Riccardo Mastini is a PhD candidate in Ecological Economics and Political Ecology in the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is also a member of the academic collective Research & Degrowth, of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, and of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook and visit his website.
A Post-Growth Green New Deal
A truly transformative Green New Deal cannot simply be about returning to a welfare capitalist order of days of yore. It must move beyond capitalism’s growth imperative. This is not only because there is no empirical evidence supporting the existence of a decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures anywhere near the scale needed to deal with the ecological crisis, but also because such decoupling appears unlikely to happen in the future.
February 18, 2020
A Green New Deal beyond Growth
The main issue with the current Green New Deal narrative is that it banks on the feasibility of decoupling economic growth from carbon emissions and material throughput.
May 7, 2019
The 8th of December, the End of the Month, and the End of the World
Saturday 8 December 2018 is a day that will likely go down in history for many social movements. The streets of many European cities were filled with demonstrations against the most pressing social issues of our time: growing inequality, useless mega infrastructural projects, and climate breakdown.
January 17, 2019
Beyond the Choke Hold of Growth: Post-Growth or Radical Degrowth?
In part two of Riccardo Mastini’s interview with Giorgos Kallis and Tim Jackson at the Post-Growth 2018 conference at the European Parliament, they trace the history that led to growth being prized above all else and discuss how to conceptualise a future beyond growth.
January 3, 2019
The Politics of Post-Growth
In the first part of a two-part interview, Riccardo Mastini discusses the possibilities and challenges for imagining a world beyond growth with two key post-growth thinkers at the conference.
January 2, 2019
Degrowth as a Concrete Utopia
The emergence of interest in degrowth can be traced back to the 1st International Degrowth Conference organized in Paris in 2008. At this conference, degrowth was defined as a “voluntary transition towards a just, participatory, and ecologically sustainable society,” so challenging the dogma of economic growth.
November 19, 2018