Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In order to keep within a ‘safe’ temperature threshold, deep and rapid decarbonisation is required, and yet existing trends show that global emissions are still growing rapidly.
Perhaps post-growth thinkers need to embrace a both/and strategy—both policy reform and grassroots change—rather than privileging one over the other or wasting energy on the wrong audience.
Bill Rees recorded in April at the Vancouver Degrowth Event on why degrowth is the only realistic path to sustainability.
Thus far the debate around unconventional gas/fracking has focussed on pollution, flammable water, earthquakes, noise, toxic fumes, climate change, etc. As a result people mainly focus on the "what?", or at a local level the "where?", of the issue. My research leads me toward one single question… "why?".
The scale of emission reductions required to meaningfully impact Climate Change will result in economic stagnation or contraction. This will render much of the financial system non-viable, greatly exacerbating the economic problems.
We turn now to a pair of climate scientists who are calling for what some may view as a shocking solution to the climate crisis: a rethinking of the economic order in the United States and other industrialized nations.
Detropia stirs anxiety and disorientation among its viewers through poignant visuals of the desolate and denuded cityscape blended with the accounts of Detroiters. But what are we to learn from this surfacing of collective dread?
The difficulty for any person who goes to another country to talk about economic and political policy is that they are almost inevitably going to be, to some degree, out of touch and out of tune with on the spot realities.
The fact is though that Croatia is a wealthy country by global standards, partly at the expense of its environment. Research by Group 22 members shows that Croatia’s ecological footprint exceeded its bio-capacity in 2007 – the amount involved means effectively that Croatia’s population requires 3/4 of “another Croatia” to maintain its lifestyle. Croatia is by no means the worst performer in environmental terms but its economy is not sustainable nonetheless – even though the population see the environment as having the lowest ranking among their priorities. In its external imbalances (trade deficits) and budget deficits Croatia is not different from many countries on the periphery of europe. The austerity recommendations of the IMF are not different in Croatia to elsewhere, except perhaps in magnitude. In Greece, Italy, Spain. Portugal, Baltic and eastern European countries, and in Ireland too, there is growing unemployment. Youth unemployment is high in these countries, there are social security cuts, a growth of poverty and insecurity, inequality and seething discontent. In many of these countries too the governing elite are repeatedly rocked by corruption scandals.
In this epic length episode #55 of The Extraenvironmentalist we cover the Montreal Degrowth Conference from May 2013. We hear from a number of degrowth academics and activists about the ideas in the movement.
Abstract: The political-economic limits to system innovation are explored through the Polanyian concepts of disembedding and the ‘double movement’. The Keynesian Welfare State is examined as the final outcome of a much broader ‘counter movement for societal protection.’ In place of reciprocity and autarchy, the Keynesian social compact involved the establishment of new, top-down circuits of redistribution, designed to facilitate continuing processes of capitalist modernization. Where social innovation is directed at the broad dynamics of marketization and the commodification of goods and services, this growth imperative continues to present an insuperable obstacle to system-level change. But as ecological capital at the level of the biosphere becomes a critical focus for a new protective ‘counter-movement’ and ‘degrowth’ becomes the de facto context for social innovation, systemic transformation becomes more thinkable. Hodgson’s ‘evotopia’ is recommended as a heuristic for a provisional, experimental and incremental exploration of the ‘adjacent possible.’
If groups seeking to make the post-carbon transition go more smoothly and equitably are to have much hope of success, they need a sound strategy grounded in a realistic theory of change. Here, briefly, is a theory of change that makes sense to me.
