULY–AUGUST 2022
to some estimates, twelve thousand liters of water per unit—and other
materials, in addition to the waste generated due to its early obsoles-
cence. With economic globalization and the development of global value
chains, the material and technological complexity of products has in-
creased and with it the commercial exchange of raw and other materials
and waste between countries. This applies not only to the consumption of
electronic products but also to food products (the world agri-food system
is responsible for 34 percent of greenhouse gas emissions) and the global
tourism industry (the cause of 8 percent of greenhouse gas emissions). All
our daily activity is tied to a particular level of resource and energy con-
sumption that exerts pressure on and impacts the natural environment.19
The extraction of material resources has in fact been stepped up through-
out the world in recent decades, as is clear from Chart 1, which goes back
to the beginnings of the last century. It can be seen, moreover, that there
has been incredible growth since the second half of the last century, a
good demonstration of the Great Acceleration period. In 2017, for example,
the average person consumed 65 percent more resources than in 1970.20
The domestic extraction indicator is generally used to find out the precise
impact of the production and consumption model on the use of natural
resources in a particular territory. It measures natural resource use with-
in the borders of a country. The drawback of this procedure, however,
is that it does not record the impact of international trade and can lead
to the belief that certain countries, traditionally net importers of prod-
ucts, are improving their indicators of the impact of resource use when
this result might, for example, reflect the fact that they have relocated
material-intensive industries. Another indicator used is domestic materi-
al consumption, which does take account of international trade, but only
adds the physical weight of the apparent consumption of imported and
exported goods. This means that no account is taken of the quantity of
resources used to produce the imported and exported goods. To solve this
problem, a much more accurate indicator has been developed. Known
as the material footprint, it describes the consumption of both domestic
natural resources and imported goods, also including the resources used
in producing those internationally traded goods.21
The material footprint is therefore the best available indicator to assess
the impact of the production and consumption model on resource use. At
the aggregate level, the material footprint necessarily coincides with mate-
rial extraction, due to the fact that imports and exports cancel each other
out on a global level—which means that the growth of the material foot-
print has also been spectacular over the last fifty years. It has nevertheless
been asymmetric, because not all regions are equally responsible for this
THE LIMITS TO GROWTH 45
growth in natural resource use. If we look at per capita resource use, we
can see that North America, mainly due to the United States, is clearly in
the lead with an average consumption of 30 tons per person in 2019. This
is 1.5 times the consumption recorded in Europe and up to 7 times higher
than the figure for Africa.
This is somewhat similar to what happens with greenhouse gas emis-
sions at a global level, given that the Global North has been responsible for
92 percent of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions since 1850. The United
States alone accounts for 40 percent of those emissions, while the countries
making up the current European Union are responsible for 29 percent.22
When we begin to look at the situation within different countries, we
find that the upper income strata are the largest consumers of resources.
As we have said, societies under capitalism are structured into classes
and, insofar as resource consumption is linked to income, it is to be ex-
pected that the greatest ecological impact will come from the wealthiest
social groups. Moreover, some research has shown that, internationally,
the richest 10 percent are responsible for between 25 and 43 percent of
carbon dioxide emissions, so it is clear that the ecological impact is driv-
en by the richest citizens of each country.23
In the case of Spain, the country’s material footprint has grown in the
last fifty years, although with two clearly differentiated sub-periods. Until
the financial crisis, the trend was upward, speeding up at the beginning
of the century with the housing boom, but the subsequent downward
trend has continued ever since. This pattern points to possible demate-
rialization, that is, less resource consumption per year. This is due to a
large extent to the economic crisis, but it may also reflect changes in
the production structure—toward less resource-intensive sectors—or an
increase in technological efficiency.
