April readings

Getty Images, via Heatmap

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

This time, we feature interesting reads on the state of work and ‘quiet quitting’; post-car societies, future and present; the false promise of saving the planet by planting trees; the Turkey-Syria earthquakes; big beef’s climate messaging machine; de-extinction and why it isn’t worth the ethical cost; the conundrums of climate fiction; the new How to Blow Up a Pipeline movie, a dramatization of Malm’s 2021 book of the same name; and so much more.

If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!



Uneven Earth updates

On planning and disaster: Notes from an earthquake | How disasters are baked into Turkey’s developmental model—and what kind of opposition could emerge out of the ruins of the earthquake



Top 5 articles to read

The age of the crisis of work 

How to make friends. Fighting the system may take a while. Why not go to a bar?

Is a post-car future actually possible? Experts say yes — here’s how we could get there

The illusion of saving the planet with a trillion trees 

Universal public services: the power of decommodifying survival



News you might’ve missed

Illegal gold mining influencers are tearing up the Amazon 

Methane leaks from oil and gas industry are 70% higher than EPA estimates, study shows

Chile plans to nationalize its vast lithium industry

Manuel Teran’s death: DeKalb County releases autopsy for ‘Cop City’ protester. Tortugita’s death has officially been ruled a homicide.



Where we’re at: analysis

Climate diplomacy is hopeless, says author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline

So much of the world economy has been going in reverse 

The lithium problem. Can we rapidly reduce carbon emissions while minimizing the damage caused by resource extraction?

The real-world costs of the digital race for Bitcoin. Bitcoin mines cash in on electricity — by devouring it, selling it, even turning it off — and they cause immense pollution. In many cases, the public pays a price.

The toxic dust from Turkey’s earthquakes 

Why Asia’s early heat wave is so alarming 



Global struggles

There’s no greater feminist cause than the climate fight – and saving each other

My continent is not your giant climate laboratory. Chukwumerije Okereke urges African governments to stand against the ploy by Western organizations to normalize research on risky geoengineering technologies.

Indigenous Pataxó demand land demarcation amid rising violence and murders

As tiger count grows, India’s Indigenous demand land rights

FEMA sued over using disaster funds to rebuild Puerto Rico’s power grid 



Cities and radical municipalism

How Tokyo became an anti-car paradise

This neighborhood is ‘banning’ cars for all residents — but it’s offering them a thought-provoking deal in return

Exactly how much less America walks than other countries, in five charts

Spain and Portugal tackle property crisis by embracing public housing

What Barcelona can teach New York City about truly affordable housing 

‘They try to build their money from our weakness’: Tenants fight rent increases, maintenance issues at apartment complex owned by federal pension fund

Return of the child-friendly city? How social movements are changing European urban areas 

Let the postpandemic city grow wild



Food politics

Food corporations paid shareholders $53.5bn while millions went hungry

Blood, soil, and grass-fed beef

Inside big beef’s climate messaging machine: confuse, defend and downplay 

You can’t eat profits. A democratic vision for England’s tormented farmlands. 



Just think about it…

Why intergenerational thinking is essential to heal the planet

The planetary emergency is a crisis of spirituality 

Bringing back woolly mammoths and dodos is a bad idea 

These adorable tiny owls are thriving in the most unlikely place

I lead a litter-picking group, but I will always defend litterers. This is why



Degrowth

The ideology of growth and its origins. An excerpt from The Future is Degrowth.

Degrowth in Japan



Sci-fi, art and storytelling

Climate fiction won’t save us. As the world burns, readers increasingly look to climate fiction for hope, predictions, and actionable solutions. But can the genre really be a manual for useful change?

Is eco-terrorism now self-defence? Inside explosive film How to Blow Up a Pipeline

How to Blow Up a Pipeline movie poses terror threat, Kansas City Intel Agency claims 



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February & March readings

A damaged home in the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood of Aleppo. (Mauricio Centurion) via The Nation

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

February was short, so we decided to do a combined February-March newsletter – and it’s a good one! We collected stories on Syria, Turkey & Rojava, the Cop City movement in Atlanta, and false climate solutions; a critique of Elon Musk’s Twitter; a discussion of the sustainability of bicycles; and a reflection on the importance of redefining ‘abundance’, to name a few. We also included a climate action toolkit for tired people, because that’s most of us in this vast capitalist hellscape.

If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!


Uneven Earth updates

Stories of permafrost | A call to look beyond permanence

Lützerath bleibt! | At the edge of the 1.5°C frontier



Top 5 articles to read

Climate in 2023: escalation and backlash

How to meet the climate crisis? Redefine ‘abundance.’

Why the Global South can’t go green

Transportation geography. How much lithium do we really need?

Automation isn’t the cause of unemployment — capitalism just can’t generate enough jobs



News you might’ve missed

Scientists deliver ‘final warning’ on climate crisis: act now or it’s too late

How Big Tech rewrote the nation’s first cell phone repair law

Rapidly melting Antarctic ice could affect oceans ‘for centuries’

Zimbabweans outraged by Al Jazeera exposé on gold smuggling elite

Climate, ice sheets & sea level: the news is not good

The $20m flip: The story of the largest land grab in the Brazilian Amazon

From arrests to apology: Government ‘sorry’ it violated Sami human rights. And the background to this story: Norway must stop violating Indigenous rights



Where we’re at: analysis

Musk is remaking Twitter into a climate denier sanctuary

Debt and ecological crises. A series of briefings looking at financial mechanisms that (in theory) support climate action and biodiversity conservation in the midst of a new debt crisis.

World should focus on phasing down developed world oil and gas over developing world coal 

The climate case for rationing

Electric vehicles alone won’t take us to a decarbonized future

The road to a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty

Imagining an economy for Nunavut beyond extraction



Global struggles

Letter from Paris

I live near the East Palestine chemical spill. Officials who say we’re safe are lying

Is Rojava a socialist utopia?

Year of war in Ukraine left developing nations picking up pieces

Sámi rights must not be sacrificed for green energy goals of Europe



Syria, Turkey, and Rojava

The earthquake has left Syrian Kurds even more under siege

Women’s movement in Bakur and Rojava has made historic advances for the rights of women

Why Turkey was ill-prepared for the Kahramanmaras earthquake



Defend the Atlanta Forest

The historical roots of the Stop Cop City movement

The future of American environmental protests may be unfolding in a forest outside Atlanta

Atlanta: Police shooting of activist fuels ‘Cop City’ controversy



Cities and radical municipalism

On bicycles: The night that changed San Francisco cycling forever. Biggest barrier to biking is a fear of cars. And Can we make bicycles sustainable again?

‘Like we don’t exist’: Indigenous fear Indonesia new capital plan 

Citizens’ assemblies: are they the future of democracy?



Food politics

The next deadly pandemic is just a forest clearing away

Big Food is betting on regenerative agriculture to thwart climate change

Phosphorus saved our way of life—and now threatens to end it

Vertical farms tried to grow lettuce indoors. Now many are failing



Just think about it…

What it really takes to save the planet 

Labour of love

On lichen as design

What if Indigenous women ran controlled burns?

We must stop treating India’s grasslands as wastelands

Why are crypto fans obsessed with micronations and seasteading?

The technocratic socialism of Otto Neurath

From bowling alone to posting alone

Economists’ obsession with “efficiency” is just an endorsement of greed

Film photography isn’t just expensive – it’s bad for the planet, too



Climate frauds

Our climate strategy must combat the technofixes-plus-markets fraud

The Living Forest Declaration and the Carbon Market Shell Game

Carbon removals: The danger of desperation



Theory

Marxism for the age of climate emergency

Economic growth is fuelling climate change – a new book proposes ‘degrowth communism’ as the solution

A greener Marx? Kohei Saito on connecting communism with the climate crisis



Degrowth

Degrowth: Everything you need to know

How degrowth can help reduce global conflict

Economic growth is not a magic wand for ending poverty

Degrowth or debunk: Do degrowth proponents have a strategy?

The future is degrowth – An interview with Aaron Vansintjan



Sci-fi, art and storytelling

An education through Earthsea. Ursula Le Guin’s fiction explored the ultimate fantasy—of self-discovery and the power that comes with it.

Why ‘Children of Men’ remains relevant with each passing year

Food and resistance in Palestinian cinema 

‘A different perspective’: the journalist reporting the Amazon through fresh eyes 



Resources

Climate action for tired people – A toolkit and quiz for parents and others

Scholarly resources on race and nature



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January readings

Photo: Jesse Pratt López via Vice

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

Belated new year’s greetings and welcome to our first newsletter of 2023! This time, you’ll be able to read up on biodiversity and colonialist conservation; the battle to save Germany’s Lützerath from being swallowed by a coal mine; the ‘Cop City’ protests in Atlanta, Georgia to save the South River Forest; nuclear fusion; why fake meat is just another food fad; psychedelics and climate activism; international struggles for justice; and so many other important topics.

If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!



Top 5 articles to read

Beyond Meat (BYND), Impossible Foods burgers are just another food fad

‘We’ll fight until the end’: a journey through the centre of Peru’s uprising

Another uprising is in the making in Tunisia

Canada birthed a mining industry in Chinese-occupied Tibet

We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction



News you might’ve missed

How Ghana, Africa’s rising star, ended up in economic turmoil

OpenAI used Kenyan workers on less than $2 per hour to make ChatGPT less toxic

Death in the marshes: environmental calamity hits Iraq’s unique wetlands

Sweden’s shameless pursuit of ”green minerals” generate a conflict with the Sami people



Where we’re at: analysis

Contesting cannibal capitalism. Nancy Fraser on the destructive nature of our system.

Paying for an overheating Earth. The euphoria over the creation of a loss-and-damage fund was well justified, but the struggle is far from over.

The labor of land. In order to better resist contemporary, neocolonial accumulation, we need to historicize land grabs in Africa.

Ecomodernism on its own terms



Biodiversity and colonialist conservation

The world is losing its biological complexity

The collapse of insects

‘We used to have everything’: Western conservation models threaten Indigenous rights, says new report

Why 30×30 would be the worst possible outcome of COP15

Harriet Friedmann reviews George Monbiot’s Regenesis

Decolonizing nature: How “wilderness” dispossesses Indigenous People



Global struggles

Fighting Amazon’s neo-colonialism in Cape Town

An unsolved murder amid Costa Rica’s Indigenous land disputes

Inside the battle to save the sacred peyote ceremony: ‘We’re in dire straits’

What we are saying is freedom, not the veil 

Turkey is starving the Rojava revolution

Mennonites deforest Peruvian Amazon, encroach on Indigenous lands

Land conflicts targeting Indigenous communities intensify in Northern Guatemala

‘How are we going to live?’ Families dispossessed of their land to make way for Total’s Congo offsetting project



Lützerath, Germany

HSBC’s secretive loan to a coal company bulldozing a village 

Beating, kicking, tearing down houses – how police, RWE, and the German state are causing climate catastrophe in the German Rhineland



Cop City in Atlanta, Georgia

Activists occupying the woods to block ‘Cop City’ face terrorism charges

Documents show how 19 ‘Cop City’ activists got charged with terrorism

‘Assassinated in cold blood’: activist killed protesting Georgia’s ‘Cop City’

Stop Cop City! Revisiting degrowth & permanent ecological conflict



Cities and radical municipalism

Luisa Cáceres: Commune-building in urban Venezuela

Why knowing your neighbors could save you in the next climate disaster

Tiny Free Stores & Libraries of Everything: Steps towards a post-capitalist future

‘You’re not welcome’: Mexico City residents decry Airbnb

Greener cities promote social and climate inequalities: 28-city study

Zimbabwe plans a new city for the rich as Harare decays

Barcelona offers free transit to residents who ditch their cars 



Fusion

Fusion net gain is manufactured ignorance

Nuclear fusion: Don’t believe the hype!

Clean energy or weapons? What the ‘breakthrough’ in nuclear fusion really means

Fusion power may run out of fuel before it even gets started



Just think about it…

The 1 percent are many times worse than the rainforest wreckers

How much should inequality be reduced?

Reliance on hi-tech solutions to climate crisis perpetuates racism, says UN official

On nuclear energy

The hidden underwater forests that could help tackle the climate crisis

BlackRock says we’re all doomed. It’s being optimistic

Casteism and climate change: a deadly combination in South Asia

Tripping for the planet: Psychedelics and climate activism



Degrowth

All we are saying is give degrowth a chance. A decade ago, a container shipping worker had an epiphany, and it caused him to question the very basis of his business.

Degrowth can work — here’s how science can help

Degrowth will be fun!



Sci-fi, art and storytelling

The definitive climate fiction reading list – 20 books to explore cli-fi



Resources

Comic: The corporate capture of food systems 



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November readings

Getty Images, via VICE

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

On this month’s list, you’ll find a bunch of readings on the COP15 and COP27, worker exploitation behind AI innovation, the disastrous environmental impact of the World Cup in Qatar, the importance of working less, the growing popularity of degrowth, and so much more. We also linked a website you can use to get past paywalls! We don’t always have time to run articles through it before adding them, so keep the page bookmarked for those we might miss.

If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!



Uneven Earth updates

Las promesas vacías de las Soluciones Basadas en la Naturaleza: los casos de Shell y BP | Las SbN encubren la falta de interés de las grandes corporaciones y gobiernos por lograr emisiones cero reales



Top 5 articles to read

AI isn’t artificial or intelligent. How AI innovation is powered by underpaid workers in foreign countries.

The World Cup in Qatar is a climate catastrophe

Getting out of the food-energy-climate crisis

Having more fun is good for the planet

The Degrowth Paradox – degrowth is growing. A Twitter thread.



News you might’ve missed

Climate activists, including scientists, are arrested in protests at private airports

Barcelona students to take mandatory climate crisis module from 2024

It’s official: France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel

Revealed: How the livestock industry funds the ‘greenhouse gas guru’

Brazil, Indonesia and DRC in talks to form ‘Opec of rainforests’

UK power station owner cuts down primary forests in Canada



Where we’re at: analysis

Taking back the mountains 

Roshan Krishnan on energy democracy, carbon offsets, and finding a political home



Global struggles

Escape from the closed loop. Protests in China are shining a light not only on the country’s draconian population management but restrictions on workers everywhere.

From Ürümchi to Shanghai: Demands from Chinese and Hong Kong socialists

Is the world paying enough attention to Indigenous mental health?



Lost and damaged: the COP

The biodiversity crisis in numbers – a visual guide

COP27 and imperialism: Weaving a crown of thorns for the Global South

Greenwash and techno-babble take us towards catastrophe. We need to turn the great power of social movements against them

‘Extractivism’ is destroying nature: to tackle it Cop15 must go beyond simple targets

“Loss and damage” is not enough: Why we need climate reparations

CCS causes the problem it fails to solve

Chasing future biotech solutions to climate change risks delaying action in the present – it may even make things worse



Cities and radical municipalism

Recycling our cities, one building at a time

A challenge for cities: Going green, without the gentrification

A YIMBY and a “Left NIMBY” duke it out

Paris became a cycling success story—and built a roadmap for other cities



Food politics

The fertiliser trap: the rising cost of farming’s addiction to chemical fertilisers (report)



Just think about it…

Where have all the snow crabs gone?

The spirit of the wetlands

Huge decline of working class people in the arts reflects fall in wider society

The ”I have NO friends” loneliness epidemic



Degrowth

Degrowth on CNN: A dangerous idea or the answer to the world’s biggest problems?

