In the article, the author places the “Green New Deal versus Degrowth” discussion in its broader historical and epistemological context. The article takes Robert Pollin’s 2018 discussion De-growth VS A Green New Deal as its starting point, and presents it alongside a series of (direct) responses from “degrowthers” that followed mainly in 2019. In showcasing the discussion, the author first focuses on the issue of “green growth” and, on a related note, on the (im)possibility of the absolute decoupling of GDP growth from material throughput and carbon emissions, which is an issue that has become the focal point of the “Green New Deal versus Degrowth” debate. The author proceeds to link the current discussions to the differences between (neoclassical) environmental economics, ecological economics and bioeconomics, with the aim of showing the essential paradigmatic distinction between the green new deal and degrowth. Against this background, the author concludes by highlighting a selection of epistemological questions that remain unthematized in Pollin’s discussion. These questions are highly important for understanding the differences between the green new deal and degrowth. The article includes an appendix that outlines environmental management and its impact on environmental thinking in economics, which the author problematizes from the point of view of the critical management paradigm.
