What is Post-Growth Economics? Rethinking Prosperity Beyond GDP Growth

Is post-growth economics a viable alternative to the modern economy? This primer breaks down the post-growth movement, its history, how it compares to degrowth and green growth, key critiques, & more.

Photo by Jesse Bauer on Unsplash

A world in flux. Climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, rising inequality—the litany of 21st-century crises can feel overwhelming, and fast. From record-high atmospheric CO₂ levels to mass extinction trends, evidence abounds that humanity is pushing beyond the planet’s limits. Underpinning many of these challenges is an economic system that prioritizes economic growth—usually measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—as the ultimate marker of success.

In a finite world, however, the pursuit of endless exponential growth looks increasingly silly and obviously untenable. This is where Post-Growth enters the conversation. As an emerging concept in economic and ecological discourse, post-growth offers an alternative vision for progress—one that seeks to maintain human well-being and ecological balance after we’ve let go of the idea that unchecked growth is a sustainable way to live. But what does that mean in practice? Let’s get into it.

Note: you can also find the Reality Studies Post-Growth Reading List here:

In this piece you’ll learn what post-growth is, why it’s gaining traction worldwide, existing economic and political post-growth proposals, as well as how it differs from the related notion of degrowth.

Speaking of degrowth, Reality Studies has also published a degrowth primer and reading list to help you along that journey. Some of the information in this primer will overlap with that one, so if you feel like you already have a grasp on a given section, feel free to skip on to the next one.

More of a podcast person? This conversation with

Michael Mezzatesta

of

Better Future w/ Michael Mezz

is a great, accessible breakdown about the promise of post-growth on the Urgent Futures Podcast—and therefore also makes for a great entry point! Find that on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube:

What is Post-Growth?

Post-growth defined:

Post-growth is an economic theory that advocates that societies shift away from GDP growth as the primary metric for societal success, instead prioritizing well-being and sustainability, recognizing the hard limits of resource extraction and environmental impact.

Post-growth thinking begins with the idea that societies can thrive without perpetual economic expansion. Post-growth is a stance that recognizes the hard truth of the limits-to-growth dilemma, based on pathbreaking research by Donella Meadows et al. in the 1972 Club of Rome Limits to Growth.

That hard truth? Put simply: on a planet with finite resources and fragile ecosystems, neither resource-intensive economies nor populations can grow indefinitely​. The term acknowledges that economic growth does bring benefits up to a point—helping improve living standards in developing stages—but beyond a certain threshold. Some studies suggest this number is around $20k–$25k GDP per person, as cited in The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (though it would probably be higher now to factor for inflation since original publication).

Such studies argue that growth in excess of this baseline GDP yields diminishing returns for human wellbeing​. In other words, once basic needs and a modest level of prosperity are secured, ever-rising GDP doesn’t necessarily make people happier or healthier; and it can even begin to undermine quality of life through environmental degradation, social stress​, and the perverse incentives of capitalist accumulation.

Rather than equating “more” with “better,” a post-growth mindset envisions progress in terms of improved well-being, equity, and sustainability. Crucially, this perspective is not anti-progress—a common misconception among critics. It doesn’t mean halting innovation or prosperity. Instead, it asks what comes after society’s addiction to growth at all costs: How can we ensure people flourish within ecological limits, once we’ve overcome the urge to endlessly increase consumption?

Proponents argue that moving beyond growth opens up positive opportunities to redefine what we value in our economy​ and in our lives. In a post-growth world, success might be measured by health, happiness, and/or community and environmental stability, rather than how rapidly we can make “number go up.”

The post-growth school of thought has close ties to ecological economics and other heterodox economic frameworks that challenge mainstream growth-oriented economics. It draws from the insight that our economy is a subsystem of the environment, bound by planetary boundaries like climate stability, land and water use, and biodiversity—and not the other way around.

As such, post-growth advocates call for fundamentally transforming our economy to respect these limits. This concept has become significant not only among economists, but also in ecological and social policy debates, as leaders and communities search for models of development that can deliver prosperity without overshooting nature’s capacity. In recent years, even high-level forums (e.g., a 2023 European Parliament conference on “Beyond Growth”) have discussed what a “post-growth future-fit” society could look like – one that combines human well-being with respect for planetary boundaries​.