Our obsession with economic growth is deadly

‘Green’ tech can’t save us from climate change

Gurus of degrowth: Say hello to the ancient cynics

What is the theory of degrowth? Gustavo Petro’s development proposal

Degrowth can work — here’s how science can help 

‘Now is time to hold degrowth as the banner of environmentalism’ 



Sci-fi, art and storytelling

Architect Indy Johar: ‘The scale of what we’re about to face is completely underestimated’

Can solarpunk save the world?

Octavia Butler’s science fiction predicted the world we live in

What if we cancel the apocalypse?



Resources

Archive.today to get past paywalls on articles



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October readings

Activists of “Just Stop Oil” glue their hands to the wall after throwing soup at a van Gogh’s painting “Sunflowers” at the National Gallery in London, Britain October 14, 2022. Just Stop Oil/Handout via REUTERS

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

In October, the infamous soup incident – in which two young Just Stop Oil activists threw soup on a Van Gogh painting at the National Gallery in London as a form of climate protest – was on everyone’s lips, so we decided to dedicate a section in this newsletter to discussions around activism and strategy. We also unfortunately lost three great thinkers: philosopher and anthropologist Bruno Latour, Leftist urban theorist and historian Mike Davis, and ecological economist Herman Daly. We featured readings on their legacy in the ‘theory’ section. For some good news, we have a huge victory to celebrate this month: Lula won the Brazilian election, and while this is only the beginning, the dystopian era of Bolsonaro is over! Finally, we read great articles on convivial technologies and the deep history of work, and enjoyed a two-part podcast series on what a just green transition might look like; and, as usual, we turned the spotlight on struggles around the world, and compiled a section on fake climate solutions and real reparations.

If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!



Uneven Earth updates

Green growth | Capitalist and neocolonial fantasies are hampering a just transition



Top 5 articles to read

A two-part series from the Upstream podcast: The green transition part 1 (the problem with green capitalism) and The green transition part 2 (a Green Deal for the people)

How Lula and the Brazilian Left can save the Amazon

Lessons from the deep history of work. What anthropological research on early human societies can teach us about improving our jobs today.

These technologies help you live lightly on a fragile planet



News you might’ve missed

Enormous emissions gap between top 1% and poorest, study highlights

559 million children currently exposed to high heatwave frequency, rising to all 2.02 billion children globally by 2050 

Business groups block action that could help tackle biodiversity crisis, report finds

World close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, warn major studies

Climate crisis: UN finds ‘no credible pathway to 1.5C in place’



Fake climate solutions and real reparations

Greta Thunberg on the climate delusion: ‘We’ve been greenwashed out of our senses. It’s time to stand our ground’  

Nova Scotia touted its huge ‘green’ energy plant. Turns out it’s powered by coal

Nuclear power is a dead end. We must abandon it completely.

In seaweed, climate capitalists see green

The Middle East is going green — while supplying oil to others

How a Quebec graphite mine is dividing a community’s support for the EV revolution

Phantom forests: Why ambitious tree planting projects are failing

‘It’s got nasty’: the battle to build the US’s biggest solar power farm 

World Bank criticized as poor countries talk reparations

As UN climate talks near, a showdown on reparations looms

What African governments must fight for at COP27



Where we’re at: analysis

Interview with Marc Edelman: How rural America’s assets have been systematically stripped away and The capitalist transformations of the countryside

The world has one big chance to eliminate plastic pollution

What if polluters footed the climate bill?

Who holds up half the Earth?: A review of Half-Earth Socialism

The colonial roots of present crises. An interview with Amitav Ghosh. 



Global struggles

The climate crisis is driving poorer nations to desperate measures

Nigerian flood victims decry government’s response to disaster

West accused of double standards over oil and gas exploration in DRC

Sudan’s hidden resistance: ‘The day that can no longer wait’

A new Iran has been born

Women Life Freedom – the revolutionary call of the Kurdish Women’s Movement

The climate injustices—and solutions—shared by Puerto Rico and Jackson, Mississippi

In Chile, even water is privatized. The new constitution would change that 

US-backed foreign intervention has led to the disaster in Haiti. And from the Progressive International: Hands off Haiti!



Cities and radical municipalism

Ban cars on Halloween

Stockholm thinks it can have an electric bikeshare program so cheap it’s practically free 

How the indoor air quality in our buildings is making us sick



Food politics

Bangladesh farmers revive floating farms, as seas rise 

The challenges to food sovereignty in the West Bank are political

Has fake meat already peaked?



Just think about it…

Born to swim: the Bajau offer a glimpse into how humans may have adapted to an aquatic way of life

The return of Aztec floating farms

Bears, fungi and global warming

Stop erasing transgender stories from history

The pipeline from elite universities to Wall Street and Silicon Valley

Why experts say you shouldn’t bag your leaves this fall



Degrowth

Liz Truss’s economic growth delusion

The case for degrowth

Degrowth is growing in popularity – but what even is it? 

Degrowth in 7 minutes. A video explainer. 

How degrowth can save the world. A video essay.

Podcast: The future is degrowth. Our editor Aaron Vansintjan was on the Srsly Wrong pod to talk about degrowth!

Rethinking work for sustainability and justice 

European project to explore pathways towards post-growth economics



Sci-fi, art and storytelling

The climate films shaping society

They Live is a timeless anti-capitalist horror classic 



Activism and strategy

Is breaking things the best way forward for climate activists?

Are Just Stop Oil’s dramatic art museum protests hurting their own cause?

Also, Movement soup. History may absolve the soup throwers. And We’re talking about soup. Finally, in the soup throwers’ own words: An interview with Just Stop Oil

Armchair strategists, the climate movement needs you

Just beans. What was ethical consumption under capitalism? 

Undaunted by DeSantis, immigrant workers are heading to Florida to help with hurricane cleanup

What we can learn from Indigenous communities about conservation

The people’s mayor is an abolitionist



Theory

A Twitter thread summarizing some of Herman Daly’s best ideas, and an in-depth interview 

On Mike Davis’ life and work: Mike Davis, City of Quartz author who chronicled the forces that shaped L.A., dies, California’s ‘prophet of doom’ on activism in a dying world, and Mike Davis could see the future

Bruno Latour showed us how to think with the things of the world



Resources

Don’t tell me to just breathe. An animation that speaks to the spiralling levels of anxiety and depression in the UK and other rich nations by revealing the often silenced links between these mental health crises and the current economic system, including not only the increasing pressures upon people’s basic needs, but also the ‘capitalist realism’ that allows climate breakdown to unfold before our very eyes.

Decolonising Utopia resource list



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September readings

Gauchos at the Pintado wind farm in Corral de Piedra, Uruguay. Credit: Alessandro Cinque for The New York Times

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

For September, our list is short and sweet. Highlights include a comprehensive report by Global Witness that found that 1,733 land and environmental defenders have been killed worldwide over the last 10 years; analysis of Patagonia’s move to give away its profits in service of the planet; different articles on Pakistan’s devastating floods; a great story on Uruguay as an example of what a good life within planetary boundaries might look like; and a piece co-written by our editor Aaron Vansintjan on why degrowth is not austerity. We also found a cool TikTok on why ‘third places’ (places where people spend time between their home and work, like cafés, parks, or churches) are so important in fighting alienation, and a video with relaxing visuals and ambient sounds by Studio Ghibli to help us switch off after digesting the world’s heavy news.

If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!



Uneven Earth updates

Do the impossible! Plan utopia! | A review of Half-Earth Socialism



Top 5 articles to read

Decade of defiance. Ten years of reporting land and environmental activism worldwide.

Patagonia founder gives away the company to fight climate change, but: Don’t rush to canonize Patagonia 

The west is ignoring Pakistan’s super-floods. Heed this warning: tomorrow it will be you

Degrowth is not austerity – it is actually just the opposite

What does sustainable living look like? Maybe like Uruguay



News you might’ve missed

Animal populations experience average decline of almost 70% since 1970, report reveals

Babies have air pollution in their lungs and brains before they take their first breath

Death of sociologist Bruno Latour, figure of ecological thought

Gen Z is apparently America’s most pro-union generation



Where we’re at: analysis

Profiting from poison: how the US lead industry knowingly created a water crisis

The US military is the enemy of climate mitigation. It alone surpasses the total national emissions of Bulgaria, Croatia, and Slovenia combined. 

The British monarchy helped mortgage our collective future 



Global struggles

Pakistan must get rid of colonial mindset on water, and Working with local knowledge only way to save Pakistan from flood disasters

Pakistan lost $30 billion in floods. Should rich polluting countries pay up? 

Flooded Pakistan needs climate reparations, not EU charity 

How Oleksandr Vilkul led Kryvyi Rih’s unexpected fight against Russia. Led by an ex-politician with no official power, Kryvyi Rih’s miners and metalworkers have united against Russia.

‘We’re minor losses’: Russia’s mobilisation targets ethnic minorities

From dreams to dust. The ostensibly green electric vehicle revolution has a decidedly dirty side, and the winner of the 2022 Yale Environment 360 Video Contest — “From dreams to dust” — vividly tells the story of the high cost of nickel mining through the life of an Indonesian mine worker. 

Al Ouneh: Autonomous resourcing in Palestine 



Cities and radical municipalism

Rurbanization: It’s time to make cities more rural

The radical roots of bikesharing

The other type of car pollution that harms us all. We all know that air pollution is choking our planet — and our lungs. But noise pollution from automobiles is almost as bad.

Urban flooding has everything to do with real estate corruption

The importance of ‘third places’. A video explanation. 

Medical care alone won’t halt the spread of diabetes. Now experts are calling for walkable communities, improved housing, and access to health care and better food, particularly in minority communities.



Food politics

Podcast on the Dutch farmer protests. Kai Heron and Alex Heffron discuss the far-right influences in the farmer protests currently sweeping the Netherlands, far-right representations of rural life, the politics of food production, and much more.

Why Puerto Rico is betting big on mushrooms. Fungi could be the secret ingredient to the island’s food sovereignty.



Just think about it…

These ‘nuclear bros’ say they know how to solve climate change

Free shipping isn’t free for everyone

Podcast: ‘Water always wins,’ so why are we fighting it? 

We need a library economy. A video essay.



Sci-fi, art and storytelling

Jean-Luc Godard. In honor of his recent death, Verso republished Peter Wollen’s essay on the great director.

30 minutes of relaxing visuals from Studio Ghibli, for a break from the bad news



Theory

Noam Chomsky on David Graeber’s Pirate Enlightenment 



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August readings

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

A little late this month, but we’re back with our August readings! We hope you enjoy what we put together. On top of the usual themes like degrowth, global environmental justice struggles, cities, and food politics, this list features a section on the (un)sustainability of fashion, an awesome piece on Marxism by Stuart Hall, and a free Leftist film archive.

If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!



Uneven Earth updates

Class struggle or degrowth? | Without class struggle the emancipatory potential of degrowth will fail to be realized. A revolutionary pedagogy can help to unify them



News you might’ve missed

The world’s top coal trader is cashing in on the Ukraine war

Climate change is making over 200 diseases worse and our immune systems weaker, study finds

Wildfires destroy almost all forest carbon offsets in 100-year reserve, study says

‘The new normal’: how Europe is being hit by a climate-driven drought crisis

France drought: Parched towns left short of drinking water

‘We borrow our lands from our children’: Sami say they are paying for Sweden going green

A new energy crisis brews in the Caribbean: The U.S. Virgin Islands

Aotearoa or New Zealand: has the moment come to change the country’s name?



Food politics

Nature-friendly farming does not reduce productivity, study finds

Agroecology, from Palestine to the Diaspora

Land grabs and conservation propaganda

Renewing the land question: Against greengrabbing and green colonialism

Beyond rescue ecomodernism: the case for agrarian localism restated



Where we’re at: analysis

West Africa is drowning in plastic. Who is responsible?

The plastic crisis has deep corporate roots: to protect our planet, they need to be exposed

Congo’s oil auction: foiling climate colonialism or filling the coffers?

Sri Lanka collapsed first, but it won’t be the last. Western debt killed the country; others will fall too.

Inherit the dust. The Colorado River is running out of water. No place will be more affected than the arid metropolis of Phoenix.

The Greenland ice sheet’s terrifying future

Revealed: how climate breakdown is supercharging toll of extreme weather

Floods, storms and heatwaves are a direct product of the climate crisis – that’s a fact, so where is the action?



Global struggles

Africa revives push for colonial-era reparations

Kicking oil companies out of school

Native American tribe gets its land back after being displaced nearly 400 years ago

‘We look deeper’: the Native court settling cases outside the justice system

Nuclear waste ravaged their land. The Yakama Nation is on a quest to rescue it

A series on Indonesia’s women land defenders: The women of Kendeng set their feet in cement to stop a mine in their lands. This is their story, ‘Turning fear into strength’: One woman’s struggle for justice in Sulawesi, and The battle for the mountains of Mollo

Testing transnational labour solidarity in the laboratory of Bangladesh

From resistance to power: Building climate justice in Colombia

Trying to keep the roof on in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley

The new fight over an old forest in Atlanta



The (un)sustainability of fashion

From attire to ashes: Clothing waste in the Atacama Desert

Mountains of clothes washed up on Ghana beach show cost of fast fashion

Fast fashion: why your online returns may end up in landfill – and what can be done about it

H&M is being sued for “misleading” sustainability marketing. What does this mean for the future of greenwashing?

Fashion and colonialism. From sourcing and manufacturing to exporting waste, this class with Céline Semaan explores current practices that reproduce colonialism and exploitation in fashion, and how we can avoid such practices.

Why can’t fashion brands just make less stuff?

Early Majority: Fashion’s first degrowth brand. Can its community-driven membership model make degrowth principles work in fashion?

Sara Arnold & Sandra Niessen on moving toward defashion and degrowth



Degrowth

Taming the greedocracy. American elites want magical technological fixes to climate change because they refuse to confront the truth that seriously addressing the problem would require limits to their own power and luxury.

Can the economy grow forever?

Climate change, scarcity chip away at degrowth taboo

‘A new way of life’: the Marxist, post-capitalist, green manifesto captivating Japan 

‘Creation care’ isn’t enough. We need degrowth. 

Degrowth gains ground

Higher ed’s cult of growth

What Paul Krugman says about green growth and degrowth is not only wrong – it is dangerous. Here is why.

Reversing the freight train: The case for degrowth

Fifty years after ‘The Limits to Growth’: Dennis Meadows interviewed by Juan Bordera

The ‘progress recession’ has been here for decades

Moving beyond GDP is key to tackling the economic crises we face



Cities and radical municipalism

The city that pioneered Europe’s car-free future

The case for making public transit free everywhere

The solution is the problem. A response to the UK Prime Minister’s plan to end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030.

Silicon Valley’s push into transportation has been a miserable failure

Spain bans setting the AC below 27 degrees Celsius

Near-term ideas and examples for incorporating green politics into cost-of-living campaigns. A Twitter thread.



Just think about it…

I’m a psychologist – and I believe we’ve been told devastating lies about mental health. And a good companion piece on the politics of mental health from earlier this year: There is no moral imperative to be miserable

Climate denial’s racist roots

What is “ecofascism” — and what does it have to do with the Buffalo shooting?

Red flags for environmental movements. An Instagram thread.

‘A truce with the trees’: Rebecca Solnit on the wonders of a 300-year old violin

Wrong road. The phone is a car: a symbol of freedom and convenience that transforms into an inescapable burden.

Monsoon dread

Supply chains as a game-changer in the fight against climate change



Theory

For a Marxism without guarantees by Stuart Hall

Alyssa Battistoni on care work, organizing, and the “free gift of nature”

Ruth Wilson Gilmore on abolition, the climate crisis and what must be done

“Neither liberal nor social democratic policies have a structured approach to understanding imperialism, including its ecological history”. An interview with Max Ajl.



