Nobody likes #degrowth. It sounds like a downturn and reeks of a return to a less comfortable past. What if we instead sell it as a change of parameters? A vision of progress, but measured in things like hapiness and meaningfulness instead of production and consumption?
Should we continue emitting copious amounts of carbon, expecting future technology to save us? Absolutely not.
Should we be hopeful technological advancements will help mitigate the impacts of #ClimateChange? Absolutely yes.
It will always be cheaper, wiser, and more equitable to reduce emissions today than to remove them in the future, #degrowth, but improving efficiency of direct air capture is something we should celebrate as a needed complement.
Talking to Filipinos about #degrowth is difficult because everyone here begins at the premise that the country is “underdeveloped.” One person told me that talking about degrowth from the perspective of rural poverty did not make sense because the rural needed development and growth. But what do we actually mean by “growth”? Growth and development means valorization, means creating value and money. If we mean that the rural needs more schools, hospitals, and amenities to improve standards of living, then say that. Because rural poverty is precisely the cause of development, not the lack of it. Value is extracted there in its purest form from the earth, from rent, etc.
We need degrowth precisely because growth and development has impoverished us as so.
Americanos are pissed that they can't have bananas year round if #degrowth/ #communism/ #anarchy happens. Banana availability has its roots in imperialism, destructive monocropping, and grueling agricultural labor/slavery.
We literally have a word for client states of #imperialism for the export of bananas: banana republic. Banana imports to the West is drenched in the blood of thousands massacred for your God damn commodities. In the #Philippines, companies told this instruction to banana worker syndicalists: “turn them into fertilizers for the bananas.”
On top of that is the steep ecological and carbon costs to actually shipping the damn things. Do you really need bananas year round?
There's also the problem of monocropping which destroys the biodiversity of forests to make way for plantations, even if we discount the slave labor. Monocropping has made Cavendish plantations at high risk of diseases. It could very well be that Cavendishes would become an endangered species just like the Gros Michel after nature erases its scourge. Maybe the extinction of the Cavendish is already a matter of time, rendering banana disocorse moot.
Americanos just don't understand that in a liberated world, maybe people won't be breaking their backs for some Americano to get their god damn banana. Of course degrowth/communism/anarchism means that relations to luxuries will change.
Besides, Cavendishes suck. They literally taste terrible. Y'all seriously live like this? Lakatan, Señorita, and Sabah tastes way better. Yeah, they can't be exported, boohoo. Not everything has to be a commodity, much less to please some Americano half a world away.
/
> Nothing can be the same from now and that means a massive effort to build a better, socially and economically just, and ecologically safe future.
Mainstream political leaders call for economic growth but we know that growth only makes the situation worse. They distract by calls that point to enemies beyond our shores, or among the peoples that live here. They may nod to sustainability but only halfheartedly, with proposals that will address only part of the problem.
/Cont'd
This was an interesting email to receive today. It reminded me of some things we discussed back on The Oil Drum about this very thing (the online archive still available: http://theoildrum.com/special/archives ) - how paving over all the old city & county gravel roads had introduced a pile of fixed costs (not just paving, but regular re-grading, snow plowing, etc) that towns would eventually have to shed.
In other words, at some point in the not too distant future, they will start turning roads back into gravel roads, slowly but surely, starting at the very outside edges and creeping inward until only a certain core of local paved roads remains.
How working for place-based solutions can change the world By Patrick Mazza, originally published by The Raven May 28, 2024
"...We must anticipate & prepare for extremes while also doing all we can to mitigate them and reduce their intensity. The more stressed systems become, the more difficult it will be for them to respond to stress. It’s a vicious cycle, the kind of feedback loop that leads to collapse. That is why we must build strong and resilient communities in our places, in our cities, towns, rural areas and bioregions. If systems break down at larger levels, we will have to fall back on our own places..."
I have mentioned many times that we will need to be prepared to take in our friends & family who will be displaced here in the US by disasters and climate collapse. The govt is not going to help. Our neighborhoods and congregations will be the basis of our sustainability.
Desirability and feasibility of perpetual economic growth is a matter of academic debate.
As of now degrwoth is not even considered as a climate change mitigation measure in projections of future #climatechange. Instead, they rely on technological innovation and further growth.
Here is cool new paper on the challenges of implementing the concept of #degrowth in models. 👇