De-Coupling is Upon Us

Many de-growthers are concerned about the direct relationship between economic growth and emissions. Their reasoning is clear— it takes resources to produce, so the more one produces, the more one emits. And for many countries across time, this was surely the case.

However, even though the de-growth movement is pretty new, the core problem they are trying to “fix” has already been solved across many parts of the world. This is called “de-coupling”, or the phenomenon that countries can increase economic activity and boost living standards while lowering emissions.

Our friends at Our World in Data have been at the forefront of this idea. They produced this fascinating figure, which I’ve copied below. They show that thirty countries have been able to grow at a level greater than 5% from 2005-2020 while lowering emissions by more than 5% during the same time period. This is a rich and diverse list of countries. It includes countries that were considered high-income countries before 2005 (like Ireland, Finland, Sweden, and Germany, to name a few), some countries that have recently become growth successes (like Slovakia and Czech Republic), and even major oil-producing countries (like the United States, Canada, and Azerbaijan). Even a country like Zimbabwe, which still hasn’t reached its GDP per capita level of 1990 after its economic crisis from 2001-2008.

There are some incredible cases here. For instance, Ireland’s income per capita grew almost 50% while cutting emissions in half. Azerbaijan almost doubled its own income while reducing emissions, something unheard of for a country that is heavily reliant on oil. Similarly, Romania grew 72% in those 15 years, and its emissions fell 12%. Even mostly non-democratic countries like the Dominican Republic have shown progress in this area.

Source: Our World in Data

Now, an easy argument against the figure above is that those countries are simply exporting their pollution elsewhere. As countries trade with one another, countries might simply just import goods from high-polluting countries (like India or China), which boosts the home country’s incomes while lowering their emissions. However, the emissions figures here adjust for that. CO² emissions that were caused by imported production are considered! This proves that countries can indeed grow their economies while lowering emissions, and not relying on simply “exporting pollution” to do so. To date, I am not familiar with any de-growthers who have tackled this fact.