The Rationale Behind Post-growth

Continuous economic growth, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), requires ever-increasing resource extraction and energy use. Yet already in 2024 the global economy has overshot several of Earth’s biophysical limits, as evidenced by:

Why pursue a post-growth approach? In a word: sustainability. A growing chorus of scientists and economists warns that pursuing infinite growth on a finite planet is a recipe for ecological collapse. Already, by the 2020s, the global economy has overshot multiple Earthly limits:

• Climate Change: Atmospheric CO₂ concentration are expected to reach 429.6 parts per million this year, far above the ~350 ppm level scientists deem a safe maximum for a stable climate​. Surging greenhouse gases from industrial growth are driving dangerous warming and extreme weather.

• Biodiversity Loss: Wildlife populations worldwide have plummeted by roughly 73% since 1970, largely due to habitat destruction and overexploitation, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Ecosystems are struggling to cope with the scale of human economic activity.

• Resource Depletion: Humanity’s annual material footprint (the total volume of raw materials we consume) has more than tripled since 1970—from about 27 billion to 92 billion metric tons in 2019—and is on track to double again by 2060 if current trends continue. This trajectory indicates an ever-growing extraction of minerals, timber, fossil fuels, and other resources, which is plainly unsustainable. According to a recent analysis conducted by ecologist & ecological economist William E. Rees, using Ecological Footprint Analysis, even if we assumed no further growth in the human population, “we would need the bio-capacity equivalent of three additional Earth-like planets to supply the demands of just the present population sustainably.”

Such trends illustrate “ecological overshoot,” where human demand exceeds what Earth’s natural systems can regenerate​.

Post-growth emerges as a response to this predicament. By questioning the primacy of GDP growth, it addresses the root driver of overshoot: an economy structurally compelled to expand, no matter the consequences. Post-growth advocates argue that instead of single-mindedly chasing more production and consumption, we must intentionally shift focus to well-being, equity, and environmental balance​.

In practical terms, this means embracing policies that reduce throughput (energy and resource use) to sustainable levels, while improving quality of life through means other than sheer consumption.

Beyond ecology, there is also a social rationale to post-growth. Many advanced economies have reached a point where further GDP growth is no longer translating into broad improvements in people’s lives. Issues like inequality (with wealth consolidating in the hands of a few), stagnant well-being, and even declines in indicators like mental health or trust have been observed despite rising GDP.

In the tradition of Herman Daly, some economists describe this as “uneconomic growth”—growth that creates more costs (pollution, stress, inequality) than benefits. Post-growth thinking posits that we should stop pursuing growth for growth’s sake, especially in wealthy nations, and instead pursue better outcomes directly (better health, better education, better environment), even if that means GDP growth slows or stops. It’s a call to redefine progress—a switch from prizing quantity to quality.

A Brief History of Post-Growth Thinking

The roots of post-growth thought run deep, even if the specific term “post-growth” is relatively contemporary.

• As early as the mid-19th century, classical economists like John Stuart Mill speculated about a “stationary state” economy, suggesting that after a certain point, society could attain a satisfactory condition and no longer need to grow its wealth indefinitely.

• Concerns about the limits of growth burst into popular consciousness in 1972, when the Club of Rome released The Limits to Growth, a landmark report using computer models to warn that unchecked economic and population growth would eventually exceed Earth’s carrying capacity. The next year, British economist E.F. Schumacher published Small Is Beautiful, advocating for human-scale, sustainable economics that value quality of life over endless expansion. These works, along with the emergence of ecological economics (instigated by figures like Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and Herman Daly), laid the intellectual groundwork for post-growth ideas by challenging the assumption that “more GDP is always better.”

