Daniel Susskind has never shied away from the great economic questions of his time. After theorizing a world without work in A World Without Work, this Oxford economist is now tackling the most political challenge of our era: can growth be maintained while respecting planetary boundaries? His answer, set out in Growth: A Reckoning, a finalist for the Financial Times Business Book 2024 and selected by Barack Obama in his annual reading list, unsettles both advocates of degrowth and defenders of business as usual.
The Author
Daniel Susskind teaches economics at Oxford and has been advising British governments on economic issues for over a decade. A Fellow of Balliol College, he has worked in the office of the Prime Minister and within Downing Street’s policy unit. His first work, co-written with his father Richard Susskind, anticipated the digital transformation of professions. The second analyzed the impact of automation on employment. With this third book, he confronts the promise of infinite growth with the physical constraints of the planet.
This intellectual trajectory is no accident. Susskind belongs to a generation of economists trained after the 2008 financial crisis, aware that traditional models no longer suffice. When artificial intelligence promises to multiply productivity, when climate change demands we rethink our relationship with resources, and when European public opinion shifts toward degrowth, the British economist refuses easy answers.
The Central Thesis
Susskind defends a middle position that will disturb both camps: yes, growth can be redirected to respect planetary boundaries, but this redirection requires massive public intervention, not market forces alone. His demonstration revolves around three pillars.
First pillar: growth is not inherently destructive; it is its composition that poses a problem. The author reminds us that electricity represents only 20% of global final energy consumption. The remaining 80% feeds transportation, industrial heating, chemical processes. This distribution reveals the scale of necessary transformations, but also their technical feasibility. “The problem is not producing more, but producing differently,” he summarizes.
Second pillar: public policies can redirect growth more effectively than market mechanisms alone. Susskind documents how public investments in fundamental research created the Internet, GPS, and touchscreens. He cites the example of semiconductors: without American military orders in the 1950s-1960s, this industry would never have reached commercial maturity. This “socialization of risks and privatization of profits” enabled successive technological revolutions.
Third pillar: voluntary degrowth remains a luxury of wealthy countries. The author emphasizes that 730 million people still lack access to electricity, that 2 billion lack safe drinking water. For these populations, economic growth is non-negotiable; it conditions survival. “Preaching degrowth from London or Paris amounts to pulling up the social ladder behind oneself,” he writes.
Key Arguments
Energy Efficiency Is No Longer Enough
Susskind dismantles easy technological optimism. Since 1990, energy efficiency has improved by 2% annually in developed countries. Problem: global economic growth averages 3% annually. The rebound effect cancels out efficiency gains. The author cites Jevons’ paradox: when a resource becomes more efficient, demand for it increases. Cars consume less per kilometer, but kilometers traveled explode.
This analysis illuminates the current impasse in climate policies. The International Energy Agency predicts that renewables will reach 50% of the global electricity mix by 2030. But electricity represents only one-fifth of total energy consumption. The remaining four-fifths—heavy transportation, chemical industry, steel production—resist direct electrification.
The Entrepreneurial State, Not the Regulator
Facing this impasse, Susskind advocates for an entrepreneurial state that shapes future markets rather than simply correcting market failures. He draws on the work of Mariana Mazzucato to show how innovation emerges from the alliance between public research and private entrepreneurship.
The Apollo program illustrates this logic. 400,000 people participated in the project, predominantly from the private sector. But NASA coordinated, financed, and assumed technological risks. Result: American space investments generated electronic chips, composite materials, simulation software. “Without Apollo, no iPhone,” the author summarizes.
Transposed to the climate challenge, this approach would prioritize public investments in breakthrough technologies: nuclear fusion, direct CO2 capture, green hydrogen, solid-state batteries. Public money would finance fundamental research and initial deployments. The private sector would take over for commercialization.
The Carbon Accounting Trap
Susskind denounces the hypocrisy of national carbon ledgers. The European Union claims a 40% reduction in emissions since 1990. But this calculation ignores imported emissions: Chinese steel, Asian electronics, Bangladeshi textiles. If we account for emissions linked to final consumption rather than local production, the European reduction falls to 12%.
This falsified accounting explains the opposition between developed and emerging countries in climate negotiations. Europe has externalized its industrial pollution to Asia for thirty years, then lectures on climate virtue. “Asking China to reduce its emissions while massively importing its products amounts to geopolitical infantilism,” the author states bluntly.
This analysis aligns with conclusions from other recent work on necessary economic transformation, notably when teachers redefine their profession with generative AI: sectoral changes succeed when they rely on the actors involved rather than circumventing them.
Blind Spots
Susskind’s book presents three limitations that weaken his argument.
First, the author underestimates political resistance to his program. Redirecting growth requires massive public investments, strengthened regulation, unprecedented international coordination. Yet Western democracies already struggle to finance their pension systems and aging infrastructure. How can hundreds of billions in additional funding be mobilized for ecological transition when populations reject austerity and tax increases?
Second, the work neglects geopolitical dynamics. European green growth largely depends on rare metals controlled by China. Lithium, cobalt, rare earths: Beijing dominates 80% of the value chain. Betting on massive electrification amounts to trading dependence on Russian hydrocarbons for dependence on Chinese batteries. Susskind mentions this constraint without drawing strategic conclusions from it.
Finally, the author skims over distributive justice issues. Will his green growth benefit working-class populations or widen inequalities? Electric vehicles remain inaccessible to modest households. Energy renovation favors wealthy homeowners. Will industrial jobs destroyed by transition be replaced with equivalent quality jobs? These social questions will determine the political acceptability of Susskind’s program.
This tension between technological transformation and social inclusion echoes challenges observed in other sectors, like differential AI adoption based on psychological profiles: innovations only diffuse durably if they benefit the greatest number.
Why Read It
Growth: A Reckoning arrives at a timely moment in European economic debate. As Germany sinks into recession, France accumulates deficits, and Italy struggles to improve competitiveness, ecological parties openly advocate degrowth. This seductive temptation ignores a reality: in a multipolar world, countries that renounce growth lose geopolitical influence.
Susskind refuses this false alternative between destructive growth and virtuous degrowth. He sketches a third way: growth directed by the state toward future sectors. This pragmatic vision draws on historical successes—the Marshall Plan, space exploration, the digital revolution—to imagine an ecological transition commensurate with the stakes.
The book will challenge European political leaders tempted by withdrawal. At a time when Europe reveals its pocket giant strategy against American and Chinese AI investments, Susskind reminds us that no power has been built through voluntary degrowth. European prosperity will not survive the renunciation of innovation and economic expansion.
Entrepreneurs will find a framework for anticipating sectoral transformations. Susskind identifies probable winners: renewable energy, electric mobility, circular economy, precision agriculture. He also points out losers: fossil fuels, traditional chemistry, aviation. This map of economic mutations helps navigate the transition.
Citizens concerned with ecology will discover an alternative to ambient catastrophism. Rather than guilt-tripping individual behaviors, Susskind bets on collective innovation and public action. This systemic approach frees one from moral burden to focus on political effectiveness.
Bibliographic Information: - Title: Growth: A Reckoning - Author: Daniel Susskind - Publisher: Allen Lane (Penguin Random House) - Publication date: September 2024 - Pages: 368 - Original title: Growth: A Reckoning