Sci-fi, art and storytelling

Miyazaki’s Marxism – the politics of anime’s legendary director



Resources

Solidarity cinema. A free film archive of struggle and solidarity.



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Class struggle or degrowth?

by Gray Maddrey

In his recent book, Climate Change as Class War, Matthew Huber argues that the ecological crisis is primarily caused by the capitalist mode of production, especially the preponderant deployment of fossil capital, ‘the forms of capital that generate profit through emissions’. For many on the anti-capitalist left, this is a conclusion that hardly bears repeating. Nevertheless, Huber is right to centre the claim. Ecological collapse is accelerating and requires immediate action. While the global average of emissions must reach zero by 2050 to stay within 1.5–2 °C heating, in order to do this at pace, the parts of the world most responsible for emissions must reach net zero by 2030. But not only are we failing to make progress toward these goals, emissions continue to rise with no end in sight. Huber puts it bluntly: ‘We’re still losing.’

We’re still losing to capitalism—but why? Because, in the first instance, Huber emphasizes, we are not really fighting it. Capitalism is uniquely defined by its class structure: capitalists, the business owners and corporate boards of directors who organize production; and workers, those they hire to carry it out. While the capitalist class comprises a relatively tiny number of people, it dominates the working class in terms of property owned and legal authority over its use. In order to make a living, workers have no option but to sell their time to capitalists in the labor market. However, due to its relatively immense size and leverage at the point of production—through strikes and other forms of collective action—the working class has the potential to exercise its own form of power. This is where climate struggle must be located, Huber tells us: the sites of mass emissions. Capitalism can be fundamentally challenged by nothing other than class struggle, so only class struggle can fundamentally address the ecological crisis. In this historical moment, climate change is class war.

In addition to its strategic position in the production process, the working class has the most to gain from class struggle. Huber suggests that the point of building class power is to alleviate ‘the lack of control over the basics of life [that] defines working-class life’. In fact, this is how the struggle against the capitalist class ought to be framed. In a capitalist economy, even the means of subsistence—basic goods such as food, energy, and housing—are available only in markets that operate on the principle of profit. This makes access to them unreliable for the majority of workers, who live from paycheck to paycheck. From the perspective of the working class, resolution of the ecological crisis ought to be seen as ancillary to universal access to these means of subsistence—through a public guarantee of basic goods outside the marketplace. Huber then highlights the possibility of organizing around this goal in the electricity sector as the fastest route to mitigating the ecological crisis: ‘As the climate crisis intensifies and the technical case for electrifying everything becomes clearer, a “socialism in one sector” approach could be the core of a public sector–led decarbonization program.’ That is, electrifying everything would simultaneously begin to reverse ecological collapse and lead the way towards further public provisioning of basic goods.

However, in Huber’s estimation, climate ‘struggle’ is predominantly oriented around consumption rather than production: instead of building power at the point of production, climate struggle has focused on building knowledge about our individual carbon footprints. Unfortunately, Huber claims, ‘knowledge is not power’. Although he begins here with a critique of naive science communicators and technocratic policy experts, whose approaches assume that not enough of us are convinced of the reality of ecological crisis or that we are not properly taxed for emissive consumption choices, the primary targets of Huber’s antagonism are ‘anti-system radicals’, that is, proponents of the degrowth movement. For Huber, they are more egregious than the others because they attempt to critique capitalism yet alienate those actually capable of challenging it, the working class. Growth is not the problem with capitalism; capitalists are. Whereas the working class has a material interest in ‘more’, Huber maintains, degrowth is a politics of ‘less’ and therefore ultimately undermines itself.

Huber has already been criticized for his failure substantively to engage with degrowth, thereby missing any compatibility with his own position. The degrowth movement calls for an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that will reduce societies’ throughput of energy and raw materials. It does not implore us to take individualized responsibility for overconsumption. Furthermore, an equitable distribution of that downscaling would result in those with the least now having even more after. I would like to deepen the present critique by showing how Huber’s failure to engage with degrowth results in a failure to recognize tensions intrinsic to his own position. First, there is no empirical evidence that the plan to electrify ‘everything’ would sufficiently mitigate the ecological crisis. On the contrary, the material and energy requirements of such a project on the existing (and growing) scale of infrastructure would likely exacerbate the crisis. Second, Huber’s disregard for the problem inherent to growth rests on misunderstanding the capitalist mode of production as capitalists’ power to organize production. While this is certainly part of it, the ‘mode of production’ is more completely understood as the way life itself is organized within capitalism, which requires perpetual growth. Finally, without grasping the relationship between capitalism and growth, motivating class struggle solely on the grounds of material security will not necessarily lead to a greener future. The very meaning of ‘material interests’ is influenced by capitalism, so class struggle must coincide with efforts to interpret and advance our own desires beyond what life within capitalism conditions us to take for granted. For this reason, I underscore the significance of socialist political education for degrowth. A future beyond growth is one we can learn to freely associate with only through democratic pedagogy.

Evidence in favor of degrowth

An implicit point of contact between Huber and degrowth occurs early in the book where he centres capitalist production:

[LafargeHolcim, the largest cement company in the world] boasts of a new strategy called ‘Building for Growth,’ which ‘aims to drive profitable growth and simplify the business to deliver resilient returns and attractive value to stakeholders.’ The company does not seem to see a contradiction between this growth orientation and its stated goal of sustainability, which includes a ‘mission to cut its net CO2 emissions per tonne of cement.’ Of course, if you cut the ‘emissions per tonne’ but keep growing the tonnage you make, you still produce more emissions. [emphasis mine]

In the empirical literature surrounding degrowth, this fact is known as ‘relative decoupling’—when the amount of emissions per energy use decreases. But, as Huber observes, relative decoupling is not enough. If the amount of emissions per energy use decreases, but energy use does not decrease, then emissions still increase, albeit more slowly. Further, due to improved resource efficiency, relative decoupling often results in a price reduction of the produced goods. This creates the ‘rebound effect’, a rise in demand and energy use to the point where emissions increase even more quickly than before. What would be necessary is absolute decoupling, a decrease in overall emissions irrespective of energy use. Huber later says that ‘if we actually decarbonize energy, the need for aggregate reductions in energy consumption is less obvious’ [emphasis his]. This is the extent of his argument, but the consideration has already been made within the discourse on decoupling: there is evidence against the possibility that absolute decoupling from emissions can be achieved at the scale of the global economy quickly enough to mitigate the ecological crisis. There is also no evidence that absolute decoupling can be achieved with respect to ecological variables other than emissions if economic growth is sustained.

In this regard, Huber’s text lacks a broad ecological awareness. Rather than focus exclusively on CO2 emissions and climate change, degrowth is about several facets of ecology, such as the full range of planetary boundaries, various limits to things—from freshwater use to biodiversity loss—beyond which rapid or irreversible changes to the global ecosystem become more likely to occur. Huber continues:

Our energy system is currently bifurcated between those things that run on electricity … and those that run on other forms of energy …. Theoretically, many of these non-electric energy applications can be electrified, moving them for example, from gasoline to battery-powered automobiles, from natural-gas furnaces to electric heat pumps, and from combustion-based industrial heat to electric heat to replace such processes as steam reforming for hydrogen with electrolysis. [emphasis mine]

Setting aside just how theoretical this transition is (electricity itself is currently primarily generated through fossil fuels, so the transition to renewables will have to deal with the rate of decoupling of emissions and energy use), there is the question of how materially intensive such a process would be. Calculating from World Bank estimates, the global economy at its current rate of growth would need to increase lithium extraction by at least 2700% between now and 2050 in order to produce the batteries necessary to store energy at the grid level (not to mention the other rare metals required for renewable-energy infrastructure: copper, cobalt, silver, and so on). But even at existing levels of extraction, lithium mining devastates local communities and environments. Worse yet, most of this mining occurs in the Global South, exacerbating inequality between it and the North.

Yet Huber also takes issue with the North–South critique that ‘frames inequality as between the rich countries in the Global North and the poor countries in the Global South’. According to Huber, concepts such as ‘North’ and ‘South’ fail to articulate the inner dynamic of these political geographies, in particular their class dynamic: in both the North and South, the exploited masses are the working classes. Far from ignoring this, however, the critique conceives the North–South dynamic as the capitalist class dynamic recreated at a global scale. Northern countries use four times or more material per capita than planetary boundaries allow. In comparison, a majority of countries (mostly Southern) use less material per capita than could be safely allocated. This is the result of imperial, neo-colonial relations between the North and South, such as the structural adjustment programs implemented by the IMF since the latter half of the 20th century. Among other things, these relations have regimented access to valuable resources for the North, and the fact remains regardless of whether the ‘transnational capitalist class’ is to blame. In order to liberate the working classes within Southern countries, the dissolution of imperial relations between the North and South is prerequisite. Without the possibility of absolutely decoupling energy and material throughput from planetary boundary variables such as land-system change, aggregate consumption in the North will have to be significantly reduced—both to accommodate renewed exchange with the South and as a measure against ecological collapse.

This is just a glimpse of the research that undermines the idea that electrifying everything (or any other so-called ‘green growth’ approach) would successfully mitigate the ecological crisis, much less in an internationally egalitarian way. The evidence cannot be overstated, but I leave it here because I want to address the core of Huber’s critique of degrowth: the notion that a ‘politics of less’ will not win over the working-class who are struggling to make ends meet.

Capitalism and the mode of production

At the height of his critique of degrowth, Huber urges us to consider the literal meaning of the term: ‘the prefix “de” indicates less, or as an online dictionary defines the prefix: “used to indicate privation, removal, and separation.”’ It is therefore surprising that he fails to reflect on how versatile the meaning of ‘less’ is. When ‘degrowth’ means less of a bad thing, degrowth is a good thing. Huber practically acknowledges this when he states that ‘a class politics would articulate a confrontational approach where the capitalist class must degrow so that the working class can see growth in material security and basic human freedom’ [emphasis mine]. This is consistent with the entire framework of degrowth, which is oriented to the fact that the economy has outgrown, and is destroying, the Earth. The problem with economic growth in the abstract is that it is ‘infinite’—continuous, for its own sake, and ignorant of its material or ecological basis. When the economy ‘grows’, there is more production and thus more ‘value’ in circulation. But, for example, this can be the result of ‘planned obsolescence’, a general design strategy that ensures frequent consumption by artificially limiting the lifespan of products. The most infamous example concerns light bulbs designed to last 1000 hours, despite existing knowledge and capacity to produce bulbs that could last twice as long, but this practice manifests in various ways. It can be found in the production of technologies—from furniture and clothing to smartphones and home appliances—that are easier to trash and replace than to repair or upgrade. It is also evinced in a culture of advertising that facilitates desire for the ‘new’ even when it is only superficially different from the ‘old’. In all of these cases, the fact that we spend (or waste) more time and resources producing things overall is irrelevant to the resultant economic growth.

From this angle, Huber appears to side with the degrowth movement: ‘As we have seen since the 2008 financial crisis, we can have quite steady growth alongside wage stagnation and declining labor force participation. The mass of the working class is not really benefiting from growth.’ So what’s wrong with degrowth?

Capitalism does not require aggregate societal growth, but growth for capital (M-C-M’). It is private capital that controls investment, the profitability of which will determine whether capital grows …. It is true that economists have created all manner of statistical tools to track something called ‘growth,’ but this does not mean we live in a society where the owners of the means of production collectively devise strategies to grow the economy. … Thus, growth ideology creates the myth of a unified aggregate societal ‘system’ of capitalist growth.

Huber argues that degrowth misses the mark: by going after fictional aggregate societal growth, the degrowth movement ‘lets off the hook’ the capitalist class who controls and profits from growth for capital. It is true that the degrowth movement has historically comprised a wide variety of views, some of which have failed to centre the critique of capitalism—by one-sidedly critiquing consumerist culture or insufficiently appreciating the power dynamics of class, for example. As Matthias Schmelzer, Andrea Vetter, and Aaron Vansintjan recognize in their recent compendium, The Future is Degrowth, the movement must be ‘explicitly critical of capitalism’ and take on ‘systems of domination such as patriarchy, colonialism, imperialism, racism, and capitalism as the central, structural problems facing us today’ [emphasis mine]. While the degrowth movement is becoming more actively aligned with socialism of late, it has always been implicitly critical of capitalism through its critique of aggregate societal growth. Contrary to Huber’s statement above, capitalism does require such growth, and to see why requires investigation of the capitalist mode of production.

Several times throughout the book, Huber cites the formula M-C-M, which abbreviates the ‘circuit of capital’, a representation of the capitalist mode of production. Some amount of money M (including what is distributed as wages) is invested in the production of commodity C, which upon consumption returns as a greater amount of money M (the difference being profit). If there were no consumption of C, there would be no return of M. Now, the growth of any specific firm does not require aggregate societal growth. Huber is correct as far as this goes. One company may simply absorb the business of its competitors while the size of the economy remains the same. However, capitalist economy rests on a basis of growth for capital in general and therefore does require aggregate societal growth (when inferring from what applies to individual parts that it also applies to the whole, Huber’s reasoning falls into the ‘fallacy of composition’). Overall, capital cannot grow unless consumption keeps up with production to complete the circuit. If the aggregate value within society were not growing, then it could not be continually appropriated as growth for capital. If the capitalist mode of production conditionally requires growth for capital, it consequently requires aggregate societal growth.

There is no need for the process of aggregate growth to be collectively controlled by the capitalist class. It follows ‘on its own’ from the mechanisms of capitalist economy, for example, the system of compound interest on loans, which requires exponential growth for its debts to be reliably paid. Additionally, capitalism is structured against an equitable distribution of value. As Thomas Piketty statistically shows in Capital in the 21st Century, the rate of return on investment (growth for capital) is systematically greater than aggregate growth; that is, capitalists’ share of wealth tends to crowd out the workers’ share. Despite this, the promise of growth equalizes the tension between classes. Because workers’ livelihoods intimately depend on their incomes from capitalists, this promise is received simultaneously as an opportunity and as a threat. On the one hand, growth promises to improve workers’ lives with cheap, commercial goods or high wages (although, either of these are bought at the expense of intensified labor exploitation and material extraction in ‘periphery’ markets, such as those in the Global South). On the other hand, growth promises to destabilize workers’ lives when the circuit of capital is disrupted. The classical Marxian analysis of capitalism demonstrates the economy’s periodic tendency for consumption to be unable to keep up with production and therefore for the economy to collapse into recession, but the threat can also be wielded more locally and intentionally to quell working-class resistance and manufacture consent to the expansion of capital.

Because material well-being structurally hinges on the promise of growth, it is in many workers’ immediate interest to maintain the capitalist mode of production—especially, but not exclusively, those in the Global North. For this reason, the capitalist mode of production cannot be reduced to the power capitalists have to organize production. Whereas private ownership of the means of production is an historic premise and material condition of capitalism (making it necessary to overcome on the road to socialism), the essence of the capitalist mode of production is the capitalist form of value. In spite of his reference to M-C-M, Huber’s exclusive focus on capitalists’ direction over the literal production of commodities ultimately fails to interrogate the circuit through which their value as capital is realized. This analysis of the mode of production is one-sided and elides the problematic of growth.

To take this investigation further, we need to ask what, in general, is meant by ‘mode of production’. In The German Ideology, Karl Marx equates a society’s mode of production [Produktionweise] with its way of life [Lebensweise]: ‘As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and how they produce.’ While this definition reinforces the idea that isolated critiques of consumption are wrong-headed, it is because such critiques are one-sided. If the way of life is the mode of production, then there is never a society in which consumption can be considered in isolation from production. Conversely, as we have seen, a critique of the mode of production isolated from consumption is one-sided as well. Neither side can be made sense of without the other.

