Timothy Parrique is a researcher in ecological economics at the School of Economics at Lund University in Sweden. His doctoral thesis studied the link between economic growth, social health and ecological resilienceas well as the concept of “degrowth”.
Last September, he published “Slow down or perish, the economy of degrowth” (Seuil) where he explains that the impasse in which we are is the fruit of our economic system, and its post-war turn.
“On the 9 planetary boundaries not to be exceeded to guarantee the integrity of our ecosystem, several have already been crossed: climate change, erosion of biodiversity, global disturbances of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycle, changes in land use, introduction of new substances in nature and recently chemical pollution”.
But what could a world look like in which we no longer talk about growth? Or GDP? Or Advertising? Or purchasing power? And (in real life) this world, it could (really) exist… or not…? And by the way… why would we change the economic system when we’ve always done it this way?
In his essay, Timothée Parrique shows how growth is the lever to operate so as not to perish and draws scenarios for emerging from the crisis where decline no longer rhymes with unemployment or recession, but on the contrary with equality and survival. He explains everything to us today.
Welcome to Planète Bleu, Le Mag!