• The term “post-growth” itself began to gain traction in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In 1996, Herman Daly’s book Beyond Growth explicitly argued that sustainable development requires moving past the growth paradigm​. By the 2000s, frustration with both environmental crises and social issues like the “growth fetish” (to borrow Australian writer Clive Hamilton’s 2003 book title) fueled new calls for a post-growth future. Another influential work was Tim Jackson’s Prosperity Without Growth, first published in 2009 and later updated, which systematically questioned the link between prosperity and GDP. Jackson demonstrated that building a ‘post-growth’ economy is indeed “a precise, definable and meaningful task,” outlining practical steps such as changing the nature of business enterprise, improving the quality of work, redirecting investment, and reforming the money system.

• In the 2010s, an organized post-growth movement began to take shape. The Post Growth Institute, an international nonprofit, formed to promote the transition to economies of wellbeing within ecological limits. Academics and activists held conferences (for example, the EU Parliament’s “Post-Growth” conference in 2018, followed by a large Beyond Growth 2023 event) to discuss policy pathways beyond GDP. Meanwhile, related frameworks like the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (a coalition of countries and organizations focusing on well-being over growth) and Doughnut Economics (Kate Raworth’s model to meet human needs within planetary boundaries) gained momentum. Although the labels vary, all reflect a growing mainstream acknowledgement that the age of pure GDP growth as policy gospel is drawing to a close.

• Now well into the 2020s, post-growth has become an umbrella term for this new wave of economic thinking that seeks to chart a path to sustainable prosperity after growth.

Key Principles of Post-Growth

What do post-growth proponents actually propose? Since post-growth is more of a broad approach than one rigid doctrine, its principles are best understood as a set of shared commitments and values guiding a range of solutions. Some foundational points include:

• Embrace Planetary Limits: Acknowledge that there are ecological limits to economic and population growth, and respect those boundaries in policy and planning. This means accepting scientific realities like climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion—and recognizing we must scale our economy’s material and energy use to within sustainable levels.

• Shift Beyond GDP: Redefine what success means. Rather than treating ever-rising GDP as the chief objective, post-growth calls for switching to metrics that track human and ecological well-being. Examples include indicators like Gross National Happiness, the Happy Planet Index, genuine progress measures, or other indices that incentivize health, education, equality, and environmental stability over raw output.

• Prioritize Well-being and Equity: Build an economy that first and foremost meets everyone’s basic needs and enables people to live secure, fulfilling lives. Once fundamental needs are met, focus on improving quality of life (community, leisure, health, environment) rather than accumulating more goods. This often entails valuing care, relationships, and community—things that don’t always show up in GDP stats, but greatly enhance well-being.

• Learn from the Past, Innovate for the Future: Post-growth doesn’t imply starting from scratch. It advocates using the wisdom and technological gains of the growth era to help drive a transition to new systems (this is one area where it diverges from degrowth, which we’ll address in the next section)​. For instance, advances in renewable energy, efficiency, and healthcare achieved during the growth-centric age are invaluable assets—if repurposed toward sustainable ends. Likewise, social innovations (democracy, education, human rights) are foundations to build upon. The idea is to build on what works in our current system, while discarding or redesigning what doesn’t.

• Foster Values of Cooperation and Sufficiency: Post-growth thought favors values like community, sharing, justice, and stewardship over hyper-competitiveness and individualistic consumerism​. It encourages cooperative models (e.g., co-ops, sharing economies, open-source knowledge) and the principle of “enoughness”—satisfying needs without excess. Culturally, this involves elevating non-material sources of satisfaction. Philosopher Kate Soper, for example, advocates “alternative hedonism,” imagining a new conception of the good life focused on the joys of community, leisure, and minimal ecological impact rather than status-driven consumption.

It’s important to note that post-growth is intentionally open-ended. Unlike a strict blueprint (say, the defined limits of a steady-state economy at zero growth, or the specific target of degrowth to downsize resource use), post-growth is more of a guiding philosophy. It looks at the challenge of sustainable prosperity through a complex systems lens, recognizing that economies are intertwined with psychology, culture, technology, and ecology. Therefore, solutions will vary by context—what a post-growth transition looks like in a European city might differ from a rural community in the Global South. The unifying theme is adjusting humanity’s economic trajectory away from expansionism toward regenerative and redistributive practices.

