A group of 18 European Parliament Members have issued a statement officially calling for #Degrowth.
Here is part of what they wrote...
We believe that the current economic model, based on endless growth, has reached its limits.
Firstly, continuous economic growth, especially based on the consumption of fossil fuels, is leading to catastrophic global warming.
Secondly, the infinite pursuit of growth relies on the depletion of natural resources, the destruction of biodiversity, and the accumulation of waste and pollution. This also poses risks to our health, our economies, and our societies writ large.
Thirdly, the current economic model is contributing to social inequality and exclusion. The emphasis on economic growth has not translated into equal distribution of wealth or opportunities. Instead, it has resulted in a concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few leaving many behind.
Fourthly, the current economic model is inherently unstable and prone to crises, as seen, for example, during the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The pursuit of growth at all costs has created a global economic system that is fragile and vulnerable to shocks.
We need an economic system that prioritises human well-being and ecological sustainability over GDP growth, one that recognises that infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible.
We also believe we need to find new ways of organising our economies without relying on the continuous exploitation of resources and the constant increase in production and consumption.
We call for more pluralism in economic thinking within EU institutions and for its alignment with the scientific evidence of climate, ecological, and social sciences.
We call for economic models and other decision-support tools to be more diverse, more comprehensive, and more readable for citizens.
We call for decision-making processes to be aligned with our common policy objectives rather than on the basis of the variation of GDP figures.
Names of those who signed on as co-authors: Philippe Lamberts (BE), Bas Eickhout (NL), Ville Niinisto (FI), Manuela Ripa (DE), Marie Toussaint (FR), Ernest Urtasun (ES), Kim Van Sparrentak (NL) — Greens/EFA; Manon Aubry (FR), Petros Kokkalis (EL), Marisa Matias (PT), Helmut Scholz (DE) — The Left (GUE/NGL); Pascal Durand (FR), Aurore Lalucq (FR), Pierre Larrouturou (FR) — Socialists & Democrats (S&D); Sirpa Pietikainen (FI), Maria Walsh (IE) — European People’s Party (EPP); Katalin CSEH (HU) — Renew Europe (RE); and Dino GIARRUSSO (IT) — Non-attached (NI).
For those who might not know, following a week after the Russia-Ukraine wheat embargo, there are even bigger and ominous signs hinting at global food insecurity and the catastrophic agricultural crises coming our way.
India last week banned export on all non-basmati rice varieties.
I repeat: EXPORT BAN ON ALL non-basmati RICE varieties.
[Aside: export of basmati variety will continue, the demand for which is relatively small in India when compared to the nearly 15 major varieties of rice (it's home to at least a 1000 varieties) consumed by very large populations everyday(these are the ones which are now banned). Basmati is a "festive" and only occasionally consumed variety in India. It is largely exported to the richer nations, many of whom think it is the only variety of rice from India.]
Why is India banning rice now?
Answer: global warming.
What’s happening in India (and South Asia at large) should both terrify you and wake you up
Here’s more (facts? trivia? bothersome news? how the world actually works?).
“According to a recent poll, more than 70 percent of Britons under the age of 50 are indifferent to the coronation. Even so, a staggering 250 million pounds ($315m) of magicked-up taxpayer money will be spent on this single day even as thousands of nurses, doctors, teachers and other key public workers have been told for months there is no money in the coffers to offer them a meaningful pay rise.”
No way! A European Citizens' Initiative to (1) tax millionaires to (2) finance a Green New Deal via EU Commission own funds, and (3) whose proponents are (check notes) the president of the Belgian Socialist Party, a Polish former Employment and Social Inclusion Commissioner and Thomas Piketty (@pikettylemonde), possibly the world's most prominent scholar of inequality.
"In 2019, the richest 1% were responsible for 16% of global carbon emissions, the same as the emissions of the poorest 66% of humanity (5 billion people)."
"The world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes from $405 billion to $869 billion since 2020 —at a rate of $14 million per hour— while nearly five billion people have been made poorer"
George Monbiot offers a concise summary of the current state of #Britain:
#Inequality 'demands oppression. The more concentrated wealth & power become, the more those who challenge the rich & powerful must be hounded and crushed. In other words, economic inequality is mirrored by inequality before the law. You can dispense with all the other indices of democracy. The best measure of the health of a political system is who gets prosecuted'!
This articulates my exact feelings about San Francisco, the tech industry, & the entire social crisis of Capitalism we are all facing. Ms. Solnit writes with fierce precision & grace, connecting the dots with damning evidence rather than hyperbole.
It can be difficult to understand just how un-equal our modern human society really is.
We often talk about the 1% versus the 99%, but that’s not even close to an accurate ratio for the true scale of inequality — because the “haves” in our society (our owners, our rulers) do not possess a mere one hundred times more power and wealth than the rest of us. The disparity is FAR greater than that.
