Abstract:

Ecological destruction caused by growth, which has become a fetish in today’s world, has been reacted to in the academic world and theories of degrowth have come to the fore. The climate crisis, which will determine the fate of the world, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which makes us question our role in the life, are the biggest indicators that the limits of the nature have been reached. In this study, the damage of growth ideology to ecology has been examined based on degrowth theories. In the study, greenhouse gas emission and material footprint were used separately as dependent variables to measure environmental pollution. The long-term relationship between environmental pollution and its determinants was examined by a panel data analysis of G20 countries. As a result of the analysis, a long-term positive correlation was found between material footprint and greenhouse gas emissions, and all independent variables except urbanization. It has been observed that the dependent variables increase in case of increase in growth, square of growth, trade openness, energy consumption and economic complexity, which are independent variables with long-term coefficients. Although economic complexity has a positive relationship with CO2, no significant relationship has been found with material footprint.

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