Schedule 9th International Degrowth Conference

This paper looks at the politics of climate-economy modelling to understand how degrowth models can gain more traction in science and policy. Neo-classical economics’ hegemonic role in reducing the climate and environmental crises to a problem of market-based, technocratic fixes is centered around so-called “integrated assessment modelling” (IAM). These models are the legitimizing backbone of any green growth narrative. Antithetically, as a tool – invented by Jay Forrester, adopted by the Club of Rome – IAMs pioneered the criticism of perpetual economic growth and reinforced the 1970s environmental movement. Only over the last 40 years IAMs became a tool to thwart rather than to promote radical change.
Today, growth-critical models struggle to find traction in the political economy of knowledge production. I conducted 20 expert interviews with both orthodox and heterodox modelers, high-ranking EU-bureaucrats and politicians as well as with experts skeptical of modelling altogether. Using the critical lens of science and technology studies (STS), I analyze the role that current, hegemonic models play in legitimizing an unsustainable and unjust social and political regime. On six levels – from political-bureaucratic centers of power to everyday scientific practice – I Identify nine concrete obstacles that degrowth modelers encounter in gaining traction. From their experiences of struggle and occasional breakthrough, I derive strategic conclusions on how to confront each of those obstacles. These findings are also relevant for degrowth’s counter-hegemonic struggle in general. Using Helmut Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions, my findings point to pertinent conclusions about the relationship between scientific and political change.

Info

Day: 2023-08-30
Start time: 16:30
Duration: 00:15
Room: ZV-KC-Cres
Type: Paper Presentation
Theme: Hegemonic worldviews and degrowth horizon

Links:

• iCalendar