Post-Growth vs. Degrowth (and Other Related Ideas like Green Growth)

As aforementioned, post-growth can be understood several different ways, and it overlaps with other “beyond growth” movements, so it often discussed in relation to degrowth, green growth, and similar terms. So pinpointing exactly how it differs is more of an exercise in sensemaking and clarifying ideas on a Venn diagram than it is in drawing hard boundaries, which don’t exist. In fact, in Jan. 2025, a group of leading degrowth and post-growth scholars just published a major report on post-growth in the Lancet titled, “Post-growth: the science of wellbeing within planetary boundaries.”

With that in mind, let’s clarify how post-growth might compare to similar terms, especially degrowth, while acknowledging their common ground:

• Shared Ground with Degrowth: Both post-growth and degrowth start from the premise that infinite GDP growth is neither possible nor desirable on a finite planet. Both critique the current growth-obsessed economic model and call for a transition to an economy focused on human well-being and ecological balance​. In fact, many of the end goals overlap: reducing unnecessary consumption, cutting waste and pollution, improving equality, and adopting new measures of prosperity. It’s fair to say post-growth and degrowth proponents are allies in challenging the status quo of “growth at all costs.”

• Post-Growth vs. Degrowth: Degrowth explicitly advocates for a planned downscaling of production and consumption—a deliberate reduction of the economy’s throughput—as a strategy to bring societies back within ecological limits while improving social equity. The term “degrowth” thus emphasizes the process of shrinking harmful economic activity. Post-growth, by contrast, places emphasis on the outcome or era after the end of growth. Post-growth is often sometimes regarded in this “noun” form—that is, referring to the state in which humanity has successfully transitioned away from a growth/GDP economy and toward a wellbeing economy. Under this reading, degrowth can be seen as a set of principles, practices, behaviors, and policies which might bring about a post-growth world. An example of this used in a sentence: “And no continent is better placed to benefit from a degrowth transition towards a post-growth economy than Europe.”

• Keep and Cultivate: Post-growth entails developing practices that counteract excess growth and environmental overshoot while retaining those which are already effective. In practical terms, post-growth advocates often highlight building on existing positive initiatives (e.g., expanding renewable energy, local food networks, cooperative businesses, open-source innovation) rather than solely concentrating on dismantling the old. It’s a framing that asks, “How can we nurture the good in our society to flourish within limits?”

• Narrative and Tone: Partly due to this difference in framing, post-growth is sometimes seen as a more palatable or optimistic narrative for broad audiences and policymakers. The very word “degrowth” can sound negative (conjuring decline or loss), which some believe makes it a tough sell politically​. Post-growth, on the other hand, emphasizes the positive vision—a future economy that thrives in new ways once we’ve moved past the growth paradigm​. Advocates like those at Triodos Bank deliberately use “post-growth” to foreground opportunities and a sense of purpose, rather than focusing on less or “downscaling” alone. That said, this difference is largely about messaging. Many degrowth thinkers fully acknowledge the need for a positive vision (indeed, degrowth literature often discusses improved well-being, community, and so on), and many post-growth proponents acknowledge that certain sectors must contract (for example, fossil fuel industries) as part of the transition.

• Post-growth vs. Green Growth: It’s also useful to distinguish post-growth from so-called green growth or sustainable growth. Green growth advocates believe that with innovation, efficiency, and technology, it’s possible to decouple economic growth from environmental harm—allowing GDP to keep rising even as emissions and resource use fall. Post-growth thinkers are generally skeptical of this claim. They point out that while relative decoupling (less impact per unit of GDP) is occurring, there is scant evidence of absolute decoupling on the global scale sufficient to prevent ecological crisis​. Moreover, in The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet, Brett Christophers makes the case that this view overlooks a vital aspect of the energy transition: that decreasing costs of renewable energy isn’t the metric we should be using to evaluate the success (or not) of the energy transition: profitability is. And while wind, solar, and other renewables have seen incredible development in the 21st century, they remain less profitable under capitalism (for a whole host of reasons that would take too long to explain here). In short, efficiency alone hasn’t been enough to offset the sheer scale of growth. Thus, post-growth argues that we likely need to ease off the “gas” with growth rather than betting everything on an eco-efficient version of business-as-usual growth. Thus, if we might think of green growth as “having our cake and eating it,” post-growth is about choosing a different cake—one that nourishes society without breaking the oven (planet) it’s baked in.