The problem with the material footprint measurement, as well as all the
other previously mentioned indicators, is that they only reflect the con-
sumption of materials. To take account of other types of impacts, the
European Commission has developed a new methodology based on the
full product life cycle, which has led to the construction of two new indi-
cators: the domestic footprint and the consumption footprint.24
The domestic footprint reflects the ecological impact (not of resources
alone, but also a further fifteen aspects), taking account solely of what is
produced within the country. As the consumption footprint also covers the
effect of international trade, it incorporates the impact of all the goods
produced abroad but consumed in our country (deducting the impacts of
what we produce here for consumption in other countries). In the case of
the European Union, the data show that in the period between 2005 and
46 MONTHLY REVIEW / JULY–AUGUST 2022
2014 there was a relative reduction in environmental impacts, although
with very different indicators from one country to another. The most
significant environmental impact was felt in countries that are tradition-
ally importers of fossil fuels, meat, minerals, and manufactured products,
resulting in a higher consumption footprint.25
All in all, at this point, fifty years since the publication of Limits to
Growth, the debate no longer centers on whether economic growth is as-
sociated with pressure and impact on the natural environment (there is
an overwhelming consensus in this regard), but whether it is possible
to decouple the two phenomena from growth sufficiently and quickly
enough to prevent the social metabolism from reaching the point of no
return in the crossing of planetary boundaries. This is, precisely, the de-
bate between green growth and degrowth.
Degrowth and Technological Efficiency
According to the dominant view of international institutions like the
United Nations and European Union, to avoid the worst ecological scenar-
ios we must reconcile economic growth—which is considered essential to
social well-being—with use of resources and energy remaining within the
planetary boundaries. This would be possible if there were a decoupling
of some variable used to measure economic activity (normally GDP) from
the variables used to measure ecological pressures and impacts (such as
carbon dioxide emissions, use of material resources, and so on).
When the ecological pressure and impact variables grow at a slower
rate than GDP, a relative decoupling is said to have occurred, whereas if
GDP grows but the pressure and impact variables decrease, an absolute de-
coupling is said to have occurred. To achieve these objectives, great hope
has been placed in technological efficiency, seen as the set of technol-
ogies that, applied to the production process, enable the latter to con-
sume fewer resources and less energy per unit of product in monetary
value. This is the technological optimism on which the whole narrative
of green growth is based.
Nevertheless, most of the analyses carried out have concluded that, in
general, no decoupling between economic activity and environmental
pressure and impact is happening, and, furthermore, is unlikely to happen
at any point. In most cases, no kind of decoupling is taking place with re-
gard to consumption of materials, energy consumption, water use, green-
house gas emissions, or loss of biodiversity. Where studies have found some
evidence of decoupling, it has been based on local analyses, restricted to
specific countries or regions, for short periods of time (during a crisis, for
example) or on an insufficient scale to tackle the ecological challenges.26
THE LIMITS TO GROWTH 47
It is obvious that strategies to increase technological efficiency must
be complemented with sufficiency strategies, that is, with a reduction in
the material scale of production and consumption in many sectors so that
economic activity can fit within the planetary boundaries. This is where
the proposals for degrowth have emerged most forcefully. Degrowth be-
gan as a political and social movement and should not be understood
either as an economic concept or as a consistently structured theory, but
as a broad, heterogeneous stream of thinkers and proposals seeking to
ensure development of the global economy within the planet’s biophysi-
cal limits. Quite simply, degrowth should be understood as a criticism of
the theory of decoupling and green growth, and as an affirmation of the
need to reduce the pressure of human beings and their economic model
on ecosystems and the natural environment without betting everything
on technological promises.27
Ecosocialist Strategies versus Barbarism
Fifty years since The Limits to Growth, we are now fully aware that the pro-
duction and consumption model is causing pressure and impacts on the
natural environment to such an extent that life itself is threatened. What
is lacking, however, is the political will to make decisions equal to that
challenge, as the institutional policies followed to date have proven clear-
ly insufficient. Despite the speeches and rhetoric from the governments
of the most developed countries, the commitment in the Paris Agreement
not to raise the global temperature by more than 1.5°C above pre-industri-
al levels is currently undeliverable. On the contrary, according to research
by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world is on a
path toward a catastrophic rise of 2.7°C by the end of the century.28
This being the case, the key task of democratic societies should be to
build resilient communities capable of prioritizing the well-being of their
members without permanently damaging the natural environment that
sustains them, as well as to prevent escalation of the social conflicts and
wars increasingly linked to the eco-social crisis.29 As we have seen, howev-
er, achieving this eco-social-political objective necessarily entails scaling
down the material dimension of the economy to bring it within planetary
boundaries, with far-reaching political, social, and economic implications.
To begin, a complete reframing of the realm of consumption is needed.
