{"id":36829,"date":"2018-08-19T12:15:19","date_gmt":"2018-08-19T17:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36829"},"modified":"2018-08-19T12:15:19","modified_gmt":"2018-08-19T17:15:19","slug":"defending-degrowth-at-ecomodernisms-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36829","title":{"rendered":"Defending degrowth at ecomodernism\u2019s\u00a0home"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Defending degrowth at ecomodernism\u2019s\u00a0home<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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In June, I was invited to speak at the eight annual\u00a0Breakthrough Dialogue, <\/a>an annual invite-only conference where accomplished thinkers debate how to achieve prosperity for humans and nature. The Breakthrough Institute, anecomodernist<\/a> think-tank, welcomed my presence as a provocateur. <\/span><\/p>\n

I was to participate in a panel called \u201cDecoupling vs. Degrowth\u201d. My role was the token \u201cdegrowther\u201d making my case to a majority \u201cdecoupler\u201d crowd. In this context, degrowth<\/em> <\/a>is the proposal to intentionally shrink the physical size of wealthy economies, whereas decoupling<\/em> <\/a>is the hope that growing economies will at last break free from growing resource use and environmental damage. The former renews environmentalism as a subversive political movement. The latter is firmly post-environmentalist, often associated with support for nuclear energy, industrial agriculture, and artificial technologies. With my mentorGiorgos Kallis<\/a>, we\u2019ve spent three years working together on a critical analysis of this post-environmentalism that emanates from the Breakthrough Institute and their self-styled ecomodernist friends.<\/p>\n

\"risingtideloge\"
The logo of the 2018 Breakthrough Dialogue, titled \u201cRising Tides.\u201d\u00a0Source:\u00a0The Breakthrough Institute\u00a0<\/a><\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The panel and the whole event went well. I think I made a bulletproof case for degrowth. I learned lots about geoengineering, carbon capture, agricultural modernization, and other topics from brilliant thought leaders \u2013 whom Noam Chomsky might call the intelligentsia \u2013 both through their panel discussions and informal conversations. Talking with journalists and scientists who had never engaged with degrowth before made the Dialogues worthwhile. I expected to feel like a visiting team player in a hostile professional sports arena, but really it was more like being a foreigner who people are interested in but don\u2019t always know how to interact with.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Defending degrowth at ecomodernism\u2019s\u00a0home In June, I was invited to speak at the eight annual\u00a0Breakthrough Dialogue, an annual invite-only conference where accomplished thinkers debate how to achieve prosperity for humans and nature. The Breakthrough Institute, anecomodernist think-tank, welcomed my presence as a provocateur. I was to participate in a panel called \u201cDecoupling vs. Degrowth\u201d. My […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,7],"tags":[5302,17328,203,8075,240,21305,11641],"class_list":["post-36829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-breakthrough-institute","tag-decoupling","tag-degrowth","tag-ecomodernism","tag-economic-growth","tag-entitled-blog","tag-sam-bliss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36829"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36830,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36829\/revisions\/36830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}