Mark Burton and Peter Somerville

Mark Burton and Peter Somerville are British activists and scholars associated with the degrowth movement, Burton a former public-sector psychologist and Somerville a professor of social policy. Degrowth: A Defence, published in New Left Review in 2019, answers Robert Pollin’s argument for a Green New Deal by insisting that no plausible rate of decoupling can reconcile continued economic growth with the emissions cuts the climate requires, and that the rich economies must shrink by design rather than by collapse. It is assigned on the newest lists beside Pollin’s essay as the other half of a live argument.