A concrete example of this is located in the way that electricity is currently produced and consumed. As remarked upon in the first section, electricity is primarily generated through fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are considered high-energy ‘stocks’, meaning that they store large amounts of energy that can be released on demand, which allows electricity production to be continuous and intense. We are not a passive recipient of this fact: we actively construct the world around continuous, intense electricity production. It becomes normalized, feeding into the further development of an energy grid designed around high-energy stocks. This is why we would have to massively expand lithium mining for batteries if we were to convert the current energy grid to renewables. The ‘flow’ of energy—the rate at which energy can be produced—from wind turbines, solar panels, and so on is insufficient to power the grid. Renewable sources of energy are also intermittent: the wind does not always blow, and the sun does not always shine. Batteries would be necessary to convert these low-energy, intermittent flows into high-energy stocks. However, this uncritically assumes that we require continuous and intense energy production. Marx describes in the Grundrisse how production and consumption ‘create’ each other by ‘completing’ each other. Intermittency may be a problem for our current way of life, but that way of life is itself the source of the problem. Then, in Capital, Marx refers to the mode of ‘social reproduction’ to articulate how the immanent relationship between production and consumption perpetuates, or reproduces, the way of life. A critique of fossil capital that does not encompass the mode of consumption, including how we have used fossil fuels to design a world that is ‘always on’, is not a critique of the mode of production either.

This imbrication of production and social reproduction implies that economies are characterized by the production of not only things but forms of subjectivity as well. In Between Capitalism and Community, a study of the obstacles to transitioning out of capitalism, Michael Lebowitz provocatively calls the subjectivity of capitalism its ‘second product’, and he warns, ‘never forget the second product’. A well-known example of the second product is the subjectivity of the worker, who within the capitalist division of labor is another cost of production. Workers are therefore continually cheapened, guided by the production process rather than exercising agency over it, which ‘rationally’ results in disinterest and low thresholds of capacity. The subjectivity of the consumer is also affected. In the marketplace, consumers do not simply purchase goods but exchange ‘bourgeois right’ to them—the abstract right to what is yours and no one else’s (what we casually refer to as ‘private property’). This is conditioned by the competition that structures not only capitalists’ relations to profit but everyone’s relation to physical survival itself. Because markets exclusively supply access to everything, including the means of subsistence, capitalism naturalizes the ideal of bourgeois right to whatever it is one may want or need, regardless of why one may need or want it. Again, this is the ‘rational’ result.

Marx makes a note of this in Critique of the Gotha Programme: ‘What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.’ Although Marx references ‘morals’ in this passage, he does not mean to moralize—to patronize individual conscience. Rather, he acknowledges that the subjectivities of capitalism do not automatically dissolve within new material conditions but must be transformed by the possibilities they engender. Paulo Freire expands on a related point in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, saying that

almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or ‘sub-oppressors’. The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. … At this level, their perception of themselves as opposites of the oppressor does not yet signify engagement in a struggle to overcome the contradiction; the one pole aspires not to liberation, but to identification with its opposite pole.

In the struggle of the working class to be liberated from the marketplace, there is no guarantee that it will desire a progressively different way of life than capitalism has offered. For example, without a critique of the ‘American Dream’ built into such liberation, residential developments structured around low-density housing, transportation networks structured around individual automobiles, and production structured around private wealth in general may expand under the proliferation of bourgeois right. Such a proliferation gave birth to the ‘middle class’ in the United States and Europe after World War II, but further expansion of the middle class remains the goal even of popular social-democratic leaders worldwide, such as Bernie Sanders. Once again, this is not a moralistic failure but speaks to the need for an explicit critique of the mode of social reproduction—a need that has been emphasized primarily by feminist and anti-colonialist critics of capitalism (whose voices are absent from Huber’s text). Without such a critique, ‘liberation’ may not in fact be revolutionary: even if it did not intensify imperial relations with the Global South, it would continue to drive ecological collapse, regardless of the success of decarbonization.

Even if this is not the future that Huber envisions, there is nothing in particular about his strategy that resists it. He admits in his conclusion that ‘shifting to public ownership [of utilities] does not guarantee decarbonization. … All public power does is to grant us a democratic opening for creating a comprehensive public sector–led transformation of the electricity sector.’ For the same reason, it does not guarantee subordination of capitalist growth to post-capitalist society. Of course, whereas there is never the guarantee that the future we are striving after will come to be, it would behoove us to understand better how to arrange for its possibility.

Class struggle, degrowth, and political education

I am faithfully sympathetic to Huber’s ecological concern and opposition to capitalism, but I have argued that his position is disoriented. On the one hand, the idea to electrify everything will not mitigate the ecological crisis. On the other hand, the idea appears appropriate because the logic of Huber’s argument does not sufficiently grasp the mode of production, which is not totally determined by material conditions but is caught up in the mode of social reproduction. A class struggle that reflexively accepts the current mode of social reproduction is therefore by itself incapable of leading us into a greener, more equitable future. Of this final fact, though, Huber is relatively aware—to continue the previous quote: ‘All public power does is to grant us a democratic opening for creating a comprehensive public sector–led transformation of the electricity sector in line with what climate science says is necessary. Actual movements need to do the rest’ [emphasis mine]. Ironically, this is where degrowth comes in: climate science says that infinite economic growth is unsustainable.

Class struggle that reflexively accepts the current mode of social reproduction is by itself incapable of leading us into a greener, more equitable future. This is where degrowth comes in.

Furthermore, when it explicates an eco-socialist future, the degrowth movement stands to ‘write history backwards from the future’ and answer the question with which Lebowitz concludes Between Capitalism and Community: ‘What must we do in the present for the future to become what it must?’

Historical paths are inherently unstable; given the sensitivity of outcomes to the interaction of parts and wholes, any slight deviation in the starting point (for example, the disintegration of feudalism) might lead to someplace other than capitalism. The point is critical. If you write history forward, how can you understand the next system? If capitalism disintegrates, what system emerges in its place? … If we write history forward, it is assumed that the contradictions of capitalism … are sufficient to yield the movement to community. But are they?

Lebowitz shares Marx’s concern in Critique of the Gotha Programme about the different ways in which the new society might emerge from the old. As I adumbrated, it would be possible for a fledgling socialist society to unintentionally build upon the ‘metabolic rift’—the contradiction between capital and nature—in the transition from capitalism, even after it formally abolished the capitalist class. The way to intentionally prevent this possibility is to target the subjectivity of capitalism.

I agree with Huber that the material interests of the working class are objective. Stefania Barca affirms this in ‘The Labor(s) of Degrowth’: ‘Logically speaking, working-class people … have a vested interest in the subversion of [capitalism].’ To be working-class is to be systemically exploited and therefore to have an interest in subverting capitalism. However, Barca does not take this interest to be immediate: it is possible even as a worker for one to be subjectively—that is, from one’s own point of view—interested in the maintenance of capitalism. As seen in the previous section, this interest is self-perpetuating: it is socially reproduced through the promise (both opportunity and threat) of growth. Even though it is objective, an interest in subversion must still be subjectively grasped through understanding oneself as systemically exploited. Beyond that, there is the question of what exactly the working-class interest in subversion entails. Does it simply entail liberation from the capitalist class, through a livelihood independent from income, or more generally the freedom to determine new ways of life? This question directly bears on who ultimately is working-class. Barca suggests that ‘a good starting point is enlarging the concept of class relations beyond the wage labor relation and toward a broader conception of work as a mediator of social metabolism’. In that case, the working class would comprise anyone without the freedom to direct social reproduction, from traditional ‘industrial’ workers to homemakers and ‘meta-industrial’ workers outside the labor market. Whatever the extent of the working class may be, its members must recognize each other as such in order to take collective action against capitalism. Along these lines, class struggle would be best conceived as the project of the working class not only to be liberated from the domination of the capitalist class, but to recognize itself as free to determine its material interests for itself.

In light of this, those of us who believe in the necessity of degrowth would do well to incorporate it into the larger body of socialist political education (Huber himself discusses the significance of political education but mainly in the context of union campaigns). Lebowitz, channeling Freire, designates political education as the primary function of the ‘revolutionary political instrument’. Following the discussion above, this requires that it break with the ‘banking concept’ of education according to which teacher–leaders ‘deposit’ knowledge into the minds of student–followers. Such pedagogy presupposes a passivity on the part of students and is therefore antithetical to ‘protagonizing’ them—activating their understanding of their fundamental role in transforming the world. Instead, revolutionary pedagogy would provide a ‘problem-posing’ education that generates knowledge through dialogue. Similarly, Marta Harnecker argues in ‘Ideas for the Struggle’ that ‘true popular pedagogues [are] capable of stimulating the knowledge that exists within the people … through the fusion of this knowledge with the most all-encompassing knowledge that the political organization can offer’. Barca connects this to degrowth when she states that

the degrowth movement must build a constructive dialogue with the alienated and exploited workers of the world. Here, in the messy reality of everyday re/productive work, complex contradictions arise that need to be addressed in fundamentally new ways. Different forms of metabolism clash with each other and produce environmental conflicts, which enter into communities’ and people’s lives, questioning identities, crushing certain life-forms, and turning them into cogs of the dominant social metabolism.

Another way the degrowth movement provides this education is through ‘the commons’, spaces that either implicitly resist or explicitly deny the logic of bourgeois right. In England before the rise of capitalism, the commons were primarily forests where villagers collected wood or pastures where they raised animals. In today’s commodified world, the commons are less common, but small-scale examples include communal gardens and libraries of things. Among other approaches, opening varieties of commons to people can be a part of what philosopher Barbara Muraca calls the ‘education of desire’. In the foreword to Degrowth in Movement(s), she writes: ‘In the alternative spaces of experience established through social experiments, one can learn to desire differently, better, and even more. Instead of repressing desire through a one-sided notion of voluntary simplicity, the point is rather to free oneself from the forces that limit the autonomy to demand more (in political terms).’ In such spaces, people may come to recognize the extent to which they feel alienated from their individual and communal capacities to direct their lives in broader society, discussing future commons and organizing with others around the subversion of capitalism for the sake of their own liberation. Further, these democratic forms of education would help not only to distance degrowth from, but to immunize it against, adjacent trajectories such as ‘eco-austerity’, the notion that Huber ostensibly takes issue with, which frames ecological transition around accepting lower levels of material comfort (‘voluntary simplicity’) without investigating the subjectivity of capitalism and its mode of social reproduction.

Huber’s belief that ‘we should appeal to a working-class interest in more—specifically, more access to the elements of a secure life’ is not a mistake. It should be the foundation of revolutionary pedagogy. The problem is that he rejects the rich vision of a democratic world that elaborates on this interest, in which not only could secure life be sustained, but the point of securing life—our own freedom—could be explored. The timeline of the ecological crisis requires that we transform the mode of production and the ‘second product’ at the same time by preparing ourselves for the world we want to create through our struggle against the world we have to inherit. Degrowth is a transitional program without which the metabolic rift will devour the Earth. Class struggle is a movement without which the emancipatory potential of degrowth will fail to be realized. We need both—and only a revolutionary pedagogy can unify them. Knowledge may not be power, but should the future ‘become what it must’, the process of building power will have been one of building knowledge.

Gray Maddrey is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He currently serves as his chapter’s political education director and chair of its ecosocialist working group.

Summer readings

Credit: balazs.sebok via Green European Journal

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

Long time no read! We’ve been taking a break from posting at Uneven Earth, but we’re slowly getting back to business – with lots of exciting changes to come, as we’re in the process of becoming an incorporated, salaried non-profit organization. Our editor Aaron Vansintjan also published a book on degrowth while we were inactive! You can find all the links in this newsletter.

We decided to make this a combined summer reading list – so these are articles we collected throughout May, June and July, with the occasional piece from earlier in the year that still seems relevant and worth sharing. Starting from next month, we’ll go back to our usual monthly model. We hope you’re still along for the ride, and thank you so much for your patience while we transition into this next phase of Uneven Earth.

If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!



Uneven Earth updates

Our co-editor Aaron Vansintjan published a book with colleagues Andrea Vetter and Matthias Schmelzer! The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism is now available to buy at Verso, or anywhere else you like to buy your books.

Uneven Earth contributed to this ephemera paper on alternatives to mainstream publishing within and beyond academia

Technology | Technology is not neutral. We’re inside of what we make, and it’s inside of us

A jaywalking manifesto | “Every step that is ‘jay’ is defiance in the face of the automobile machine.”



Top articles to read

Excerpts from The Future is Degrowth: Toward a post-capitalist future: On the growth of “degrowth” and Degrowth – not just Green New Deals! Also: a review.

On private jets: A 17-minute flight? The super-rich who have ‘absolute disregard for the planet’. Also: The celebs who have racked up the most CO2 emissions this year using their private jets, a Twitter thread, and an in-depth report.

Resisting the cost of living crisis in the UK could be the tipping point for socialist solidarity. Progressive movements should not focus on social issues in isolation. As we saw in countries like Colombia and Chile, solidarity builds collective power for sustained change.

The imperial core of the climate crisis and Transcending the ‘imperial mode of living’



News you might’ve missed

EU parliament votes to designate gas and nuclear as sustainable

Record number of dams removed from Europe’s rivers in 2021

Revealed: oil sector’s ‘staggering’ $3bn-a-day profits for last 50 years. Vast sums provide power to ‘buy every politician’ and delay action on climate crisis, says expert.

Big Oil is suing countries to block climate action 

Corporate carbon offset company accidentally starts devastating wildfire 

Big Oil has known for decades that carbon capture isn’t a solution

This climate guru is a celebrity in the US. In India, he’s accused of destroying a forest



Our burning planet

Why is it so hot in the UK and elsewhere in Europe and what are the dangers?

Europe is frying in devastating heat, yet is burning more coal

South Asia’s heatwave is only the beginning 

Death and despair after deadliest urban flood in India

Somalia: ‘The worst humanitarian crisis we’ve ever seen’

‘We just pray for rain’: Niger is in the eye of the climate crisis – and children are starving

How is the jet stream connected to simultaneous heatwaves across the globe?



Food politics

Raj Patel on agroecology, reparative approaches, and land reform 

Beef stakes. Climate activists have proposed an end to the livestock industry. But overhauling farming could have unintended consequences.

Report: Cash cow. How beef giant JBS’s links to Amazon deforestation and human rights abuses are aided by UK, US and EU financiers, importers and supermarkets.

How Germany is kicking its meat habit 

Farmland assets. International finance and the transformation of Brazil’s agricultural lands.

Heatflation: How sizzling temperatures drive up food prices 



Where we’re at: analysis

NFT scams, toxic ‘mines’ and lost life savings: the cryptocurrency dream is fading fast

We cannot adapt our way out of climate crisis, warns leading scientist 

The case for climate reparations is now irrefutable 

Air pollution kills 10 million people a year. Why do we accept that as normal?



Global struggles

A global just transition

The Global South has the power to force radical climate action. After all, Western economies – and their economic growth – depend utterly on labour and resources from the South.

The farmers restoring Hawaii’s ancient food forests that once fed an island 

Indonesian islanders sue cement producer for climate damages

‘Every year it gets worse’: on the frontline of the climate crisis in Bangladesh

Inside New York’s fight for public renewables 

Ecuador deal reached to end weeks of deadly protests and strikes 

Carbon commodification in the Peruvian Amazon: The Kichwa People’s struggle against territorial and climate destruction

‘People are waking up’: fight widens to stop new North Sea fossil fuel drilling 

What can other movements learn from Colombia’s elections?

Colombia’s shift to the left: A new ‘pink tide’ in Latin America?

