Erin Remblance

Unpicking the dominant, growth-based worldview will mean closely analysing the stories we have been told (and who those stories might serve), and bravely and courageously assessing whether all of this growth really does bring us ‘the good life’.

The path to a good life is not what we own, or the places we travel, or what we individually achieve. It is living in harmony with ourselves, with the planet and all of its inhabitants, in finding joy in nature’s wonders and in our connection to ourselves and others.

We don’t need to change the name ‘degrowth’. What we need is for more of us in wealthy nations to intuitively associate the term ‘economic growth’ with ‘collapse’.

After nine long years of an increasingly far-right, climate change denying Liberal National Party coalition (LNP) government, the citizens of Australia voted for change.

If we are honest, it’s not the term “degrowth” that people don’t like, it’s what it means: we must reduce our material footprint so that we are no longer living as though we have two, three, four or five planet earths.

What if, in trying to heal ourselves, we also begin to heal the planet? Because, in a wonderful turn of events, it turns out that what is good for us, is good for the planet too.