TLDR: though definitions can differ, broadly speaking degrowth is more of a rallying cry to tactically downsize the economy’s excesses, whereas post-growth is a call to envision the economy after the growth era, cultivating new norms and systems, and working toward those today.

Practical Applications and Policy Implications

One criticism of both degrowth and post-growth has been that it’s more theory than practice—more of an academic study than real-world policy generator. There is some truth to this critique, but it overlooks many of the key proposals that have been made—and in some cases have already been implemented.

Here are some ways it’s being put into practice or at least has been seriously explored:

• New Economic Metrics: Shifting the focus beyond GDP has policy implications for how governments plan their budgets and priorities. A number of countries and regions are adopting alternative metrics of success. For example, Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness (GNH) index famously guides its development decisions, prioritizing citizens’ well-being over output. New Zealand launched a Wellbeing Budget in 2019, explicitly directing government spending toward improving social and environmental outcomes. Similarly, countries like Scotland, Iceland, and Wales are part of a Wellbeing Economy Alliance that shares post-growth-aligned goals of prioritizing health, education, and ecology in governance. These efforts represent first steps toward restructuring policy around quality of life indicators rather than chasing GDP growth for its own sake.

• City and Regional Initiatives: Cities have become laboratories for post-growth frameworks. A prominent example is the adoption of Raworth’s Doughnut Economics by cities such as Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen and Glasgow​. The Doughnut model provides a tool to ensure social well-being while not exceeding ecological ceilings—essentially a roadmap for a post-growth city. Amsterdam, for instance, has used the doughnut to shape policies on housing, food, and consumer goods, aiming to provide a good life for residents within a fair share of Earth's resources. Other municipalities focus on concepts like the Wellbeing Economy (choosing terminology that resonates locally​). Notably, very few if any governments use the term “degrowth” officially—they often prefer the post-growth lexicon when implementing similar ideas in practice​. This underscores how important framing is: prosperity and well-being are easier to champion publicly than "less growth," even if the underlying changes might align with degrowth’s goals.

• Corporate and Business Innovation: Post-growth implies reimagining the role and structure of businesses in our economy. One idea gaining attention is steward-owned companies (or similar models of ownership and governance) that move away from the traditional shareholder-profit maximizing model. In steward-owned firms, profits and growth are not the overriding objectives; instead, the company’s mission and long-term wellbeing guide decision-making​. Profit is treated as a means to an end (to sustain the enterprise and its purpose), rather than the end itself. This can remove the pressure for endless expansion. Some businesses, for example, cap their returns or reinvest most profits into social/environmental goals – aligning with post-growth principles. We’re also seeing growth in social enterprises, cooperatives, and B-corporations that pursue triple-bottom-line outcomes (people, planet, profit) instead of pure growth. Post-growth advocates encourage these models as they inherently aim to provide value to society without requiring constant exponential scaling, though there have been criticisms of all of the above in practice.

• Tax and Fiscal Reform: If an economy doesn’t rely on growth, government finances need rethinking. One proposal is to redesign tax systems to be less dependent on taxing income or transactions that presume ever-growing volumes. Instead, more revenue could come from wealth taxes, environmental taxes (like carbon taxes), and taxes on resource use or pollution​. Drawing from the notion of a “vice tax,” taxing “bads” (pollution, depletion, extreme wealth concentrations) rather than “goods” (like labor or basic commerce), governments can both incentivize sustainable behavior and secure funds without requiring a growing tax base. Broadening the tax base in this way could make public budgets more resilient in a low-growth or no-growth scenario. Some economists also discuss reforms such as sovereign money or central bank financing for public investment, to reduce the reliance on private debt-fueled growth for economic stability.

