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No Climate Protection without Climate Justice; No Climate Justice without Degrowth
No Climate Protection without Climate Justice; No Climate Justice without Degrowth
Shortly before the most crucial UN climate change conference after the failure of Copenhagen, it seems that the international climate-movement is finally getting its act together: resistance against fossil fuel extraction is gaining ground and a rising global movement is putting pressure on institutions to divest their money from fossil fuels to finance renewables instead. Green jobs in the renewable energy sector have been a success story and it is broadly accepted that we need to keep 80% of the known fossil fuel reserves in the ground if we want to prevent runaway climate change. Last year, more than 400 000 people flooded the streets of New York City in the largest climate march in history and, as the global development of renewable energy increases in scale and efficiency, people are starting to believe in a transition away from fossil fuel dependency.
This is of course good news, and nobody concerned about climate change would seriously doubt that the global transition towards renewable energy is an absolute necessity. However, much as right-wing conservatives, mostly in the US, deny anthropogenic climate change, the majority of the climate movement tends to deny an equally important issue: that renewables are unable to maintain our Western growth-based consumer lifestyles on a global level.
“Renewable” does not equal “unlimited”
The limitations and environmental impacts of renewables are being discussed in breadth and depth elsewhere; suffice to say here that e.g. wind mills and solar panels are very energy-intensive in production – and intensive in other natural resources too, such as metals, minerals and rare earths. Windmills for example require lots of concrete which is a highly CO2 intensive industry. Solar photovoltaic systems use on average 23-59 kg of aluminium per kW – the aluminium sector being another CO2 intensive industry.
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A Degrowth Response to an Ecomodernist Manifesto
A Degrowth Response to an Ecomodernist Manifesto
A group known as the “ecomodernists,” which includes prominent environmental thinkers and development specialists such as Ted Nordhaus, Michael Shellenberger, Stewart Brand, David Keith, and Joyashree Roy has recently published a statement of principles called An Ecomodernist Manifesto (2015). Many of the authors of the Manifesto are connected to an influential think tank called The Breakthrough Institute.
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Degrowth, the Book | David Bollier
Degrowth, the Book | David Bollier.
In industrialized societies, where so many people regard economic growth as the essence of human progress, the idea of deliberately rejecting growth is seen as insane. Yet that is more or less what the planet’s ecosystems are saying right now about the world economy. It’s also the message of an expanding movement, Degrowth, that is particularly strong in Europe and the global South.
A few months ago I b
logged about the massive Degrowth conference in Leipzig, Germany, that attracted 3,000 people from around the world. The basic point of the discussions was how to get beyond the fetish of growth, intellectually and practically, and how to transform our idea of “the economy” so that it incorporates such important values as democracy, social well-being and ecological limits.
Several of the movement’s leading figures have now released a rich anthology of essays,Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era(Routledge). It is the first English language book to comprehensively survey the burgeoning literature on degrowth. More about the book onits website and an amusing three-minute video.
The editors — Giacomo D’Alisa, Federico Demaria, Giorgios Kallis – are three scholars at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain, and members of the group Research & Degrowth. The editors describe degrowth as “a rejection of the illusion of growth and a call to repoliticize the public debate colonized by the idiom of economism.” The basic idea is to find new ways to achieve “the democratically-led shrinking of production and consumption with the aim of achieving social justice and ecological sustainability.”
Here’s how the book jacket describes the volume:
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Do We Own Our Stuff, or Does Our Stuff Own Us?
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Do We Own Our Stuff, or Does Our Stuff Own Us?.
The frenzied acquisition of more stuff is supposed to be an unalloyed good: good for “growth,” good for the consumer who presumably benefits from more stuff and good for governments collecting taxes on the purchase of all the stuff.
Degrowth-movement refuted by climate-report? No, not at all! | Degrowth 2014
Degrowth-movement refuted by climate-report? No, not at all! | Degrowth 2014.
Right before the recent UN climate change summit and shortly after the Leipzig Degrowth-Conference, international media, governments and the United Nations enthusiastically welcomed a new report entitled “Better Growth, Better Climate” and trumpeted its central message around the globe: that economic growth and tackling climate change can go hand in hand.
While the report, released by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, is supposed to drive climate-action by world leaders, business executives and investors, critical scientists fear that its central message will open the door for business-as-usual approaches and play down the urgency of immediate and far-reaching action.
Accordingly, University of Melbourne´s Samuel Alexander points out that “while the report has some merit insofar as it highlights the importance of energy efficiency, pricing carbon, investing in renewable energy, it fails miserably to justify its core conclusion.”
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charles hugh smith-What’s Avant-Garde Now? Social Innovation
charles hugh smith-What’s Avant-Garde Now? Social Innovation.
What qualifies as true avant-garde? Degrowth qualifies–and very little else.
In the 20th century, avant-garde was a term primarily reserved for the arts: fine arts, music, performance and literature. Avant garde–literally fore-guard or vanguard— challenges the conventions of Status Quo measures of beauty and departs from traditional forms and conceptions of value.
In many cases, the departure is designed to shock traditionalists by flaunting accepted norms; by traditional standards, avant-garde art is ugly or disturbing, avant-garde music is atonal and unmelodic, avant-garde theatre flouts conventional narrative structure and avant-garde social movements upend traditional morals and values.
Virtually all design and art fields have been continually disrupted by avant-garde movements, to the point that the conventional consumerist economy now depends on avant-garde (or perhaps quasi-avant-garde) to create “the new” that can be sold at a profit to differentiate the in-crowd from those (sigh–how sad) left behind.
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