Doughnut Economics, Degrowth, & Climate Nuance

It’s hard not to love a donut. Little sugar pills of decadence, there’s always a feeling of instant saccharine uplift when you bite into one. Lindsey works weekend shifts sometimes, so sometimes I’ll take the kids to get one from Voodoo Doughnuts as a treat. They love picking from them – one particularly loves the crème filled and the other loves the one in the shape of a Voodoo doll. I justify the activity to myself by making us all walk to get them. There are some particularly (ahem) irreverent ones, but one of my favorites is the Homer. So named after The Simpson’s character and his preference for a pink-frosted donut with sprinkles, it really is great in its simplicity.

There’s a bit of an irony that these little tokens of conspicuous consumption share a name with one of the underpinning concepts around the environmental and social justice movements – “Doughnut Economics”. Named after the shape of the visualization, it is one of my favorite concepts – that we have a social floor above which all humans have a right to live and an environmental ceiling above which we are mining our future for the present. It may seem intuitive, but one of the most common arguments against dealing with our environmental problems is to frame it as a false choice. That we can either save endangered species or feed hungry people. The answer, of course, is that we have to do both, and we have to do it across the spectrum of social and human problems.

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