The title of this piece is good. It is taken from Tim Watkins latest piece.
De-consumption is a good way of explaining the consequence of de-growth, to those who do not yet want to believe in de-growth.
He points out that:
The crisis which is overtaking us is not caused by greedy workers seeking enough income so as not to have to choose between food and warmth. It is caused by the energy cost of the energy which drives the economy beyond the point at which we can sustain the complex social superstructure which we built upon it. As ever more energy has to be devoted to producing energy, ever less is able to fund the debt, the corporate profits, CEO salaries and workers’ wages of a by-gone age.
By coincidence there is also a piece by the other Tim, Tim Morgan, in the RADIX think-tank entitled “ENERGY COSTS: THE SCARY REALITY BEHIND THE HEADLINES”.
They both sing from the same hymn-sheet – an underlying belief in surplus energy economics. And they both have Welsh connections.