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Here's an article explaining "Why Only Degrowth Will Save The World."

From the introduction...
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Let’s be clear. It isn’t ‘climate change’ that’s the problem. It’s a multitude of crises stemming from the fact that our current capitalist economy, predicated on endless accumulation and extraction, has tipped nature out of balance. And if we don’t change this system, we are screwed.
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They suggest following these basic principles:

✦ Never extract more than ecosystems can regenerate.
✦ Never waste or pollute more than ecosystems can safely absorb.

And then they propose a plan of action...
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1. End planned obsolescence — Guzzling materials and energy only for them to be useless in a few years, all in the name of the growth imperative, is madness. Policy options include extended warranties on products and the right to repair products. Take the Fairphone, for example.

2. Cut advertising — Advertising, especially when tied to social media giants like Google and Facebook, is mass manipulation on an unprecedented scale. Hickel calls it an “assault on our consciousness — the colonisation of not only our public spaces but our minds, to make us desire things we don’t need”. Policy options include quotas on ad expenditure, legislation, banning ads in public spaces, and social policies to reduce inequality.

3. Move from ownership to usership — especially for equipment that is necessary but rarely used. Take lawnmowers, for example, or cars. Common Asset trusts, anyone?

4. End food waste — Around 50% of all the food produced in the world, about 2 billion tonnes, is wasted every year. This is an insane ecological cost, in terms of energy, land, water, and emissions. Ending this could cut the scale of damage caused by the agricultural industry in half.

5. Scale down ecologically destructive industries — such as the fossil fuel industry (obviously), the beef industry, the arms industry, the commercial airline industry, etc.
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I like the sound of this. How about you?

FULL ARTICLE -- https://medium.com/the-new-climate/why-only-degrowth-will-save-the-world-2a4b1bf35011

Note that this is all based on work by Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel), especially as contained in his book, Less is More.

GET THE BOOK -- https://www.jasonhickel.org/less-is-more

#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual #Degrowth
It is literally the only option we have left.
Seems promising.
We are so invested in capitalism that our entire society will collapse in on itself if we try to stop it.

Our ecosystem will collapse if we don't.

So, basically, we are screwed. I think a lot of old school capitalists already understand this, they just don't want to change because they wanna enjoy stuff until they die.

That's kinda the fundamental problem. We rather enjoy a lot for a bit, than a little for a long time.

"Everything dies after I am dead anyway".
I like the sound of it very much
@jasonhickel@mastodon.world I'm a bit wary about advertisement post. While we are in capitalist society, ads help survive day some nonprofit sites in the internet, and local shops and distributors in towns. So it seems it's mostly to cut on ads from big companies, which are actual mass producers.

Then there is question about economy and jobs. Again capitalist society. It will have to substantially adapt to this changes.
@natureworks

The only way out. A sensible approach to saving our planet.
We will never counter the negative consequences of our quest for unlimited growth so long as our system continues to reward growth over all else.
Not to sound too pessimistic, as I admire the efforts suggested, but to get to a sustainable economy/society within a time-frame that matters, will take some core systemic changes.
Maybe we could start by doing things some little things such as effectively taxing the hell out of billionaires? Or?
I have always thought that continuous growth as an economic policy is akin to cancer.
Why not? Something in line with the Fridays school strike for climate, except for everyone?
nobody ever built anything using just an axe and a saw. If you want people on board, you have to explain how their lives will be better, not just how much privation you plan to inflict on them.
@davidfetter
But it won't be better for them, of course. Consuming unlimited amounts of fossil fuels makes our lives better.

In order to not destroy the ecosystem, people will have to give things up now, so their descendants can survive.

No one will do that. We will continue to consume exponentially until we destroy our ecosystem and most of humanity.

We are stealing a future from our grandchildren so we can have disposable plastic crap and junk food.
@TomSwirly How's that whole puritanical hectoring thing been working out for the past 50+ years? Getting a lot of action? Motivating people to make massive societal changes? No? Gee, I wonder why not.

The choice you offer between Capitalist Hellscape and AnPrim/Eugenics/Fascism, and make no mistake, this is the choice you're offering, just makes people not take you seriously because BOTH choices you offer suck.

We can live wonderful lives with clean, ubiquitous, reliable nuclear energy, and that's the message we need to get out there. We don't have to have capitalism. We don't have to have privation.
@davidfetter
I see rudeness; I see anger; and particularly, I see no argument at all and no numbers.