Through consolidation and monopolies and lobbying and bribery and corruption, within the past four decades the wealthy and powerful have achieved complete dominance over us and over the world we live in. It’s not an exaggeration to say they own and control virtually EVERYTHING.
They own the corporations. They own the resources. They own the governments. They own the major media. They own (most of) the Internet.
And what are they doing with all that wealth and power? Simple. They’re grabbing more. And more and more and more. They will never have enough.
In the meantime, while they continue hoarding, our owners are also working to convince you and me that everything is okay, that the status quo is just fine, that there’s nothing to worry about. They want to keep the stores open, the factories running, the airlines flying, and the cruise ships sailing.
The longer our rulers can keep assuring everyone that Business As Usual is the way to go, the more money they will make. And they believe (though it's likely a delusion) that with enough money and enough power, they and their descendants will be able to survive and even thrive in the 3°C to 5°C world of the future.
I’m not sure at this point if anything can be done about all this. It may be too late. But I hope I’m wrong.
mRNA derived vaccines are indeed great (I am a beneficiary), and the researchers who did the foundational work on mRNA richly deserve the honor.
A lot of people have already weighed in on the mistreatment/shutting of one of the winners, Katalin Kariko and the brokenness of academic research, bias against women, incentive structures, awards, grants etc.,
However, there is myopia/distortion/rank hypocrisy on other fronts that deserves ridicule as well.
This sentence in the citation, to put it mildly, is preposterous:
" ... contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times."
In a world of roughly 8 billion people, roughly 13.5 billion doses of Covid19 vaccines have been administered so far. About 3 billion of those are mRNA vaccines (you can guess who got them). So, what do they mean when they say "human" health? Which humans are they talking about? Who do they think vaccinated the world?
This has to be either the greatest sleight of hand or complete ignorance/denial of how and what kind of Covid-19 vaccines were rolled out to save the world. It's as if the rest of the world doesn't exist or didn't as well develop vaccines quickly and save themselves.
What we witnessed the last three years was not "unprecedented ... development" using mRNA techniques to counter "one of the greatest threats to human health" as the citation points out, instead it was how the entire rich world failed so completely and spectacularly to see itself as part of a common humanity even after it had the means to do so.
This graphic (circulated by Bridget Doran on LinkedIn) neatly sums up the problem with the simple message that growth needs to be prioritised & measured via a nominal GDP measure.
In this sense it reflects a heckle reported by Anand Menon nearly a decade ago, during a lecture on GDP & the problems of growth:
'That’s your bloody GDP. Not ours'!
The simple truth that growth is unevenly distributed is often lost in policy discussions!
Silicon Valley’s elite made their billions through luck, not genius. But as the public turns on them, they want to protect their privilege, so they’re trying to convince us they’re inherently superior.
For Disconnect, I explain how billionaires like Elon Musk are bringing eugenics back by promoting effective altruism, longtermism, and pronatalism. The goal is to cement their position at the top, and we need to stop them.
Ready for news that will shock nobody? It turns out globalization mostly helps out the richest 10% and has little to no impact on the poorest.
"The influence of globalization on income inequalities worldwide was greater than we had expected. We were particularly surprised that these differences were mainly due to the gains of the richest and that the lower income groups benefited little or not at all."
We need to be better at recognising and showing everyone that all our interests are aligned - it shouldn’t be farmers against #JustStopOil or whatever; we should all be fighting #inequality and billionaires together. #WeAreThe99Percent
Taxing great #wealth to finance the ecological and social transition. 💰
The European Citizens' Initiative, is a powerful tool for EU citizens to propose policy changes. Securing 1 million signatures prompts the Commission to review proposals.
A notable initiative is a call for a pan-European #tax on the ultra-wealthy. It would be used to combat #climatechange and #inequality.
It's a bold proposal worthy of support. I have already signed.
Just in time for #Davos, here's 'Taken, not earned: How monopolists drive the world’s power and wealth divide," a report from a coalition of international tax justice and anti-corporate activist groups:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
My spouse worked for a short-term rental company, an #AirBNB competitor, and wow did I hear an earful from them about the kinds of chaos these places can cause. One factor driving away the individual homeowner posting their extra 'crash space' online vs. the massive conglomerates is how little help the companies offer when something goes wrong (i.e. a renter sets off fireworks in your house while you're renting it out). Giant property owners can eat those kinds of losses and don't have sentimental attachment to their homes.
'Since 2020, the richest five men in the world have doubled their fortunes. During the same period, almost five billion people globally have become poorer. Hardship & hunger are a daily reality for many people worldwide. At current rates, it will take 230 years to end poverty, but we could have our first trillionaire in 10 years'!
@oxfam latest report on #inequality focusses on the role of #corporations as the engines of the widening gap between rich & poor!