Though it is true that consumers cannot make decisions concerning the
supply side, such as the location of major production centers, they do
have plenty of room to influence decisions on the demand side. It is not
easy to take advantage of this capacity, because capital is a social relation-
ship and, therefore, far more than a production and consumption model;
48 MONTHLY REVIEW / JULY–AUGUST 2022
it is a way of life. This means looking at the values and principles of capi-
talist consumption, which go beyond human needs and planetary bound-
aries, the ways such practices are socially reproduced, and what potential
centers of resistance could be generated. When it comes to the necessary
achievement of ecologically sustainable consumption, the starting point
must be that the market is incapable of distinguishing between goods
meeting basic needs and goods of a luxury nature. We need to move in
the direction of an economy based on the satisfaction of human need.30
Approaches of this type, inspired by Amartya Sen and Martha Nuss-
baum and their influence on the UN Development Programme, together
with the contributions of Manfred Max-Neef and Ian Gough, should re-
place the dominant paradigm of economic growth. The utilitarian tradi-
tion in economics maintains that there is a positive, infinite relationship
between income growth and happiness/well-being. Specialist literature
has nevertheless argued in favor of the existence of the Easterlin Paradox,
according to which increased income does not, beyond a certain point,
result in increased individual happiness.31
In adapting the production and distribution processes to be socially
just, there must also be a significant flow of redistribution between social
classes and a general reorientation of production toward activities that
may be low intensity when it comes to ecological pressure and impact
but significantly satisfy human needs. To this end, guaranteed work pro-
grams can help combat unemployment.32
Moreover, democracy will only survive the coming social tensions if
it can put itself forward as a complete program of positive safeguards,
meaning that it must be in the republican tradition, with an underlying
positive conception of the notion of freedom. Consequently, consolidat-
ing and ring-fencing public services such as health, education, housing,
and pensions, among others, is an essential part of a both ecologically
sustainable and socially just society.33
These alternative policies must nevertheless start from a concrete anal-
ysis of reality. A large part of scientific research concerning the eco-social
crisis has given us ever more accurate information on what is happening
in the social metabolism. It is much harder, however, to find the reasons
this is happening, which specific actors are responsible, and which obsta-
cles stand in the way of changing direction.
First, it is unusual to find research that, along with a technical analysis
of the eco-social crisis, also provides a specific analysis of how power
operates. When all is said and done, power is a social relationship that in-
evitably defines the limits of what is possible. At the same time, the pos-
sibilities of implementing policies that may look simple on paper move
THE LIMITS TO GROWTH 49
closer or further away. For example, although the need to reduce global
meat consumption to combat climate change has been sufficiently docu-
mented, it is not easy to find an analysis that also incorporates thinking
about how to put such notions into practice. In other words, analysis of
the political ecosystem extending to power in its various guises (business
lobbies, major production companies, productive system, mass media,
political and trade union alliances, and the state itself) is lacking.34
Second, if power is missing from many current analyses, absence of
thought about the ultimate causes of the eco-social crisis is even more
marked. It is true that the drivers of environmental destruction are as-
sociated with the social pressures and impacts that influence the dispro-
portionate use of resources and energy, greenhouse gas emissions, and
more. But there is no use in reaching that point if no link is made with
the ultimate, systemic causes of the persisting catastrophic process. In
the end, without an understanding of how capital operates and how it
pushes all actors (from the working class to major companies) to achieve
economic growth ad nauseam, the analysis will be insufficient. If an anal-
ysis of the relationship between economics and the environment truly
wishes to go beyond the frontiers of academia and, consequently, gen-
uinely seeks to transform the material reality it is examining, it must
be capable of drawing on dynamic approaches to the study of the sys-
tem that currently links together economic, social, and environmental
spheres—that is, capitalism. The central contradiction of this economic
system, as we have already remarked, is that it functions and operates
as if it were disconnected from the natural base on which it necessarily
stands. As Marx suggested, the main problem with capitalism is its huge
success in achieving its objectives. We now know that life simply cannot
bear the costs associated with this “success.”
The central ideological opponent of capitalism has historically been so-
cialism, a sociopolitical movement without which even modern democ-
racy itself could not be understood. But, as it arose in the nineteenth
century, socialism has been characterized by a longstanding ignorance
of environmental pressures and impacts. Most of the theoretical output
concerning the economic measures to be taken in defense of the working
class ignores its ecological consequences—even the most recent theoret-
ical work. As I have already pointed out, the influence of the traditional
way of thinking about the economy has seriously contaminated that of
socialists and the left in general, as can be seen in uncritically produc-
tivist approaches from which economic policy proposals and measures
often classed as leftist are derived. Some researchers even speak of the
role played by these authors as protagonists of a passive revolution—a
50 MONTHLY REVIEW / JULY–AUGUST 2022
concept Antonio Gramsci used to describe the ability of the dominant
classes to co-opt the leaders of the subordinate classes.35 These policies,
however, are not just the result of a specific conception of the world but
at the same time serve to educate entire generations of opponents of cap-
italism in a particular political culture.
