In response to climate change and environmental breakdown, degrowth has become one of the key concepts in political ecology and related disciplines. Degrowth provides a critique of the ideology of growth measured as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a core objective for capitalist economies. It argues that degrowth is possible, desirable and necessary to halt further ecological destruction and to build socially just and ecologically sustainable societies.
I don’t know if it’s defeatist. We should really start coming to terms with the fact that things are most likely going to get extremely bad regardless of what we do, and instead of putting most of our effort into trying to stop things, we should increase focus on how we’re going to deal with what’s coming.
Not that trying to eg. get global CO2 production down or whatever wouldn’t be worth it, but unless this economic system is more or less torn down completely or someone comes up with an actually viable fusion reactor, we can’t pin too much of our hopes on the people in power suddenly starting to act selflessly.