Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I miss critiques of degrowth. A few years back, a single online search for the term would unleash a stream of fury. But no more. In fact, I cannot remember the last time I stumbled upon a well-argued critique. Why degrowth is wrong by Adam Lee is definitely not one of them – not even close…
In the very same month the IPCC publishes an 8-year in the making, almost 3,000-page report, I find it scientifically insulting that someone dares to cobble a few graphs together in defence of a crackpot hypothesis whose scientific legitimacy has come close to Flat Earth theory.
After thirty years of ineffective climate politics, finally a new idea makes it to the top of the pile. Instead of bickering about decoupling, passively waiting for a quasi-magical greening of GDP, we can finally switch to Plan B.
What I intend to show in this paper is that the reassuring claim that decoupling is feasible, as one may read in the Summary for Policymaker and hear in the media, is scientifically ungrounded, and this based on the very analysis provided by the IPCC report.
Even after two days of binge reading, I still have trouble believing that the last IPCC report “Mitigation of climate change” is real. The document is packed with powerful statements with radical implications and might represent nothing short of a watershed in the history of climate politics.
If we are honest, it’s not the term “degrowth” that people don’t like, it’s what it means: we must reduce our material footprint so that we are no longer living as though we have two, three, four or five planet earths.
Based on principles and practices of resource use reduction, sharing, conviviality, solidarity, and mutual aid, the Brisbane Tool Library can be considered a small-scale laboratory for a reorientation of society towards degrowth.
Sustainable Hedonism: A Thriving Life that Does Not Cost the Earth is a call to reflect on our beliefs and actions related to pleasure, joy and ecological sustainability.
While capitalism has taught us to identify the first with money-making and the second with life-making – a necessary but nevertheless subordinated, dependent and qualitatively inferior activity – climate justice movements are claiming the progressive, i.e. egalitarian, emancipatory, and wealth-producing agency of reproductive forces.
Deep, systemic, positive change arises when we collectively dream and enact a different form of society altogether — one focused on free and flourishing lives for all.
Through the organization Fashion Act Now, a growing band of dissident fashionistas want to make the clothing industry more ecologically responsible, relocalized, and culturally in sync with this moment in history, especially with respect to climate change, economic justice, and decolonialization.
In caring commons, autonomy and self-reliance are approached collectively. Human health is understood holistically, with a focus on promoting community solidarity in caring endeavors.