This longstanding weakness is not the only dangerous legacy from the
past. The type of society we presently know, which has seen rapid devel-
opment over the last two hundred years, is a result of intensive use of nat-
ural resources, especially fossil fuels. The predominant role of fossil fuels
can hardly be exaggerated. The whole social architecture we see before
us now is due to fossil capital, and not just in historical terms. Everything
from productive activities through to the layout and design of our cities,
not to mention the way of living imposed on working families, is shaped
by the dynamics of fossil capital. Serving as an emblematic demonstra-
tion is the fact that, when there have been other upheavals in energy
markets, as happened in the 1970s and is happening again now following
the Russian offensive in Ukraine, the whole social system is transformed
both materially and ideologically. The dependency on fossil capital is an
expression of the fragility of the whole social system.36
The issue here is obvious. In a world with finite natural resources and
fossil fuels reaching or exceeding their respective peaks, the crossroads at
which we find ourselves should not be underestimated. We already have
before us the first signs that one of the alternatives gaining ground in the
face of this eco-social crisis is a new form of fascism, which promotes a type
of closed, authoritarian social organization aimed at meeting the needs of
select social groups to the detriment of the rest of the population. This type
of social closure, characterized by insider/outsider dynamics, has funda-
mental sociopolitical implications. A growing proportion of international
migratory flows are currently due to climate change and environmental
crises and their effects on impoverished countries, while the neofascist re-
sponse to migration brings traditional racism into line with climate denial
and a commitment to authoritarian solutions to the eco-social crisis.37 This
route can only lead to barbarism. It is not by chance that the rising tide
of global reaction is happening at the same time as we have the best and
most accurate information about the way humankind is running out of
time under this economic model. Clearly, it is not sufficient to be correct.
Currently, some of the social and generational frustrations of our time are
being articulated politically through a reactionary solution that seeks to
defend “our own” against the “foreign.” An ideological and material retreat
of broad social sectors is taking place in the face of the fundamental uncer-
tainties of the Anthropocene era. Old wine in new bottles.
THE LIMITS TO GROWTH 51
Taking up these challenges will not be a matter of simple political pre-
scription, nor will it be a question of winning arguments. Rather, it will
have to do with the ability to put together broad social and political al-
liances to prepare the ground for a whole historical and social bloc to
emerge. Local initiatives and global proposals, classical traditions, and
new ways of thinking, along with social and institutional action, must
play a part in this broad community, in an effort to build a social fabric
that looks toward a horizon of peace, justice, equality, and social rights
within planetary boundaries.
In the past, the idea of an alternative—socialism or barbarism—was popu-
larized by Rosa Luxemburg against the bellicose backdrop of the First World
War. The traditional Marxist conception of the time theorized that capital-
ism was at such an advanced stage of development, in its imperialist phase,
that the only thing that could come out of the war was international social-
ist revolution or the destruction of every trace of civilization. In a way, there
were indeed revolutions and a lot of destruction. Not only Europe but the
whole world was devastated by two world wars and numerous repressive re-
gimes, which swept away millions of human beings, including Luxemburg
herself, who was assassinated in 1919 during the Spartacist uprising.
Presently, that alternative is perfectly valid. Human civilization, any
civilization, can only build horizons of justice and well-being if it can find
a way to do so within the planetary boundaries. Fitting within or readjust-
ing to those boundaries, if we may put it like that, can happen in either
an organized or a chaotic manner, the worst-case scenario being ecologi-
cal collapse. Any of the intermediate scenarios will in any event oblige us
to reorganize ourselves through other rules. But we must not forget that
the politics striving hardest to prevail in these situations of emergency
and collapse is that of authoritarianism, discrimination, inequality, and
militarism. It is, once again, barbarism. To avoid it, we must open an al-
ternative road based on other principles and values, democracy, human
rights, and social justice. It is a matter of ecosocialism or barbarism.