On Ukraine-Syria solidarity and the ‘anti-imperialism of idiots’



Degrowth

Should rich countries degrow their economies to stop climate change?

This pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end. “It’s a false assumption,” argues Herman Daly, “to say that growth is increasing the standard of living in the present world.”

Ask Prof Wolff: The case for degrowth 

What GDP does and doesn’t tell us

Beyond GDP: Alternatives to capitalism already exist 

No, let’s not call it something else 

The necessity of ecosocialist degrowth 

Toward an ecosocialist degrowth: From the materially inevitable to the socially desirable 

Degrowth & strategy: how to bring about social-ecological transformation. A new book, available to download for free.



Cities and radical municipalism

When cities made monuments to traffic deaths 

What I mean when I say ‘ban cars’ 

I wanted to share a bit about how amazing yet simple Barcelona’s Superblocks are, and Barcelona school and residents create solar energy community

Land power. Sustaining a community land trust requires radical commitment to housing justice and local self-determination — not to mention real estate savvy and political diplomacy. 

‘The beaches belong to the people’: inside Puerto Rico’s anti-gentrification protests

Here’s how rocketing rents and unaffordable house prices can be fixed



Just think about it…

‘The casino beckons’: my journey inside the cryptosphere. Not all cryptocurrency investors fit the cliches. Many are people looking to somehow claw their way out of a life of constant struggle.

Here’s why a border-free world would be better than hostile immigration policies

“Which coming flood?” Welcome to the Thunderdome of Ignorance 

The tricky politics of ecological restoration

Is tree planting a get-out-of-jail-free card on climate? 

Where should the climate movement go next? Andreas Malm thinks climate politics needs to reject pacifism for sabotage.

Is climate activism really about ‘sacrifice’? 

Body politics: the secret history of the US anti-abortion movement. The overturning of Roe v Wade is part of a wider movement entangled with nativism and white supremacy. 

The dangerous populist science of Yuval Noah Harari



Theory

A little bit of African thinking. The profound influence, often underplayed, that great African revolutionary Amílcar Cabral had on Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire. 

Japanese scholar looks to Marx’s theory to explain pandemic, climate change



Art and storytelling

Can an artists’ collective in Africa repair a colonial legacy? 

A list of films dealing with political ecology

A playlist of songs about the climate crisis 



Resources

D-Econ’s seasonal alternative reading list

Ecosocialist bookshelf, June 2022. Seven important new books on science, medicine, and socialism – including The Future Is Degrowth



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November readings

Protesters in Marseille set a model of Earth on fire during a demonstration where members of Extinction Rebellion were supported by gilets jaunes, in July. Photograph: Gerard Bottino/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock, via The Guardian

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

A lot happened this month. As always, while putting together this list, we tried to strike a balance between stressing how serious the state of the world is, while also elevating solutions, optimism, and better visions for the future. COP26 took place in Glasgow, and we collected a bunch of articles analysing and critiquing the conference itself and the various issues it raised. We’re highlighting discussions on technological colonialism and liberatory technologies, as well as Indigenous and decolonial perspectives on the future. We read an important article on how climate denial is being replaced by a dangerous ‘green-cloaked nativism’ on the Right. People did a lot of free advertising for Spotify, so we’re sharing an article on the costs of streaming music. And in the midst of all this chaos, Rebecca Solnit reminds us of the power of pleasure, art and beauty as forms of resistance.

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!


Top 5 articles to read

Remembering the Ogoni Nine. In 1995, nine activists from the Ogoni region of Nigeria were hanged after a campaign against oil giant Shell – decades later, their struggle for environmental justice is more relevant than ever.

Rebecca Solnit on the politics of pleasure

Climate denial is waning on the right. What’s replacing it might be just as scary 

What would it look like if we treated climate change as an actual emergency?

The hidden costs of streaming music


News you might’ve missed

Delhi shuts schools as it mulls ‘pollution lockdown’

Land and life: Feudalism and environmental change in the Philippines

Life in Pakistan without a digital ID

Greenland’s government bans oil drilling, leads Indigenous resistance to extractive capitalism

Connecting the dots between B.C.’s floods, landslides and clearcut logging. And The cost of waiting

Lee Maracle, revolutionary Indigenous author and poet, dead at 71 Also read: Inspiring and uncompromising, Lee Maracle could raise you up or eviscerate you. Read one of her essays: The lost days of Columbus



Indigenous and decolonial perspectives on the future

How Indigenous peoples are fighting the apocalypse

Indigenous cultures must not be forced to bear the brunt of global climate adaptation

Rethinking the apocalypse: An Indigenous anti-futurist manifesto

Taking the fiction out of science fiction: A conversation about Indigenous futurisms

Also read: An Old New World. When one people’s sci-fi is another people’s past

Utopia’s settler colonialism problem 



COP26

COP is broken

At U.N.’s COP26 climate summit, Indigenous voices are calling for more than lip service

The climate crisis is about the Global South’s present

Never mind aid, never mind loans: what poor nations are owed is reparations

The US is blocking climate reparations

How ExxonMobil captured COP26

Technology fetishism reigns at COP26. It’ll keep us burning fossil fuels.

Q&A: Can ‘nature-based solutions’ help address climate change?



Where we’re at: analysis

The forgotten oil ads that told us climate change was nothing

More than 2 billion workers make up the informal economy

Western monopoly of climate science is creating an eco-deficit culture

What economists get wrong about climate change

Will climate change itself derail plans to reduce emissions?

The last great forests

Ruptured worlds: a photo essay on the Lower Se San 2 Dam, Cambodia 

Dead white man’s clothes. In Accra, Ghana, imported second-hand clothing—or “dead white man’s clothes”—represents a massive industry with complex environmental, social, and economic implications.



Just think about it…

Forgive humans, not oil companies. It might seem like prison abolition and fossil fuel abolition have nothing in common, but they couldn’t be more related.

‘Injecting poison will never make you healthy’: how the wellness industry turned its back on Covid science

Do we need to work? The history of what we call work.

Congested, contested, and competitive: Are we running out of room in outer space?

Why trying to clean up all the ocean plastic is pointless

The need to trespass: let people in to protect nature, says guerrilla botanist

The moral case for destroying fossil fuel infrastructure



On technological colonialism… 

Mining the planet to death: The dirty truth about clean technologies

Green hydrogen: The new scramble for North Africa 

The headache of ‘crypto colonialism’ 

What to know about the frantic quest for cobalt



…and liberatory technologies

On the movement for the right to repair: Opening this article voids warranty

Activists are designing mesh networks to deploy during civil unrest

A path to neighborhood power



Degrowth

Perpetual growth is an impossible fantasy – even if we wanted it

Infinite economic growth caused the environmental crisis. Degrowth will help us fix it

Sand and gravel: Rethinking aggregate consumption and distribution



Cities and radical municipalism

Where are the municipalists in the US and Canada?

Sindicat: evading eviction in one of Europe’s most densely populated cities – a documentary

Play the game: Can you get a city to zero emissions? 



Sci-fi and utopian imaginings

The metaverse: colonial fantasies of the wild West

The science fiction origins of the Metaverse

Artists must confront the climate crisis – we must write as if these are the last days. “If you knew you were at the last days of the human story, what would you write?”

Shifting the narrative. Music and storytelling for a future earth.

Kim Stanley Robinson on science fiction and reclaiming science for the Left



Resources

Global Indigenous newsletter: Chemicals, climate and consultation

Here’s how to support Wet’suwet’en land defenders

Managing mental health in the age of climate change: Diagnosing climate disorder, Diagnosing climate trauma, 7 resources to help manage climate anxiety, and Mental health professionals on processing climate anxiety



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September & October readings

Illustration by Rob Sato, via The New Yorker

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

We’re back! After a much-needed summer break, we’re going to share all noteworthy articles we read during September and October. Themes this time include global land struggles, food justice (including spicy takes on veganism and lab-grown meat), effective communication for environmental justice, degrowth, and re-readings of history, to name a few. Enjoy.

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!



Uneven Earth updates

Radically rethinking urban planning in (and from) the Global South | At a time when the spaces we inhabit determine our chances to survive a deadly virus, it is crucial to challenge canonical urban planning and its deep failures in the Global South



Top 5 articles to read

Labors of love. The work of Ivan Illich can provide an antidote to fears about automation.

‘We’re all fighting the giant’: Gig workers around the world are finally organizing

Agroecology is the solution to world hunger

The coming green colonialism

Ecological multiplicity against capitalist hegemony in India



News you might’ve missed

COP26: Document leak reveals nations lobbying to change key climate report 

Today’s youth will face ‘unmatched’ climate extremes compared to older generations

Generational conflict over climate crisis is a myth, UK study finds

Access to a healthy environment declared a human right by UN rights council 

Chile is at the dawn of a new political era



Global land struggles

Murders of environment and land defenders hit record high

The industries causing the climate crisis and attacks against defenders 

Indigenous people of Brazil fight for their future

Study: Indigenous resistance has staved off 25% of U.S. and Canada’s annual emissions. And Forest people offer the best hope of saving them

Land acknowledgments meant to honor Indigenous people too often do the opposite – erasing American Indians and sanitizing history instead 

Black families passed their homes from one generation to the next. Now they may be lost.

Women on storm-hit Philippine island lead Indigenous effort to restore mangroves

‘We will be homeless’: Lahore farmers accuse ‘mafia’ of land grab for new city 

From Stroessner to Syngenta: Paraguay’s soy conflicts 

Norway court rules two windfarms harming Sami reindeer herders



Where we’re at: analysis

Think disasters are isolated? Think again, warns the UN

‘Pristine wilderness’ without human presence is a flawed construct, study says

The climate crisis is a colonial crisis

The extractive circuit

After Covid, Sankara’s lessons on debt are as relevant as ever

The dirty dozen: meet America’s top climate villains 

Permian climate bomb. A six-part series that explores the ongoing oil, gas, and petrochemical boom in the Permian Basin and Gulf Coast.

Is nuclear power our best bet against climate change? 

An energy transition at whose expense?



Food politics

Food justice files. A New Internationalist series.

The unsung Caribbean roots of the vegan food movement

Red vegans against green peasants

Lab-grown meat is supposed to be inevitable. The science tells a different story. And Giant meat and dairy companies are dominating the plant-based and cellular meat market

African agriculture without African farmers 

Can small-scale farming feed the world? A video essay.

Farmers don’t have to contribute to the environmental crisis – we can solve it

Agribusiness and big finance’s dirty alliance is anything but “green”

How food became the perfect beachhead for gentrification

The power of food



Just think about it…

Forget your carbon footprint. Let’s talk about your climate shadow.

The advertising industry is fuelling climate disaster, and it’s getting away with it

The billionaire space race reflects a colonial mindset that fails to imagine a different world

Why your internet habits are not as clean as you think 

Capitalism is making you lonely 

Do we live in a selfish world? An experiment on video.

Too much free time isn’t actually bad for you 

The dark side of wellness: the overlap between spiritual thinking and far-right conspiracies, and It’s shocking to see so many leftwingers lured to the far right by conspiracy theories

The co-option of mutual aid. “The reality is that mutual aid has its roots in community resistance by Black and Indigenous people.”

The class contradictions of scholar activism



Communicating (environmental) justice

Why we need a new local language of climate change reporting

The seven deadly sins of politi-speak  

Imagination, transformed. “As a movement who cares about climate justice and justice overall, we need to better leverage the power of culture because culture is what transforms the imagination—culture shows us what’s possible. And we can do that by including artists and culture makers in our organizing work.”

All Aboriginal art is political: you just need to learn how to read it

Stop trying to find magic words to convince climate opponents



New politics

A decolonial, feminist Global Green New Deal

The ZAD: between utopian radicalism and negotiated pragmatism

An Indigenous community land trust rises, making Land Back a reality

Climate reparations: The case for carbon removal 



Degrowth

Demystifying degrowth

Who is afraid of degrowth? A Global South economic perspective

GDP: A countdown to doom

Degrowth: why some economists think abandoning growth is the only way to save the planet – podcast 

Tailor made degrowth: How a localised clothing economy can contribute to a degrowth future

Futures beyond GDP growth: a report 

How shorter workweeks could save Earth 

Enough for everyone. “It is possible to satisfy humanity’s universal needs fairly—and keep the world livable.”

Degrowth and revolutionary organizing



Cities and radical municipalism

The inside story of how Berlin took on corporate landlords and won

Is it more sustainable to live off the land or in the city? 

A city without cars is already here, and it’s idyllic. Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana has been car-free for over a decade. Is it time to export their model?

Hundreds of kids and parents are biking to school together in Barcelona 

Democratic confederalism and movement building in South Africa

A billionaire wants to build a utopia in the US desert. Seems like this could go wrong

The real urban jungle: how ancient societies reimagined what cities could be

The grand crash. Some notes on housing markets in China, and what this tells us about wider economic realities.



History revisited

Early civilizations had it all figured out, The radical promise of human history, and check out a YouTube presentation of David Wengrow and David Graeber’s newly released The Dawn of Everything

Built on the bodies of slaves: how Africa was erased from the history of the modern world 

Amitav Ghosh explores the hidden history of climate change 

Un-sustaining sustainability? Tracing the colonial origins of India’s rising “sustainable” fashion industry.

How the Dutch are facing up to their colonial past



Sci-fi and utopian imaginings

Imagine 2200: Climate fiction for future ancestors. Short stories.

Why this gives me hope for the future. A video essay on the solarpunk movement. Also: Solarpunk is not about pretty aesthetics, it’s about the end of capitalism

The realism of our times: Kim Stanley Robinson on how science fiction works

‘Dune’ has a desert problem



Resources

New Socialist issue on Ecologies 

Earthcare fieldcast. A new podcast about struggles for ecology and care. 

Resources for working with climate emotions

A bullshit job title generator. David Graeber would love this. 



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June readings

Image: A Growing Culture

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

Must-reads this June include GRAIN’s investigation into the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and their outsized influence over global agriculture, Kai Heron on why ‘socialism or extinction’ isn’t quite accurate, a story on the Landless Workers’ Movement and the LGBTQIA+ community in Brazil, and a critique of the EU’s Green Deal. We also read a lot of articles about wildlife and species justice. Browse the list for more!

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!



Uneven Earth updates

Why the National Páramo Day in Ecuador matters | The páramo is a wetland ecosystem found only in the Andes, but its future well-being has global implications

Discounting | Descriptive discount rates both reflect and sustain a highly unequal and myopic world



Top 5 articles to read

Extinction isn’t the worst that can happen. It’s much more likely that climate chaos will intensify existing processes than bring about the end times.

Pacific plunder: this is who profits from the mass extraction of the region’s natural resources, part of The Pacific project series

Climate colonialism and the EU’s Green Deal

How the Gates Foundation is driving the food system, in the wrong direction

Agrarian reform and queer rights go hand in hand. The Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil fights for LGBTQIA+ people who are being murdered at an alarming rate in a country besieged by racism, capitalist domination and exploitation.



News you might’ve missed

Reducing poverty can actually lower energy demand, finds research

The push to make ‘ecocide’ an international crime takes a big step forward

Revealed: ExxonMobil’s lobbying war on climate change legislation 

Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay the price

Hotter than the human body can handle: Pakistan city broils in world’s highest temperatures

‘The next pandemic’: drought is a hidden global crisis, UN says 

Iceland tried a shortened workweek and it was an ‘overwhelming success’ 

America’s continued move toward socialism. Just half of younger Americans now hold a positive view of capitalism — and socialism’s appeal in the U.S. continues to grow, driven by Black Americans and women, according to a new Axios/Momentive poll. 



