Always interesting to see things from the other side; here’s a conservative publication covering #degrowth.
They get multiple things wrong (“In its most pernicious forms, it includes population control.” Where on earth do they get that from?! 😱), and they come to far different conclusions than I would, but they do at least quote fairly reasonably.
New paper out by Jefim Vogel & Jason Hickel demonstrating the absurdity of #greengrowth promises:
"[H]igh-income countries have not achieved green growth, and are very unlikely to be able to achieve it in the future"
"At the achieved rates, these countries would on average take more than 220 years to reduce their emissions by 95%, emitting 27 times their remaining 1·5°C fair-shares in the process. To meet their 1·5°C fair-shares alongside continued economic growth, decoupling rates would on average need to increase by a factor of ten by 2025." #degrowth#postgrowth
The fourth instance of our online Degrowth seminar series is coming up, on September 19th, 2 PM-3 PM CEST
“The future of degrowth: Decolonizing more than the imaginary” by Dr. Brototi Roy (Central European University, Vienna)
In recent years, degrowth has sparked multiple discussions, analyses and actions on repoliticizing the debate for socio-ecological justice and equity. Since the beginning of the movement as an activist slogan, there have been calls for decolonizing the imaginary. In this talk, Dr. Roy will engage with the idea of how can this decolonization be more material.
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Hell, anyone interested in dealing with #climateChange or any of our ecological problems should read it.
Nish is going a step further than I’d ever considered. Not only is he saying that #capitalism can’t fix our ecological overshoot (yep, I hope everyone’s realised that), but that states of any sort cannot fix those problems either.
Surprised to see some fair coverage of #degrowth in Forbes.
Definitely not perfect; under the paragraph "Challengers to degrowth" they write "Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz raises an essential consideration: while sacrifices may be necessary, ensuring they're fairly distributed is crucial."
As if equality and decolonisation aren't central themes to degrowth.
Anyway, I'll take it. It's getting the term out there in the public consciousness.
“we are currently extracting more than 100 billion tons of natural materials annually, and rising. This greatly exceeds natural processes that move materials around the globe.
Only about 10% of these resource flows are potentially renewable.”
"Diamond identified three key indicators or precursors of imminent dissolution: a persistent pattern of environmental change for the worse like long-lasting droughts; signs that existing modes of agriculture or industrial production were aggravating the crisis; and an elite failure to abandon harmful practices and adopt new means of production. At some point, a critical threshold is crossed and collapse invariably follows."
I tend to avoid sharing collapse-related things because they often veer into doomerism, but this one is worth the read.
It does however hold back from identifying why "elites are choosing to perpetuate practices known to accelerate climate change and global devastation."
It's no good talking about #collapse without talking about #capitalism as a driving force. And for #postgrowth systems as a way out of it, especially #degrowth.
Have you considered using the property to explore living condition scenarios from "Decent living with minimum energy"? That's something I've frequently thought about since reading that paper (I just did a measurement now, to compare a 15 m² per capita benchmark.)
It could go hand-in-hand with a transfer to cooperative ownership, for people who could be interested in trying this.
Here's an all-star #postgrowth#podcast for you: @jasonhickel , @jks and Giorgos Kallis join the Circular Metabolism Podcast to discuss how post-growth can be achieved.
Today I joined demo day of the Post-Growth Entrepreneurship Incubator. It is always interesting to learn about alternative business models for startups, and it was great to see the wide diversity in terms of products, regions and founders!
Another selection from a recent article at the Guardian with statements from various scientists about the alarming and accelerating pace of the climate crisis...
Bill Hare, a physicist and climate scientist, also chief executive of Climate Analytics, says:
We knew by the mid-1990s that lurking in the tails of our climate model projections were monsters: monstrous heatwaves, catastrophic extreme rainfall and floods, subcontinental-scale wildfires, rapid ice sheet collapse raising sea level metres within a century.
But as today’s monstrous, deadly heat waves overtake large parts of Asia, Europe, and North America with temperatures the likes of which we have never experienced, we find that even 1.2C of global warming isn’t safe.
Driving all this is the fossil fuel industry. Enabling it are political leaders unwilling to bring this industry under control, and who promote policies such as offsetting that simply enable this industry to continue.
@breadandcircuses the last paragraph sums up our current political and economic quagmire. In democracies, due to needing to get a majority of votes to govern, political parties do not 'lead' change, they follow popular interest. Currently, popular interest is driven by marketing in a system reliant on growth.
I see no other pathway out of our current trajectory than a framework respecting #PlanetaryBoundaries, which requires #PostGrowth approaches.
The Anthropocene is a colonial construct and very misleading. Referring to the human species as the influencer of a new geologic epoch beginning less than 100 yrs ago ignores 200,000 to 2,000,000 yrs of humans living within #PlanetaryBoundaries.
As postgrowth economists move beyond neoclassical economics , we need techniques of analysis that incorporate qualitative information. My coauthors and I have looked into a data representation in network form for large-scale ethnographies. Since these networks tend to be large and dense, we propose some techniques to reduce them, and ground them in major approaches in #anthropology and #sociology.
Pff, I created a thread on Ha-Joon Chang's book "Kicking away the ladder", but managed to botch it, so that it was splut into two. The link here will take you to post 1; I have added a link in post 4, that takes you to post 5. From then on, it's just a regular thread. Sorry, it's inexperience, I'll get better.
With all the #NewHere people, it would be fantastic if we could build a bit of a network of mutual follows around non-mainstream #economics: #degrowth, #postgrowth, #beyondgrowth, doughnuts, mission economies, modern monetary theory, ecological economics etc.
My modest contribution: I am going to be more attentive in posting short comments about my own readings.
Just listened to an interesting talk by Federico Savini (Amsterdam) on post-growth de-growth planning. He and others have done a book #degrowth #postGrowth
I have huge respect for Jon Gruber - especially after his brave and empathetic talk on the many harms of public shaming ("Cancel Culture") - so I'm going to take some time to unpack this.
It may still be the wrong question, or at least can be phrased differently to highlight a key aspect.
I think in general the fedizen population are all pro-openness. But what's at stake with an unbridled corporate takeover leads to asking the question:
"Is the #Fediverse open to business-as-usual i.e. #hypercapitalism? Or does it favor and is protective of a pathway that leads us towards a #postgrowth economy?"