I'm a big proponent of nuclear power but people won't accept it. More, it is far, far to late to fix it by building nuclear power plants as we only have a few years' carbon budget left.

Let's see your numbers. How would it work?

Such rudeness; such anger. You should consider therapy, because the rage isn't good for you or anyone left who might care about you.

Ostrzeżenie o treści: Why I'm against nuclear power

Ostrzeżenie o treści: Why I'm against nuclear power

Ostrzeżenie o treści: Why I'm against nuclear power

Ostrzeżenie o treści: Why I'm against nuclear power

@TobiWanKenobi @calotriton @dj3ei @davidfetter
We have had solar panels now for 70 years, and yet every year the amount of fossil fuel use increases.

Right now, about 3.5% of US electricity needs are generated solar panels.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

And fossil fuel use increases by about 2% a year.

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@TobiWanKenobi @calotriton @dj3ei @davidfetter
Some environmentalists have fought against nuclear power for generations. Now disaster for our ecosystem has been locked in for decades, and we are working on catastrophe. Our emissions grow by 2% a year.

And yet, still, people fight against nuclear power, as if we'd already won the climate battle and just didn't need it. And most of them drive gasoline cars, eat meat, and pop out kids like there's no tomorrow.
@TomSwirly

"We have had solar panels now for 70 years, and yet every year the amount of fossil fuel use increases."

We have had nuclear power on a global scale for 70 years now, and yet the same happened.

So maybe it's not an issue of alternative energy sources, be it nuclear or renewable, but an issue of some powerful entities having an active interest in selling and using fossils?

"Some environmentalists have fought against nuclear power for generations. Now disaster for our ecosystem has been locked in for decades, and we are working on catastrophe. Our emissions grow by 2% a year."

I'm not fighting against nuclear power. I just told you that it's unfeasible to use it under today's circumstances.
But, just like environmentalists have been fighting against it, for very understandable reasons in my eyes, some people have suddenly re-discovered nuclear power for them as super-solution to all our problems, especially after some Silicon Valley billionaires started to shit in people's head, yapping about small reactors, recycling waste perfectly, and what-not. The same people who run their mouths about hyper loops and journey to Mars.

There are reasons why nuclear power as energy source used to go downhill, before some capitalists started to use it as a ploy to suggest that we can go on with our consumption orgy as before.

What I have clearly written in my post as solution is to consume/produce less. And that's what I fight for.

We produce gigatons of things that are never used, but simply thrown away. We waste gigatons of food. And we waste gigatons of oil because every dork and their goat needs to own a private car to get around. All of this waste requires energy and pollutes our environment. And currently we, as you rightfully stated, use fossil energy sources.

So, rather than wasting any time on listening to the wet dreams of billionaire capitalists, we may as well use what we already have available (renewables) and radically lower our energy consumption.

But since most people in the rich countries don't understand this very simple solution, because they got used to their prosperity, which they and their ancestors have been exploiting from the poorer countries, this planet is on a straight path to shit.

Give it a few decades, and this civilization is gone anyway, but the damage to nature and climate will need thousands of years to fix, if it's recoverable at all.

@calotriton @dj3ei @davidfetter @breadandcircuses @jasonhickel
@TobiWanKenobi @calotriton @dj3ei @davidfetter
We stopped nuclear power because of popular resistance to the technology.

Yes, this was very convenient for the fossil fuel companies and no doubt they had a hand.

Yes, exponentially increasing consumption is the issue, yes we aren't going to escape.

BUT

https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/2/11/german-electricity-was-nearly-10-times-dirtier-than-frances-in-2016

Things would have been better if we had done France, but we did Germany.

All this blah blah blah is irrelevant. It was a mistake.
@TomSwirly

🤷‍♂️

It's moot to discuss this since the environmental conditions work against nuclear power now. France is a prime example of how energy through nuclear power plants doesn't work well anymore, and it'll get only worse for the power plants they got. But France will be alright since they're part of the European grid

And sure, you can lament over how great it'd have been, if the world had chosen to go full nuclear, pushing fossil aside, 50 yrs ago. But personally I believe that choice never existed in the first place, since the fossil lobby would have worked against any movement towards a switch to nuclear or renewables. Only now that #ClimateCrisis is hitting hard, reality is starting to overpower those fossil forces, and even then it causes huge frictions and counter-movements, going even as far as capitalists using fascist ideologies to work against change.

But whatever we say in hindsight now, renewables are the only feasible, available alternative at the moment.