Where we’re at: analysis

What exactly is the “system” that we are fighting?

If we can vaccinate the world, we can beat the climate crisis

Dust storms, green waves. A lattice of violent, global relations sustains China’s colonization of ‘Xinjiang’.

The WWF’s poaching war is killing innocent people

The connection between clearcut logging and Canada’s hottest day on record. With temperatures set to soar to 47 C in B.C., forests provide a cool, wet place for animals and people alike to seek shelter.

The rush to ‘go electric’ comes with a hidden cost: destructive lithium mining

Sixty years of climate change warnings: the signs that were missed (and ignored) 

We are on track for a planet-wide, climate-driven landscape makeover



Food and water politics

Imperial roots of the global food system

Inside the struggle for water sovereignty in Brazil

Oregon’s water crisis could have a quiet solution

What a water shortage is doing to some of America’s best farmland 

A kingdom from dust

A perfect storm: Climate change and overfishing

Farmworkers endure brutal conditions during historic heat wave / As the climate emergency grows, farmworkers lack protection from deadly heat 

How pesticide companies corrupted the EPA and poisoned America



Just think about it…

The case for letting Malibu burn

Mines produce more waste than metal

Modern medicine still has much to learn about women’s bodies

The struggle to be Nadleehi: A Two Spirit person

How to heal in the Anthropocene, part of the Climate emotions series

The problem with reinforced concrete

The tyranny of time



Species justice

Climate change and biodiversity loss must be tackled together – report

Species solidarity: Rediscovering our connection to the web of life

Did the pandemic really help wildlife? 

How fireworks harm nonhuman animals

When the bison come back, will the ecosystem follow? 

There’s a wolverine in my neighborhood. “Often, conservation communicators think in terms of educating around the big, global, complicated issues. But there’s a role for helping people understand and appreciate the local, the small, the overlooked.”



Degrowth

La política anticolonial del decrecimiento

Sozialismus oder Degrowth?

The delusion of infinite economic growth 

The poverty of ‘economic growth’



New politics

It’s time to nationalize Shell. Private oil companies are no longer fit for purpose

Making the world big enough for all of us: A review of Max Ajl’s ‘A People’s Green New Deal’

Building an anti-imperialist climate justice movement

Transformation is not a metaphor 



Cities and radical municipalism

An ambitious, radical Green-Left Coalition has won Zagreb’s elections. Here’s how they did it.

By bringing down Sweden’s government, the Left Party saved rent controls

A municipalist alternative for San Juan and Puerto Rico: An interview with Pablo Benson

If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

What if we designed cities for the safety of people, instead of the convenience of cars? 

Blue-sky thinking: how cities can keep air clean after coronavirus 




Sci-fi

Stories to save the world: the new wave of climate fiction

Solarpunk, climate change and the new thinkable 

Ministry for the Future with Kim Stanley Robinson. The science fiction writer discusses his Modern Monetary Theory-inspired “cli-fi” novel.



Resources

The People vs. Agent Orange. A new documentary that investigates the legacy of one of the most dangerous pollutants on the planet, a cover-up, and the fight for accountability. Read a review here.


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May readings

Palestinian demonstrators burn tires near the Israeli barrier surrounding Gaza in solidarity with Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem on 8 May. Mohammed Zaanoun ActiveStills, via The Electronic Intifada

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

This month, Palestine and Israel were all over the news. We collected some useful reading lists, essays and photo stories so you can dig deeper beyond the bite-size tweets and Instagram posts. Photography runs like a thread through our May readings: we featured a photo essay that documents the deep scars mining has left on our planet, and another on China’s ‘Cancer Villages’. We do have reasons to celebrate this month, though: a court in the Netherlands has ruled in a landmark case that the oil giant Shell must reduce its emissions, and Germany has formally recognized the atrocities committed against the Herero and Nama people of what is now Namibia as genocide, paying reparations of €1.1 billion ($1.3 billion). On top of that, we included our editor Aaron Vansintjan’s new piece on the insights on the imagination and the practice of democracy that the late David Graeber has left us with, an explainer on how Nigeria’s forests are being decimated to make charcoal for barbecues in Europe and the United States, and much more.

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!



Uneven Earth updates

GDP | What is GDP, and why should we learn to live without it?

Brave New Normal | Cultivating cooperative, self-sustaining communities can undermine destructive economic systems and offer meaningful responses to social-ecological crises in the wake of the pandemic



Top 5 articles to read

Eye-catching abstract photos reveal mining’s scars on our planet

Do you know where your grilling charcoal comes from?

David Graeber: The power of the imagination. “For many people, Graeber turned the concept of democracy on its head. Rather than a bureaucratic process that must be engaged in every few years, democracy for Graeber was imaginative, active, and intensely personal. There is no inevitable arc of progress towards more or deeper democracy. Rather, democracy must be fought for, actively built into institutions, protected, and constantly renewed.”

Ancient Indigenous forest gardens still yield bounty 150 years later: study

COVID-19 could end our dependence on cars — if we ‘build back better’



News you might’ve missed

Rich countries drained $152tn from the global South since 1960

Germany will pay Namibia $1.3bn as it formally recognizes colonial-era genocide 

Shell: Netherlands court orders oil giant to cut emissions / Shell loses climate case that may set precedent for Big Oil 

Climate tipping points could topple like dominoes, warn scientists 

Four-day working week would slash UK carbon footprint, report says 

Cali takes on mantle of Colombia’s ‘capital of resistance’



Justice for Palestine

Resources

Decolonize Palestine reading list 

Palestine: Sheikh Jarrah, expulsion, occupation, and settler colonialism

The Fire These Times reading list on Israel-Palestine

Visualizing Palestine

Discard Studies reading list on waste colonialism and Palestine

Stories and explainers

Palestine in pictures: May 2021

Peaceful coexistence in Israel hasn’t been shattered – it’s always been a myth

‘To say goodbye is to die a little’: Palestinian farmers struggle for survival

Human waste spills on to Gaza’s blacked-out streets as crisis looms

The architecture of violence. A short film on architecture’s key role in the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the evolution of urban warfare.

The power of the cultural boycott of Israel 



Where we’re at: analysis

How Senegal fought Covid-19 with lessons learned from Ebola and HIV/AIDS prevention

A climate dystopia in Northern California

When climate disaster and mass incarceration collide

We still blow up mountains to mine coal: Time to end the war on Appalachia

The curse of white gold? An interview with political ecologists Francisco Venes and Stefania Barca explores debates around lithium mining in Portugal.

Brazil aerial photos show miners’ devastation of Indigenous people’s land

The brutal reality of life in China’s most polluted cities. A photographer documents China’s ‘Cancer Villages,’ telling the human story of pollution.

Johan Rockström: ‘We need bankers as well as activists… we have 10 years to cut emissions by half’ 



Food politics

Why aren’t we talking about farmers in India? They are fighting in a global war over the future of agriculture.

Regenerative agriculture needs a reckoning

Between promise and peril: Can fake meat save the planet? 



Just think about it…

Cottagecore, colonialism and the far-right

Naomi Klein on climate change and family life. Here she shares her ideas on the big question of whether to have children and how we might begin the monumental work of saving the planet—and maybe even one another.

Civilizations don’t really die. They just take new forms. 

For peat’s sake: How saving Scotland’s peatlands could be the key to saving the planet

The intellectual labour of social movements



Degrowth

Giving up on economic growth could make us cooler and happier

Global climate change cannot be tackled without addressing economic inequality 

There’s a simple answer to climate change. But will capitalism allow it? 

The climate crisis requires a new culture and politics, not just new tech 

Degrowth and the pluriverse: continued coloniality or intercultural revolution?

How we end consumerism. A video that looks at how degrowth and ecosocialism can work in tandem to stop consumerism and overconsumption.

The only way to hit net zero by 2050 is to stop flying



New politics

A People’s Green New Deal. Max Ajl’s new book is an overview of the various mainstream Green New Deals, and a vision of a radical alternative: a ‘People’s Green New Deal’ committed to degrowth, anti-imperialism and agro-ecology.



Cities and radical municipalism

New municipalism, property and freedom: The battle for rent regulation in Spain 

The New Isaan Movement in Thailand is igniting protests and change in the poorest region of the country 

Driving cars out of our cities. The Car Free Megacities campaign sets out to transform London, Paris and New York.

To save the planet, kill minimum parking mandates. California was a pioneer in minimum parking mandates, which drive up housing costs and climate emissions. Now the state is ready to lead the nation in reclaiming our cities from parking lots.

How ‘gendered’ city budgets aim to boost equality 

How Vienna built a gender equal city. “In practice, gender mainstreaming takes many forms, such as ensuring government bodies use gender-sensitive language to communicate, or that public transportation includes illustrations of men with children to signal seats reserved for parents. A visitor to the capital might also notice the wide pavements for mothers navigating the city with prams or children, or the fact that a large proportion of the city, including the whole public transportation network, is wheelchair accessible.” 

Wetter the better: Gothenburg’s bold plan to be world’s best rainy city

The race to reinvent cement. What if we could transform the material that built the modern world from a climate wrecker into a carbon sponge?


Resources

Feminist resources on the pandemic

The pedagogy of transition: Educating for the future we want

Midnight Sun. A new online magazine of socialist strategy, analysis and culture.

EARTHRISE Spring 2021 issue 

Open-access Funambulist issues on Reparations and Futurisms

20 quotes from “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”



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April readings

Source: Grist / Amelia Bates

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

This month’s list is a little shorter than usual, but maybe that’s not a bad thing! In April, we read stories about India’s Covid catastrophe, the dangers of the concept of net zero, toxic USA, an Aboriginal family beating back a fossil fuel conglomerate, the death and post-Covid comeback of “third spaces”, as well as a fact-check of the new Netflix documentary Seaspiracy and a general critique of nature documentaries, to name a few. There’s also been quite a bit of discussion around Malmology — a very serious term we coined to describe Andreas Malm’s work. And, as you probably know by now, degrowth, global environmental justice struggles, radical municipalism, and new politics are recurring themes in our readings.

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!


Uneven Earth updates

We hit 5k followers on Twitter this month — join the party!

Is green growth happening? | The answer is no. Decoupling will not be enough to ensure ecological sustainability without a downscaling of production and consumption.

The commons | The commons opposes and transcends the logic of capitalism by building relations based on cooperation, solidarity, mutualism and direct democracy

Review of Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador by Thea Riofrancos | Resource Radicals marks an important contribution to burgeoning literature on resource politics and democratic practice

Well diggers tackling water woes in a megacity: The case of Bangalore, India | The ever-fast growing metropolis Bangalore is running out of groundwater. Yet traditional water practices might be key to a sustainable use of the blue gold below us.


Top 5 articles to read

Did climate change cause societies to collapse? New research upends the old story.

Climate scientists: concept of net zero is a dangerous trap

How an Aboriginal family beat back a fossil fuel conglomerate

How value weaponises the machine. In Breaking Things at Work, Gavin Mueller reminds us that the new antagonism between consumer and platform over data capture is not unlike the struggle between worker and capitalist over wages and the working day.

Arundhati Roy on India’s Covid catastrophe: ‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’ 



News you might’ve missed

Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine research ‘was 97% publicly funded’

Rich countries are refusing to waive the rights on Covid vaccines as global cases hit record levels

Environment protest being criminalised around world, say experts 

A top U.S. seller of carbon offsets starts investigating its own projects

French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights 



Toxic USA

‘No community should suffer this’: Florida’s toxic breach was decades in the making

The toxic legacy of the US military in the Pacific

Nuclear colonialism and the Marshall Islands



Global environmental justice struggles

Georgia: guardians of the Rioni Valley face off the dams

Land grabs and other destructive environmental practices in Cambodia test the International Criminal Court

Attacks on forest-dependent communities in Indonesia and resistance stories

Canada: hummingbirds succeed in halting controversial pipeline construction 



Where we’re at: analysis

SILENCE = DEATH, ACTION = LIFE: New relevance of HIV/AIDS organizing in COVID pandemic times

The rise and fall of multilateralism

Revenge of the plans. Why do we keep reviving technocratic climate politics when it has consistently failed?

Digital colonialism: the evolution of American empire 

Joe Biden’s new Climate Pledge isn’t fair or ambitious 



Just think about it…

Deepfake satellite imagery poses a not-so-distant threat, warn geographers

Why bitcoin is bad for the environment 

Learning a new language can help us escape climate catastrophe. Many Indigenous languages have been forcefully wiped out by white people. Turns out, they’re some of our main hopes for beating the climate crisis.

The problem with nature documentaries

What Netflix’s Seaspiracy gets wrong about fishing, explained by a marine biologist

The 7 reasons why nuclear energy is not the answer to solve climate change

To save the Earth, dismantle individuality



Malmology

The kaleidoscope of catastrophe – On the clarities and blind spots of Andreas Malm

Can sabotage stop climate change?

How to blow up a movement: Andreas Malm’s new book dreams of sabotage but ignores consequences

Andreas Malm’s Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency



Degrowth

Why Malthus’s gospel of growth was, and still is, wrong

Beyond the growth imperative 

Degrowth in demand. Lexie Smith and Jamie Tyberg on degrowth, decolonization, and agriculture.

On sacrifice



New politics

From fossil capitalism to green democracy

Book review: Enlightenment and ecology: The legacy of Murray Bookchin in the 21st century

A youth revolt is under way in South Korea

Farmers are using their stimmys to grow free food for their communities



Sci-fi

Born to rewild: Jeff VanderMeer on what it means to restore your own little part of the world



Cities and radical municipalism

The death and post-Covid rebirth of ‘third places’. “Third spaces” like coffeeshops, gyms and libraries are critical for building community ties and boosting social cohesion. What happens when they almost disappear for more than a year?



Resources

Gender bias in Academe: An annotated bibliography of important recent studies



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March readings

Phoebe Johnson for Noema Magazine

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

Our March reading list is ready for you to enjoy, be inspired by, learn from, and use in your teaching and activism! This month, we’re featuring a call by the late David Graeber for a better post-pandemic future, evidence that reducing inequality and solving our ecological crisis go hand in hand, and a beautiful multimedia piece on the ecological imagination of Hayao Miyazaki. We also collected quite a few articles rethinking and offering different insights or perspectives on science from various angles. And, as usual, you’ll find quite a bit of material on radical municipalism and cities, Indigenous struggles, food politics, and COVID-19.

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!


Uneven Earth updates

Slow violence | This harm is slow, ill-defined, and often perceptible only in retrospect, when its perpetrators are long gone, if they were ever physically present at all

Permaculture | A design system that offers a radical reimagination of the possible


Top 5 articles to read

After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep. In an essay penned shortly before his death, David Graeber argued that post-pandemic, we can’t slip back into a reality where the way our society is organized — to serve every whim of a small handful of rich people while debasing and degrading the vast majority of us — is seen as sensible or reasonable.

Why a more equal world would be easier to decarbonise

Urban fish ponds: Low-tech sewage treatment for towns and cities

Apocalyptic infrastructures

The ecological imagination of Hayao Miyazaki


News you might’ve missed

Global heating pushes tropical regions towards limits of human livability

New study says Earth could see six-month summers 

Record heat, dust, and locusts are plaguing Kuwait

Gridlock at sea and chaos ashore as pandemic snarls trade network

Oil firms knew decades ago fossil fuels posed grave health risks, files reveal

Mining magnets: Arctic island finds green power can be a curse

Why ‘rebound effects’ may cut energy savings in half

Elite minority of frequent flyers ’cause most of aviation’s climate damage’ 

France tested nuclear weapons in Africa. Now radioactive dust is drifting back into France.