• Circular and Localized Economies: A key application of post-growth thinking is advancing the circular economy—where products are designed to be reused, repaired, shared, or recycled, thereby reducing the need for new resource extraction. This aligns perfectly with “beyond growth” goals: instead of selling ever more products, businesses in a circular model provide services or durable goods that meet needs with minimal new throughput. Rather than everyone buying and owning a power drill that sits unused most of the time, for example, tools can be shared in a community library, meaning fewer drills need to be produced overall​. Sharing economies (in the true community sense, not just corporate ride-shares) and local production for local needs (like local food cooperatives, repair cafes, makerspaces) are practical manifestations of post-growth values. They shorten supply chains, reduce transport emissions, and build community resilience—all while decreasing the pressure for constant new production.

• Redefining “Progress” in Innovation: In a post-growth framework, innovation doesn’t stop—it’s redirected. For example, technological and social innovation would aim to improve quality and efficiency of services, not to increase consumption. The focus could be on healthcare advances, renewable energy, conservation technology, education, public transit—innovations that enhance human well-being or reduce our ecological footprint, rather than those that simply drive corporate profits or spur new consumer cravings. This also includes revitalizing low-tech or traditional solutions that were undervalued in the growth era (like organic farming, passive building design, or community caregiving networks) where they prove effective. In summary, post-growth policy encourages “innovation for sufficiency”—doing better with less. In this way, it also dovetails with cyborg approaches to tech.

It’s worth highlighting that some financial institutions and businesses are already exploring these ideas. For instance, Triodos Bank explicitly integrates post-growth thinking: it avoids financing polluting or socially harmful industries, questions whether each investment is “really necessary” for well-being, and supports projects in renewable energy, social housing, and the arts that contribute to a rich life without high resource use. Such examples illustrate that post-growth is not about ending enterprise or creativity—it’s about redirecting human talent and capital toward truly sustainable prosperity.

Challenges and Critiques

Moving to a post-growth system is of course a formidable challenge. Ursula K. Le Guin reminds us that capitalism’s “power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”​

But to realize such systems change, post-growth must address key challenges and critiques:

• Political and Social Viability: Perhaps the greatest challenge is that modern societies—especially in wealthier nations—are deeply conditioned to expect continual growth. Politicians win points for delivering GDP increases; companies are rewarded for quarterly growth; citizens equate growth with opportunity. Proposing to abandon that is liable to sound like heresy. Detractors argue that voters in rich countries would never accept policies that might slow growth or reduce material standards of living. There’s also the global justice concern: critics like economist Branko Milanović have pointed out that if rich countries contract their economies, they must be careful not to impose stagnation on poorer countries that still legitimately need growth to lift people out of poverty​. Post-growth advocates respond that their aim is not to make everyone poorer—rather, it’s to rebalance resources (downsize excess in rich areas, allow necessary growth where needed, and overall focus on well-being). But achieving international equity in a post-growth transition would indeed require unprecedented cooperation and trust. This raises a related criticism: coordinating a global shift beyond growth might demand more economic planning and governance capacity than we currently have, especially with far-right, authoritarian nationalist movements on the rise around the world.

• Economic Stability and Jobs: Our financial and economic systems are structurally built for growth. Companies borrow money expecting future growth to pay back loans, pensions and investments assume growing returns, governments rely on a growing tax base to service public debt, and so on. Detractors ask, how do we avoid financial crises or government insolvency in a post-growth scenario? There’s a similar fear of unemployment: if the economy doesn’t grow, will there be enough jobs? Transitioning to a post-growth economy likely requires redesigning financial systems (perhaps moving away from debt-driven money creation) and implementing robust social policies—such as job guarantees, shorter work weeks, or universal basic income (gasp)—to maintain full employment and social stability even if output doesn’t rise. These ideas exist (and some have been tested on smaller scales), but skeptics are unconvinced that we can overhaul the machine without it breaking down. Post-growth economists like Tim Jackson acknowledge these are serious issues, which is why they detail changes needed in investment, work patterns, and money supply to ensure a stable transition​. Nonetheless, the risk of disruption is a major challenge to navigate.