Notes
1. Robert M. Solow, “Is the End of the
World at Hand?,” Challenge 16, no. 1
(1973): 39–50.
2. Robert Nisbet, Historia de la idea de
progreso (Barcelona: Gedisa, 1980).
3. Donella Meadows, Jorgen Rand-
ers, and Dennis Meadows, Limits to
Growth (London: Earthscan, 2006);
Jean Gadrey, “What’s Wrong with GDP
and Growth? The Need for Alternative
Indicators,” in A Guide to What’s Wrong
with Economics, ed. Edward Fullbrook
(London: Anthem, 2004), 62–76; Kate
Raworth, Economía rosquilla: 7 maneras
de pensar la economía del siglo XXI (Bar-
celona: Ediciones Paidós, 2018).
4. Sergio Cesaratto, Heterodox Chal-
lenges in Economics: Theoretical Issues
and the Crisis of the Eurozone (Cham:
Springer, 2020).
5. Helmut Haberl, Marina Fisch-
er-Kowalski, Fridolin Krausmann, and
Verena Winiwarter, Social Ecology: So-
ciety-Nature Relations Across Time and
Space (Cham: Springer, 2016); Manuel
González de Molina and Víctor M. Tole-
do, The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Eco-
logical Theory of Historical Change
(Cham: Springer, 2014).
6. Paul Burkett, Marxism and Ecolog-
ical Economics (Leiden: Brill, 2006);
John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark,
The Robbery of Nature: Capitalism and
the Ecological Rift (New York: Monthly
52 MONTHLY REVIEW / JULY–AUGUST 2022
Review Press, 2020); Kohei Saito, Karl
Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature,
and the Unfinished Critique of Political
Economy (New York: Monthly Review
Press, 2017).
7. José Manuel Naredo, La economía
en evolución: Historia y perspectivas de
las categorías básicas del pensamien-
to económico (Tres Cantos: Siglo XXI,
2015); R. F. Harrod, “An Essay in Dynam-
ic Theory,” The Economic Journal 49, no.
193 (1939): 14–33; A. K. Sen, Growth
Economics (New York: Penguin, 1970).
8. Daron Acemoglu, Introduction to
Modern Economic Growth (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2009); Da-
vid Romer, Advanced Macroeconomics
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000); Robert
A. Blecker and Mark Setterfield, Hetero-
dox Macroeconomics (Cheltenham, UK:
Edward Elgar, 2019).
9. To be fair, the most recent models
incorporate a new productive resource
known as natural capital, although with
significant limitations deriving from the
difficulty in reducing the complexity of
ecosystems to a single monetary value.
10. James R. Craig et al., Recursos de
la tierra y el medio ambiente (Madrid,
Pearson, 2012).
11. Vaclav Smil, Energía y civilización
(Barcelona: Arpa, 2021).
12. J. R. McNeill, Something New Un-
der the Sun (New York: W. W. Norton,
2001); Will Steffen, “The Earth System,
the Great Acceleration, and the Anthro-
pocene,” in Sustainability and the New
Economics, ed. Stephen J. Williams
and Rod Taylor (Cham: Springer, 2022),
15–32.
13. The term Anthropocene first ap-
peared in English in E. V. Shantser, “The
Anthropogenic System (Period),” Great
Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 2 (New York:
Macmillan, 1973), 140.
14. Foster and Clark, The Robbery of
Nature.
15. Johan Rockström et al., “Planetary
Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operat-
ing Space for Humanity,” Ecology and
Society 14, no. 2 (2009).
16. Ulrich Brand et al., “From Planetary
to Societal Boundaries: An Argument
for Collectively Defined Self-Limitation,”
Sustainability 17, no. 1 (2021).
17. Global Resources Outlook 2019
(Nairobi: UN Environment Programme,
2019).
18. Thomas Wiedmann, Manfred
Lenzen, Lorenz T. Keyßer, and Julia K.
Steinberger, “Scientists’ Warning on
Affluence,” Nature Communications 11
(2020); David Harvey, The Limits to Cap-
ital (London: Verso, 2007).
19. Helen Burley, The Land and Water
Footprints of Everyday Products (Am-
sterdam: Friends of the Earth, 2015); M.
Crippa et al., “Food Systems Are Respon-
sible for a Third of Global Anthropogenic
GHG Emissions,” Nature Food 2 (2021);
Manfred Lenzen et al., “The Carbon Foot-
print of Global Tourism,” Nature Climate
Change 8 (2018).
20. Fridolin Krausmann, Christian Lauk,
Willi Haas, and Dominik Wiedenhofer,
“From Resource Extraction to Outflows
of Wastes and Emissions: The Socioeco-
nomic Metabolism of the Global Econo-
my, 1900–2015,” Global Environmental
Change 52 (2018):131–40; Global Re-
sources Outlook 2019.
21. Wiedmann, Lenzen, Keyßer, and
Steinberger, “Scientists’ Warning on
Affluence.”
22. Jason Hickel, “Quantifying National
Responsibility for Climate Breakdown:
An Equality-Based Attribution Approach
for Carbon Dioxide Emissions in Excess
of the Planetary Boundary,” Lancet Plan-
et Health 4 (2022): 399–404.
23. Benedikt Bruckner, Klaus Hu-
bacek, Yuli Shan, Honglin Zhong, and
Kuishuang Feng, “Impacts of Poverty
Alleviation on National and Global Car-
bon Emissions,” Nature Sustainability 5
(2022): 311–20.
24. Serenella Sala et al., Indicators and
Assessment of the Environmental Impact
of EU Consumption (Luxembourg: Euro-
pean Union, 2019).
25. E. Sanyé-Mengual, M. Secchi, S.
Corrado, A. Beylot, and S. Sala, “Assess-
ing the Decoupling of Economic Growth
from Environmental Impacts in the Eu-
ropean Union: A Consumption-Based
Approach,” Journal of Cleaner Produc-
tion 236 (2019).
26. Timothée Parrique et al., Decou-
pling Debunked (Brussels: European
Environmental Bureau, 2019); Helmut
Haberl et al., “A Systematic Review of
the Evidence on Decoupling of GDP,
Resource Use and GHG Emissions, Part
II,” Environmental Research Letters 15,
no. 6 (2020).
27. Jason Hickel, Less Is More (London:
Penguin, 2021).
28. Climate Change 2021: The Physical
Science Basis (Geneva: IPCC, 2019).
29. Elke Pirgmaier and Julia K. Stein-
berger, “Roots, Riots, and Radical
Change—A Road Less Travelled for Eco-
logical Economics,” Sustainability 11,
no. 7 (2019); Oliver Belcher, Patrick
Bigger, Benjamin Neimark, and Cara
Kennelly, “Hidden Carbon Costs of the
‘Everywhere War,’” Transactions of the
Institute of British Geographers 45, no.
1 (2019).
30. Elke Pirgmaier, “Consumption Cor-
ridors, Capitalism and Social Change,”
Sustainability 16, no. 1 (2020); Ian
Gough, “Recomposing Consumption:
Defining Necessities for Sustainable
and Equitable Well-Being,” Philosophi-
cal Transactions of the Royal Society 375,
no. 2095 (2017): 1–18.
31. Santiago Álvarez Cantalapiedra,
“Economía política de las necesidades
y caminos (no capitalistas) para su
satisfacción sostenible,” Revista de
Economía Crítica 16 (2013); Richard A.
Easterlin, “Does Economic Growth Im-
prove the Human Lot? Some Empirical
Evidence,” in Nations and Households
in Economic Growth: Essays in Honor of
Moses Abramovitz, ed. Paul A. David and
Melvin W. Reder (Amsterdam: Elsevier,
1974).
32. Alberto Garzón and Adoración
Guaman, El Trabajo Garantizado: Una
propuesta necesaria frente al desempleo
y la precarización (Madrid: Ediciones
Akal, 2015).
33. Luigi Ferrajoli, Poderes salvajes
(Madrid: Trotta, 2011); Alberto Garzón,
La tercera república (Barcelona: Edi-
ciones Península, 2014).
34. Doris Fuchs et al., “Power: The Miss-
ing Element in Sustainable Consump-
tion and Absolute Reductions Research
and Action,” Journal of Cleaner Produc-
tion 132 (2016).
35. Clive L. Spash, “Apologists for
Growth,” Globalizations 18, no. 7 (2021).
36. Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democra-
cy (New York: Verso, 2013).
37. Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Col-
lective, White Skin, Black Fuel: On the
Danger of Fossil Fascism (New York:
Verso, 2021).
THE LIMITS TO GROWTH 53