@calotriton @dj3ei @davidfetter @breadandcircuses @jasonhickel
@TobiWanKenobi @calotriton @dj3ei @davidfetter
> renewables are the only feasible, available alternative at the moment.

I first heard that claim from anti-nuclear activists in the 1970s: since then we lost the game entirely.

The disastrous +2ºC is certain; now catastrophe looms; but CO2 emissions increase at almost 2% a year.

We need all the non-CO2 energy we can get and we still won't come close to hitting our targets.
@TobiWanKenobi @TomSwirly @calotriton @dj3ei @davidfetter If I told you that many cities use to ban solar panels on roof tops because they considered it “ugly,” would you believe me‽ Yeah, I was a fan of nuclear power, hydro power, solar power, but it seemed as if any alternative was shouted down in favor of more fossil fuels.
@darnell

Of course I believe you. The fossil lobby has many powerful capitalists backing its cause. They'll hire consulting, marketing and other propaganda/lobby agencies, which know exactly how to influence politicians, small businesses/tradies, and the public to get the desired outcome.

More often than enough, these agencies belong to capitalist umbrella organizations. They got the money to hire the best experts in their fields.

Also, propaganda nowadays doesn't operate by directly telling people to do x or y since it'd trigger their resistance. It's a steady stream of information across many outlets to influence the view of people about x by repeatedly calling x in doubt, making up things about x, and highlighting an alternative y.

And on the other side of the coin you have a low level of transparency, explanations, and discussions in the public sphere.

Thanks to often low levels of education, which is being artificially kept that way in many places by chronical underfunding of facilities (why artificial? because capitalist kids are going to rich private schools), many people can't overview the whole range of arguments and counter-arguments in regards to complex problems. And I would never ever even blame anyone for that. Most of the people are being kept as labor slaves, meaning they have to invest most of their life to support themselves and their own families, just so that rich capitalists can become even richer.

Logically, those people don't have time to sit down and consider problems from various angles, let alone research things. As such they'll believe what corporate (capitalist) media tells them.

It's a vicious cycle. And nowadays we see where this loop has been slowly leading us --> Neo-Fascism.

@TomSwirly @calotriton @dj3ei @davidfetter @breadandcircuses @jasonhickel
@Bread and Circuses @Jason Hickel So let's consider what these proposals might look like in practice. E.g. advertising. Suppose I have a tiny business and I produce something (that people need). How are people realistically supposed to find out about it if we decide that advertising as such is bad? If the internet is de facto the main channel for finding information, what proposals are there for doing away with advertising but ensuring some (non-corporate) flow of information from people who offer some goods to people who needs it ?
excellent article - thanks for sharing
@comradeferret To dismantle capitalism, over 50 percent of the world's people will have to take to the streets and seize power from the ruling coalition of capitalists. And then dismantle wealth by repudiating all public debt and currency, seize property and cancel private contracts. It would be massive, drastic and harrowing. Millions would die. But billions will die when the collapse happens. This isn't going to happen through rhetoric. It would have to be real and stark.
I'm curious how difficult it would be to provide shared access to equipment/tools through a library-like system. Does anyone know if this has been done?
I think you are on the right track. In order to raise awareness and encourage mass engagement/cooperation toward sustainability, (without waiting until it's too late) is going to require some sort of grand efforts of social engineering.
@comradeferret
I've no doubt that capitalism is the problem now and has to go - and I say so here frequently!

But it's also true that some previous economic systems also over-exploited key resources and ran into ecological trouble - fortunately only on a local basis.

And many people are still stuck in a cold-war mentality, in which capitalism is associated with freedom, democracy and prosperity.

For these reasons, I think the public presentation of the anti-capitalist case is best put in other words - and other than #degrowth too, which also has some implication of a lack or absence. It certainly doesn't sound like fun.

We need words that imply a positive future. Sustainability?
I used to teach permaculture and that was one of the biggest points I always tried to make. Infinite growth (of people or profit) is not possible on a finite planet. What that boils down to is population control, or mother nature will do it for us.
Also, #EatTheRich and redistribute their wealth.
@comradeferret I find the list at least somewhat less abstract than 'capitalism' per se; on a different ontological level and a bit nearer to what live human beings can lay their hands on. They mean something to people, to whom 'capitalism' is just an empty word or a placeholder. I agree that capitalism must go, but aren't we thinking about *doing* something? It isn't primarily about ideas or ideologies, but the planet.