Garment workers win historic victory in effort to transform fashion industry

Sweden rejects pioneering solar geoengineering test, under pressure from Indigenous people and environmental groups

Lula is back — and he can save Brazil from Bolsonaro


Where we’re at: analysis

Exposed: The network of polluters funding international climate policy 

Extraction-driven devastation: an interview with Nnimmo Bassey

The victims of Agent Orange the U.S. has never acknowledged

Will the race for electric vehicles endanger the earth’s most sensitive ecosystem?

Is this the end of forests as we’ve known them?

This tiny fishing town was poisoned by a coal plant. The government is trying to replace it with a mine 

De Beers: Destruction is forever

In Suez Canal, stuck ship is a warning about excessive globalization

Want not, waste not. To save the biosphere, Vaclav Smil argues we should curb upstream consumption — not just downstream emissions.

Why more people than ever are living alone – and what this means for the environment


COVID-19

From the Anthropocene to the Microbiocene. The novel coronavirus compels us to rethink the modern concept of the political.

Sea of resilience: how the Pacific fought against Covid

Vaccine nationalism is patently unjust 


Just think about it…

Pablo Escobar’s hippos might be filling an ancient ecological niche

This TikTok star makes foraging a fun — and revolutionary — practice

Climate anxiety is an overwhelmingly White phenomenon

Bill Gates is the biggest private owner of farmland in the United States. Why?

Green investing ‘is definitely not going to work’, says ex-BlackRock executive

How economic behaviour drove witch hunts in pre-modern Germany

Bitcoin is a mouth hungry for fossil fuels

AI: Ghost workers demand to be seen and heard

What if…we banned the intensive farming of animals?


Science, epistemology, and (post-)colonialism

The long shadow of colonial science

How scientific taxonomy constructed the myth of race

Scientists need to face both facts and feelings when dealing with the climate crisis

Decolonizing the hunt for dinosaurs and other fossils

Half-Earth: A biodiversity ‘solution’ that solves nothing

The future of postcolonial thought

Rethinking the social sciences with Sam Moyo


Degrowth

Stimulus is an environmental disaster waiting to happen

We’re hurtling toward global suicide


New politics

Why the environmental justice movement should think locally

A nearly true story: The tale of the Hamlet

Queer and feminist militants are shaping Tunisia’s protests

Building alternative futures in the present: the case of Syria’s communes


(Green) fascism

When futurism led to fascism—and why it could happen again

Ideology and far right ecologism. An episode of the Right Rising podcast in which Balsa Lubarda discusses the history and connections between environmentalism and Far Right ideology.


Indigenous struggles

LandBack: The Indigenous liberation movement. A video explainer.

The Indigenous Kinggo’s struggle to defend Papua’s customary forest

Biodiversity highest on Indigenous-managed lands

Pollution and patriarchy in tribal India


Cities and radical municipalism

US city of Evanston to pay reparation to Black residents

The secret ingredient in Paris’ green public housing 

Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

High ground, high prices

Wildfires, housing crisis, fascist street violence, and an uprising: this municipalist organization in Portland, Oregon was in the middle of it all

All power to the neighborhoods: Greece rises against police barbarity

The coronavirus and a summer of mutual aid in Chicago


Food politics

Agroecology vs. climate chaos: Farmers leading the battle in Asia

Popular peasant feminism

After the flood, the forest. On planting bananas in the warming Gulf Coast.

Resistance against industrial oil palm plantations in West and Central Africa

In King Leopold’s steps: The investors bankrolling the PHC oil palm plantations in the Democratic Republic of Congo 

Pigeon towers: A low-tech alternative to synthetic fertilizers


Resources

Zero Covid networks from around the world working for a solidarian politics of COVID-19 elimination

1M Experiments. A place to browse community-based safety projects for inspiration.

Global Oneness Project. A library of multimedia stories and curricula about cultural, environmental and social issues.

Exploring economics. An open access e-learning platform on pluralist economics.

A material transition. A report by War On Want that sets out a pathway for a globally just energy future.

A blog that deals with decolonising global health


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January & February readings

A woman gets the coronavirus vaccine, at a vaccination centre in Westfield Stratford City shopping centre, amid the outbreak of COVID-19, in London, UK [File: Henry Nicholls/Reuters], via Al Jazeera

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

Welcome to our first newsletter in 2021! It has been a slow few months here at Uneven Earth, but we’re back with a fresh list of environmental justice readings and resources for you that we’ve collected in the new year. Highlights include stories on extractive tourism, global vaccine justice, and the power of mutual aid, as well as a brilliant podcast series on social ecology.

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!



Uneven Earth updates

A new book tells us what is really behind the ‘K-shaped recovery’ | A review of The Asset Economy by Lisa Adkins, Martijn Konigs, and Melinda Cooper

Rewilding | A growing movement repurposes the term rewilding to be a political and cultural project that is more than merely conservation biology

Blue neocolonialism | The Nature Conservancy is promoting “Blue bonds”—a market-based solution to fund conservation—as a new wave of neocolonialism in the Seychelles

Who owns the city? Cars and COVID-19 | Car-centred urbanisation is tied to the growing threat of deadly epidemics. Solutions lie beyond technocratic policy, instead we must look to the soul of the city.



Top 5 articles to read

A call for global vaccine justice

Texans were casualties in Republicans’ war on green energy. “Against an elemental force and a state that failed them, they recognized that the best way to survive was to band together, and practice mutual aid — supporting one another with what little they had.”

It is time to end extractive tourism

On social ecology. A Srsly Wrong podcast series that explores what a post-capitalist future might look like from a social ecology perspective, and how we might get there. Check out part 1, part 2, and part 3.

“The world has become weird”: crisis, natures and radical re-enchantment



News you might’ve missed

Residents of Jackson are nearing two weeks with no running water

Mexican feminists raise their voices against patriarchy

Argentina’s decades-long fight to legalize abortion ends in victory  

Sex trafficking sting nets Enbridge pipeline workers

Community in Trinidad says ‘No’ to quarry operator targeting area’s last untouched watershed

Nevada lithium mine kicks off a new era of Western extraction

Inuit hunters braved -30 C weather to block an iron mine 

Rio Tinto in Serbia: privatization of natural resources, obstruction of sustainable development 

A victory for farmers in a David-and-Goliath environmental case 

Sámi reindeer herders file lawsuit against Norway windfarm 



Where we’re at: analysis

How extractive industries manage to carry on harming the planet

Private planes, mansions and superyachts: What gives billionaires like Musk and Abramovich such a massive carbon footprint 

India’s farmers’ protests: “This is history in the making” 

Anti-extractivism and radical politics in Ecuador 

The Deep South has a rich history of resistance, as Amazon is learning

Child labour, toxic leaks: the price we could pay for a greener future 

Electricity needed to mine bitcoin is more than used by ‘entire countries’

The poison found in everyone, even unborn babies – and who is responsible for it

People buying SUVs are cancelling out climate gains from electric cars 

The Paris Agreement is already outdated



COVID-19

Cape Town’s response to COVID-19 shows that another kind of society is possible

Why I’m an invisible man in the global vaccine campaign

Despair and disparity: The uneven burdens of COVID-19. A Truthout series on the disparate impact and deep injustices that the crisis has wrought in the United States.

10 ways corporations have exploited COVID-19




Just think about it…

The climate crisis shows how rich people blow through their “fair share” of carbon emissions

Is thrift shopping good for the environment?

Humans may not be able to reproduce naturally much longer, scientist warns

Billionaires want to be the gatekeepers of the solar system

Mars is a hellhole

How to write about pipelines



Degrowth

Current L’Internationale issue on degrowth and progress

The urgent case for shrinking the economy 

Degrowth: Pushing social wellbeing and climate over economic growth 

Giving up capitalism doesn’t mean giving up pleasure

Socialism without growth. “People appear to understand the abstract concept of “limitless”, but it is more difficult to understand that the concept cannot and should not be applied to growth. Even socialists must shake off the idea that quantity can improve, when only quality counts.”

Ecosocialism is the horizon, degrowth is the way

Is the world poor, or unjust?



New politics

Anarchism in practice is often radically boring democracy

Mutual aid: Kropotkin’s theory of human capacity

Hiding in plain sight. Democracy’s Indigenous origins in the Americas.

Building power in a crisis of social reproduction 

The lockdown showed how the economy exploits women. She already knew. Silvia Federici on how strengthening the commons can revolutionize care work.

Current YES! Magazine issue on what an ecological civilization looks like 



Cities and radical municipalism

The city where cars are not welcome. As automakers promise to get rid of internal combustion engines, Heidelberg is trying to get rid of autos.

Two-way street: how Barcelona is democratising public space 

Squatting, rebellion, movement: An interview with Philadelphia Housing Action 

How ’15-minute cities’ will change the way we socialise 

The ‘revolutionary’ fight over California’s hidden oil and gas wells 



Food politics

Planet farm

The agrarian question in the 21st century 

Agrarian change and peasant struggles in colonial Pakistan




Resources

Introduction to political economy. A podcast hosted by Noaman G. Ali that looks at how politics and economics interrelate, but also how political economy can encompass a lot more than just politics and economics.

No job, no rent. A 30-page report by the Stomp Out Slumlords tenants rights project on 10 months of organizing the tenant struggle during a pandemic.

Books: 14 wellbeing books for a common good and good life, D-Econ’s 2020 alternative reading list, and What to read in the environmental humanities now 

The top 100 documentaries we can use to change the world

PLN. A monthly show on YouTube covering positive Leftist news stories. 

A Twitter thread exploring what meaningful work in a degrowth world might look like




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November readings

Brett Gundlock/the Globe and Mail


Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

Don’t tune out yet: the year 2020 is still full of great, much-needed analysis. This month, we are featuring work that is deeply challenging: against the idea that providing good jobs and protecting the environment are in opposition to each other; highlighting the moral depravity of for-profit, industrial agriculture; and on the revolutionary demand of giving Indigenous land back. Aside from this, there were several essential analyses of current anti-racist movements, and anti-black racist movements in particular, pieces on the power of Indigenous wisdom, and guides on organizing with tenants

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!



Uneven Earth updates

Work | Work is drudgery for a lot of people, but it can be different and meaningful, if radically reorganised

Political ecology | Like a toolbox to unpack and understand the complexity of the socio-ecological crises we live in, political ecology is dedicated to a more just and inclusive world

Development | For development to truly deliver on its promise—the betterment of life for all—it must engage a multidimensional understanding of poverty



Top 5 articles to read

The industrial exploitation of pigs

Exiting the false “jobs versus environment” dilemma

A history of true civilisation is not one of monuments

Recovering antiracism

Traditional skills help people on the tourism-deprived Pacific Islands survive the pandemic



News you might’ve missed

Denmark to cull up to 17 million mink amid coronavirus fears

1% of farms operate 70% of world’s farmland

Why are Kashmiri Muslim nomads being evicted?

Africa′s debt crisis grows amid COVID-19 pandemic

Advertisements harm the planet, researchers say

The Maya built the Western Hemisphere’s first water filtration system



Where we’re at: analysis

Hoping for a return to normal after Trump? That’s the last thing we need

Joe Biden’s garbage career: A timeline, and Biden’s corporate cabinet: A breakdown 

Let a thousand fiefdoms bloom

No easy answers: a response to Alex Heffron and Kai Heron

Haemorrhaging Zambia: Prequel to the current debt crisis

Europe’s Green Deal offshores environmental damage to other nations

Climate populism & its limits

Andreas Malm’s corona, climate, chronic emergency



Just think about it…

It is time to revolutionise how we talk about the weather

Ecologically and culturally rich deserts, swamps and grasslands must not be labelled ‘wastelands’

Carbon dioxide removal sucks

Mixed farming beats intensive agriculture methods

How hundreds of small ‘Gardens of Eden’ guard against total deforestation in Ethiopia

Lithuania’s trade-in program is swapping people’s old cars for new e-bikes

Skywoman falling



Black Lives Matter

Cars, riots & Black liberation

Life, war, and politics: After the George Floyd rebellion



Indigenous struggles: #LandBack

What is the Indigenous landback movement — and can it help the climate?

Hunting the hunt

Land Back: The matrilineal descent of modern Indigenous land reclamation

‘Land Back’ is more than a slogan for a resurgent Indigenous movement



Degrowth

Sufficiency: the missing ingredient for sustainable digitalisation

Outgrowing growth: why quality of life, not GDP, should be our measure of success

Escaping the growth and jobs treadmill



New politics

Winning back the Internet by building our own

Why the Green New Deal needs mobility justice

What is libertarian socialism?

An economy that works for everyone

A caring economy: What would it take? The November-December 2020 New Internationalist issue asks: With the world in the midst of a deepening crisis of care, accelerated by Covid-19, what would it mean to have an economy that valued them and the people they care for?

Indigenous languages as cures of the Earth. This article is part of the #CuraDaTerra essay series, focused on Indigenous perspectives and alternatives to industrial capitalism.

Interrelations. Julian Brave NoiseCat has called eight expert witnesses to a tribunal to examine capitalist and colonial relationships to the land and one other. These testimonies endeavor to understand what has gone awry in our human societies, as well as to inquire into what other forms of knowledge, values, and interrelation might form the basis of a more just and reciprocal relationship between land and people.



Cities and radical municipalism

Barcelona launches 10-year plan to reclaim city streets from cars

Ontario is mass evicting tenants, in as little as 60 seconds

This is what energy transition looks like: L’Amassada eviction one year later

L.A. tenants union rejects legislative compromises, affirms dual power

Barricades, boulders, and how LA’s public space became a battleground for the commons

Democracy is in decline. Here’s how we can revive it

‘Covid created an opportunity’: Lisbon to turn tourist flats into homes

New Foundational Infrastructures: economic policies for a radical municipalism?

Finland ends homelessness and provides shelter for all in need



Food politics

Joel Salatin’s unsustainable myth

When beef testing is surveillance, sacred cows are tools of the state

Incubated futures



Resources

Wealth, shown to scale 

A copy editor’s education in Indigenous style

How to organize your building



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Political ecology

Photo credit: Stephanie Salazar

by Panagiota Kotsila, Salvatore Paolo De Rosa & Ilenia Iengo

The relationship between nature and society is one of co-evolution in which the question of how power is distributed is central. Political Ecology can untangle how the structuring of socio-ecological relations may reproduce injustice or afford openings towards emancipation. Like a toolbox to unpack and understand the complexity of the socio-ecological crises we live in, political ecology is dedicated to a more just and inclusive world. 

As a field of inquiry, Political Ecology has many roots and branches united by the common endeavour of observing, analysing, reflecting upon, and communicating how environments are produced by the interaction of social and biophysical processes. Political ecologists document the power struggles that make and remake “the environment”. They provide an understanding of the environment as a dynamic material reality, with exchanges between human and non-human actors, as well as a symbolic arena where different (and often clashing) knowledges, desires and ideologies are cast. Political ecologists claim that the natural and the social spheres are inseparable in practice. Nature and society are constantly co-constituted through processes of co-evolution, and their relationship is fundamentally shaped by power and meaning. 

Political ecologists document the power struggles that make and remake “the environment”

Political ecology is the child of human geography, cultural ecology and development studies. In its infancy (1980s-90s), it was concerned mostly about environmental degradation, rural development and the Global South, where it examined the uneven distribution of ecological costs and benefits, and the resulting socio-environmental conflicts and grassroots resistance. Later on, it attracted attention from fields such as anthropology, science and technology studies, feminism and public health. In a nutshell, political ecology developed as an approach that could tackle complex socio-natural phenomena in a novel, encompassing and transversal way. 