• Clarity and Cohesion of the Movement: Even supporters of the general idea sometimes critique “post-growth” as being too vague. Because it’s an umbrella term covering various approaches (sustainability, degrowth, steady-state, etc.), it can lack a single concrete policy agenda. Urban planning scholar Federico Savini called post-growth a “toothless word”—useful to counter the growth narrative, but not very specific on what to do next​. Indeed, in public discussions, terms like sustainable development, degrowth, post-growth, circular economy, and Green New Deal often get muddled, which can lead to confusion or diluted action​. Without a clear message, critics worry the movement could struggle to build popular support. Post-growth proponents are aware of this and often strive to clarify that post-growth doesn’t mean zero change or utopian stagnation, but rather intentional improvement of different kind. Still, the communication challenge is real: how to convey to the average person what a post-growth society looks like and why it’s attractive. Framing it positively—as more of the things that truly matter, less of the pointless stuff—is one tactic, but the narrative battle against decades of pro-growth ideology is an uphill one. Another response might be aligning with popular features or policy proposals of a post-growth agenda without using the word itself.

• Techno-Optimism vs. Sufficiency: Some economists argue that abandoning growth might be premature or unnecessary if technological innovation (think advanced clean energy, carbon capture, efficient recycling, even future tech like fusion power) could solve environmental constraints. They caution that a post-growth turn could curtail investment in innovations that, in time, might allow both prosperity and sustainability. Post-growth advocates counter that banking on miraculous tech while continuing business-as-usual is extremely risky—and that plenty of innovation can happen within a post-growth agenda, just oriented toward different goals. Nonetheless, this debate between those favoring a tech-driven “green growth” solution and those favoring systemic change is ongoing. It’s a philosophical divide: do we bet on human ingenuity to accommodate infinite growth, or do we redesign our aspirations to fit within hard limits? In Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown, Wim Carton and Andreas Malm detail how belief in technological interventions has only fostered a culture of intensifying climate change—allowing for increasing fossil fuel consumption predicated on the belief of future “solutions”:

Despite these challenges, the post-growth discourse is steadily moving from the fringes into more mainstream venues, indicating that many people intuitively sense the current model is indeed destroying our collective home. Critics may label it idealistic, but proponents argue that clinging to an infinite growth paradigm in the face of ecological reality is vastly more unrealistic.

As environmentalist Donella Meadows famously noted decades ago, “Growth forever is not possible; the only question is, by design or by disaster.” Post-growth advocates are trying to ensure it’s by design—a managed transition to a new paradigm—rather than a chaotic collapse forced by nature.

Nate Hagens

calls this

The Great Simplification

. We will either ramp into “simpler” lives or blindly crash our way into them. If you want to go deeper on contemporary questions associated with post-growth, I can’t think of a better thing to do than subscribe to that podcast and listen to every episode.

Post-Growth: Imagining Sustainable Prosperity

In practical terms, a post-growth future might feature communities with shorter work weeks and more time for family, culture, and leisure; cities designed for people and nature rather than endless traffic; economies where innovation serves public good and sustainability, not just profit; and societies that measure success by the health of their people and their environment. It’s an inspiring vision, but also a necessary one, given the blaring warnings from scientists about our current trajectory.

Of course, realizing this vision will not be easy—it requires imagination, political will, and collective effort on a global scale. But the conversation has begun. As these ideas spread, they are influencing policy debates.

In the end, post-growth is about hope—the hopeful idea that humanity can chart a new course where we flourish within Earth’s ecological limits instead of racing past them (or throwing our hands up and trying to colonize Mars). It asks us to re-envision prosperity not as a line that goes up forever, but as a thriving circle that sustains and regenerates. Whether one calls it post-growth, beyond growth, or just common sense for a finite planet, the essence is the same: it’s time to write a new story about what economic success means.

Further Reading

I hope this article piqued your interest about post-growth, but there’s so much more to learn about the subject.

Find my post-growth reading list here. If you’d like to learn more about the adjacent concept of degrowth, find my degrowth reading list here.

I cover post-growth, degrowth, and other related topics on the Urgent Futures Podcast, so if you want to stay up-to-date, be sure to subscribe to the show on Substack | Youtube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify.