Capitalism Versus Extinction by Stagnation

The degrowth solution to climate change has been tested and shown to be a deadly failure.

I was recently happy to notice that Mark Perry, esteemed economist and Senior Fellow Emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, had excerpted my work as his “quotation of the day” at AEI.org. The excerpt comes from an essay (“Capitalism or the Climate?”) I wrote over half a decade ago, which I reposted right when I joined Substack and had almost no subscribers, so most of you have probably not read it. Here is the quote that Mr. Perry reprinted (bold added by him):

A few hundred years ago, before the rise of capitalism, humans were no different—they lived roughly 35 years on average and had about one-and-a-half billion heartbeats just like any other mammal. But gains in knowledge since then, such as innovations in medicine, agriculture, and government, have roughly doubled our life expectancy and with it our average number of heartbeats per lifetime (some dogs and other domesticated animals have been similarly altered by access to human innovations). This constitutes a totally unprecedented departure from the biological status quo.

Technological knowledge, fueled by capital, has allowed us to do many things categorically unlike the achievements of other species as far as we know. The universal extinction paradigm, which has limited all mammal species so far to one million years or less, should be high on our list of patterns to break. We don’t know what existential threats will come or how long we have to prepare for them, but we can’t expect human ingenuity to rush us past the finish line at the last minute without a context of widespread continuous technological and scientific progress until that point—a project it seems only capitalism can hope to fund.

David Deutsch observes that the word “sustain” generally refers to the absence or prevention of change. This is what environmentalists such as Naomi Klein and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would like to do with our environment by ending capitalism. Their solution to climate change is what all non-human animals have always done: leave the environment basically unaltered by refraining from large-scale production, and wait around to go extinct. Unfortunately, as Deutsch writes, “Static societies eventually fail because their characteristic inability to create knowledge rapidly must eventually turn some problem into a catastrophe.” Thus, it is not that capitalism is the problem and sustainability is the solution, but that sustainability is the problem and capitalism is the solution.

Every year, global capitalism allows more research and development departments to be funded. Every day it gives more citizens of affluent and developing nations the material wealth required for better education and information technology. Economic growth, coupled with rising carbon emissions, might lead to a climate apocalypse—or it might continue to bring us material and technological salvation. We cannot really know in advance. But we would be crazy to choose the time-tested alternative to capitalism: extinction by stagnation.

For context, read the full essay. It covers some key concepts that I think are underappreciated and increasingly crucial.