Many have called it a trans-disciplinary, supra-disciplinary, or even un-disciplined field, due to its incorporation of theories, methodologies and practices from different academic and non-academic arenas. From a rather elusive area of study, political ecology is becoming a strong, ever-evolving and diverse field of its own, of central importance and reference in the contemporary times of climate emergency and socio-environmental injustices, democracy crisis, planetary ecological degradation and widening inequalities. 

Political ecology’s main pillars are two (anti-)claims: 

1. The anti-Malthusian argument: Resource degradation is not due to general population increase, but to the relentless extraction of resources for the (over-)production and consumption of commodities, which benefits some while threatening the livelihoods and survival of others. Furthermore, in a globalising world, attention needs to be paid to how different scales meet, i.e. to the connections between proximate causes of environmental change and degradation, and the more distant but powerful processes that contribute to such changes. Extreme floods, for example, are not only due to local forest clearing and land use change which might include unauthorized construction, but are also reinforced by increasingly abrupt weather events as part of global climatic change, which in turn is exacerbated by those same land use changes and uncontrolled urbanisation patterns. Political ecologists recognise these connections and underline the powerful interests that motivate and perpetuate such changes. In this vein, the discipline resists declaring this era simply as the “Anthropocene”, which represents the human species acting as one in the process of degrading the planet’s resources and altering its biophysical processes. Instead, it places attention to the political and economic histories and specific actors that produced the current global ecological crisis. This means paying attention to how unevenly distributed the responsibilities and adverse outcomes of such crises are, in turn reflecting power relations in society (hence claims for the Capitalocene, Chthulucene, Anthropo-obscene, Wasteocene or even White (M)Anthropocene). 

2. The anti-apolitical ecologies: Or, in other words, nothing in “nature” is simply natural. While political ecology relies on strong ecological thinking, it also recognises that what we know of nature, and the imaginaries we hold of it, is a result of historical power/knowledge asymmetries. These include colonial views and conceptualisations of the biophysical environment (e.g. wilderness, pristine forests, etc.), which have come about, survived to this day and become hegemonic through violent practices of injustice and domination over indigenous populations of both humans and non-humans. Urban Political Ecology brings this “nature-cultures” understanding to the urbanization process. In opposition to the interpretation of cities as unnatural spaces, urban political ecology claims otherwise. It focuses on the socio-environmental injustices that come along with processes of altering, (re)producing, negotiating, (re)distributing and (re)imagining socio-ecological configurations in the process of urbanization, urban planning and urban life. This means paying attention to the lived experiences of environmental racism, grassroots claims for the right to live in healthy environments and the growing coalition politics of emancipatory feminist, environmental and decolonial commoning experiences in urban contexts and beyond.

Nothing in “nature” is simply natural

What politics?

For those doing Political Ecology, scientific research is not detached from knowledge/power relations and this recognition has multiple repercussions on how most political ecology is being carried out, or at least, the goals it sets for itself. First, political ecologists believe that considerations of justice, equity and fairness in relation to race, gender, class, ethnicity and other socio-cultural and material inequalities, should be put at the center of research practice and should constitute a shared horizon of values towards collective emancipation. Second, political ecologists often take a position of solidarity with movements that defend humans’ and nature’s rights, and with disenfranchised and often marginalised people that struggle for their voices and claims to be heard. Third, attention is paid to critically reflect on how one’s own position in terms of geography, class, gender, cultural background and interests, influences observations and the whole research practice. Researchers often align and engage with movements but are careful not to romanticize or misrepresent them, as well as not to over-exploit them as informants without giving back.

At the same time, a recent wave of post-/de-colonial thought has increasingly informed political ecology, pushing for the decolonization of political ecology literature, the recognition of non-white and non-western authors, including the doing away with barriers between “researcher” and “research subject”, recognizing various forms of knowledge making, and visibilising the valuable contributions of thinkers outside strict academic silos and outside of academia tout court. Along the same lines, a powerful feminist “turn” in the field is paying attention to intersectionality of power subjection (that includes but is not only about gender or women).

A more serious account of the affective, emotional and embodied experiences of people with/in nature can help to understand socio-environmental conflicts and movements

Feminist Political Ecology accentuates the importance of decolonising what we know of the world, revisiting knowledge gathered and generated by white western men in powerful institutions during and beyond colonisation, and open up to voices, words and meanings offered by subordinated cultures, non-binary subjectivities and minority peoples. Feminist Political Ecology is further advocating for a more serious account of the affective, emotional and embodied experiences of people with/in nature and in projects of ‘being in common’. This will help to understand the nitty-gritty of socio-environmental conflicts and movements, focusing on how different, ever-changing and interdependent the lives of humans and non-humans really are. This is, as Feminist Political Ecology asserts, what can give space for situated knowledges to replace colonial and universalizing accounts of the complex worlds we are part of.

What ecology?

Political ecology, however, is confronted with a number of internal tensions, much of which boils down to the question of what constitutes “ecology” and thus, what ecology do we stand for and imagine for the future? If nature cannot be seen separately from society and power relations, what are the environmental principles and ethics that the field goes by? While much of Political Ecology offers a deep analysis of the why and how in socio-natures and related conflicts, only some goes as far as sketching a more concrete way forward. 

Aligned with pertinent debates in Political Ecology, degrowth is a movement of activists and intellectuals which inspires, and is inspired by, grassroots practices reflecting on and experimenting with post-growth ways of individual and collective lives. Degrowth offers alternative visions for socio-ecological relations, which are different to capitalism and real socialism, both of which are based on environmental devastation for the final aim of profit accumulation and competitive power over other states. Degrowth articulates an analytical vocabulary of practice around concepts such as ‘autonomy’, ‘conviviality’, ‘care’ and ‘dépense’. On the opposite side of the spectrum there are the ecomodernist and ecosocialist movements, both considering the public control of the means of production through democratic and horizontal processes of decision making to be the way out of the ecological and social crisis. While according to ecomodernists technological progress will be instrumental in this process, ecosocialists focus on the political and social formations that could bring about such changes. 

Degrowth focuses on a radical critique of the growth and productivist imperative demanding a clear, voluntary, democratic and equitable reduction of extraction, processing, transport, consumption and disposal of materials and energy. According to “degrowthers” this is the only way to reduce emissions and abandon environmentally catastrophic processes, while also addressing aspects of inequality and injustice connected to such processes. Ecomodernists and ecosocialists alike, on the other hand, maintain a positivist perspective towards technological innovation and progress, beyond neoliberal propositions of green/blue growth and towards a return to projects that environmentalists had long stood against, such as nuclear power, centralized planning and industrial agriculture. Political ecologists recognise that ideas of nature are social constructions, but they also stand strongly against Western/anthropocentric  notions of complete control and domination over “nature”, as this is denying agency both to non-human beings and to non-western understandings of socionatural dependencies and value systems. 

Further resources

Peet, R. and Watts, M. (2004) Liberation ecologies: environment, development and social movements. Routledge.

Heynen, N., Kaika, M. and Swyngedouw, E. (eds) (2006) In the Nature of Cities. Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism. Routledge.

Di Chiro, G. 2008. Living Environmentalisms: Coalition Politics, Social Reproduction and Environmental Justice. Environmental Politics. 17(2): 276-298. 

Rocheleau, D., Thomas-Slayter, B. and Wangari, E. (2013) Feminist political ecology: Global issues and local experience. Routledge.

D’alisa, G., Demaria, F. and Kallis, G. (2014) Degrowth: a vocabulary for a new era. Routledge.

Haraway, D. (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Perreault, T., Bridge, G. and McCarthy, J. (eds) (2015) The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology. Routledge.

Svarstad, H., Benjaminsen, T. A. and Overå, R. (2018) ‘Power theories in political ecology’. University of Arizona Libraries.

Álvarez, L., & Coolsaet, B. (2018). Decolonizing Environmental Justice Studies: A Latin American Perspective. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 1-20.

Escobar, A. (2008). Territories of difference: place, movements, life, redes. Duke University Press.

Political Ecology for Civil Society: a “manual” developed by Entitle fellows 

Ecologia Politica – Cuadernos de debate internacional

Kothari, A., Salleh, A., Escobar, A., Demaria, F., Acosta, A. (2019). Pluriverse a Post-Development Dictionary. Columbia University Press.

Plumwood, V. (1993). Feminism and The Mastery of Nature. Routledge, New York and London. 

Panagiota Kotsila is a post-doctoral researcher at the Barcelona Laboratory for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability, ICTA, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her work looks into political ecologies of health, the politics of urban sustainability and environmental justice from an intersectional and feminist perspective. 

Salvatore Paolo De Rosa is a researcher at the Environmental Humanities Lab of KTH (Stockholm). His interests are in political ecology, geography and anthropology while his work focuses on environmental conflicts, socioecological metabolisms and grassroots eco-politics. Currently, he is investigating climate politics in Malmö.

Ilenia Iengo is a scholar activist PhD fellow in Feminist Political Ecology, member of the Marie Sklodowska Curie WEGO ITN at the Barcelona Laboratory for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability, ICTA UAB. Her action research is situated in the Southern European city of Naples where she focuses on emancipatory urban politics and imaginaries sprouting at the intersection of transfeminism and environmental justice.

September & October readings

Illustration: Roy Boney/The Guardian

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

Unfortunately, we were forced to skip our newsletter last month due to low capacity and poor health — but we’ll make it up this time by bringing you two months’ worth of readings to mull over and learn from! As this year’s World Mental Health Day fell on the 10th of October, we decided to include a section dedicated to political analyses and the social determinants of mental health. We also compiled a list on the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, and particularly highlighted what we can learn from non-Western countries and philosophies. As usual, you will find plenty of material on Indigenous struggles, degrowth, cities and radical municipalism, food politics, and the dangerous rise of eco-fascism; as well as alternative perspectives on conservation, sci-fi, and fire ecology.

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!



Uneven Earth updates

Make life, not work: democratizing, decommodifying and remediating existence | Emancipation from labour requires us to democratize and decommodify the economy as a whole

Renewable energy | To provide the conditions for a sustainable technology, we must begin by establishing a sustainable economy

Structural violence and the automobile | The intertwined legacy of fascism and the motorcar

Degrowth | Degrowth is not a passive critique but an active project of hope



Top 5 articles to read

This is my message to the western world – your civilisation is killing life on Earth

The tenants who evicted their landlord

Feral Atlas invites you to explore the ecological worlds created when nonhuman entities become tangled up with human infrastructure projects

The lost forest gardens of Europe

In the Navajo Nation, anarchism has Indigenous roots



News you might’ve missed

World fails to meet a single target to stop destruction of nature – UN report

Banks lent $2.6tn linked to ecosystem and wildlife destruction in 2019 – report 

Fifth of countries at risk of ecosystem collapse, analysis finds 

Polluted air killing half a million babies a year across globe, Small increases in air pollution linked to rise in depression, and Air pollution linked with 15% COVID-19 deaths worldwide. Also, don’t forget: Pollution is a racial justice issue. Let’s fight it that way.

A historic victory in Bolivia. Fireworks exploded across the night sky in the Bolivian capital of La Paz on Sunday evening, October 18th, as the projected results came through showing a near-landslide victory for the left-wing Movimiento al socialismo (MAS) and its presidential candidate, Luis Arce, in the country’s national elections.

Chile’s latest steps towards true democracy are a beacon for the world. Hopes are high that the overwhelming vote to overturn the Pinochet-era constitution marks the beginning of a new era.

Land defenders are killed in the Philippines for protesting Canadian mining

Indonesia mass strikes loom over cuts to environmental safeguards and workers’ rights

The world celebrated Kurdish women’s fight against ISIS. Now it’s silent as they’re raped and tortured

Nuclear power hinders fight against climate change

Barbarians at the barn: private equity sinks its teeth into agriculture



Learning from COVID-19

Covid-19 shows factory food production is dangerous for animals and humans alike 

Covid-19 has exposed the catastrophic impact of privatising vital services 

The pandemic case for the two-day workweek 

What developing countries can teach rich countries about how to respond to a pandemic

Reimagining the post-pandemic “normal”: Learning from Indigenous peoples about reconciling culture and nature

Africa has defied the Covid-19 nightmare scenarios. We shouldn’t be surprised.

How Africa fought the pandemic — and what coronavirus has taught the world

Barcelona’s radical response to Covid-19. While governments around the world have allowed inequality to increase during Covid-19, Barcelona’s left-wing municipality has fought back – introducing measures to support workers, women, migrants and the environment.



Where we’re at: analysis

“Colonizing the atmosphere”: How rich, Western nations drive the climate crisis

There’s no such thing as “we”

Mutual aid is essential to our survival regardless of who is in the White House 

The challenge of reclaiming the commons from capitalism

Seize and resist

Thai imperialism and colonisation

Andreas Malm: “The likely future is escalating catastrophe”

The stories Michael Shellenberger tells

We can’t mine our way out of the climate crisis

Controlling oil, controlling development

Towards a working-class environmentalism for South Africa

On the #BeirutBlast and the environmental violence of capital



Just think about it…

The vine and the fish. Does the language of invasive biology contribute to xenophobia? An interactive comic.

Why the world can get worse by constantly saying it’s getting better

We can use less energy and still have good lives

Blue sky thinking: is it time to stop work taking over our lives? 

Hidden cameras and secret trackers reveal where Amazon returns end up

To save the climate, give up the demand for constant electricity

On being an octopus

Cruise ships dismantled for scrap after pandemic sinks industry

Land as a social relationship

Is plastic recycling a lie? Oil companies touted recycling to sell more plastic



Fire ecology

Our burning planet: Why we must learn to live with fire

California’s apocalyptic ‘second nature’

California and Australia look to Indigenous land management for fire help



The politics of mental health

Mental health and hope, from the second issue of the New Economics Zine on the connections between mental health and the economy.

For Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism is rooted in loneliness 

Self-help hacks at the end of the world. Everything is pretty terrible right now. A glut of pop psych advice wants you to think you can muscle your way out of it alone.

’Investing’ in mental health is doomed to fail because humans aren’t stocks. The World Health Organization focused on investing in mental health as the theme for this year’s World Mental Health Day. That might sound sensible, but it’s precisely this language of ‘investment’ that is taking the mental health conversation backwards. 

‘Solastalgia’: Arctic inhabitants overwhelmed by new form of climate grief 



Indigenous struggles

One of the best climate solutions is giving Indigenous people their land back

Respect for Indigenous land rights key in fight against climate change

Native tribes are being poisoned by pesticides made by U.S. companies

Land-grabbing in Asia displaces indigenous people: UN expert



Degrowth

After growth. A review of Self-Devouring Growth: A Planetary Parable as Told from Southern Africa by Julie Livingston.

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel. A book review.

Climate change is accelerating because of rich consumers’ energy use. Here are some solutions. 

Reflecting on the emerging strategy debate in the degrowth movement

Ecosocialism and/or degrowth?

Degrowth and MMT: A thought experiment

Climate crisis: Is it time to ditch economic growth?

The macroeconomics of degrowth: can planned economic contraction be stable?



New politics

The ecology of feminism and the feminism of ecology 

We can’t have billionaires and stop climate change 

4 key ways to build strong social justice movements

Building, not branding. Instead of creating individual brands, we can aim to build collectivities in struggle.

A plan to cool us down without burning up the planet



Eco-fascism

How COVID and Syria conspiracies introduce fascism to the Left, part 1 and part 2

Nazi hippies: when the New Age and Far-Right overlap

How Far-Right extremists are using wildfires to go mainstream

Neo-nazis are using eco-fascism to recruit young people

Blood and vanishing topsoil

The rise of eco-fascism: The environmental case for taking a tougher stance against online hate



Cities and radical municipalism

Public power in a green city

How Philly’s Black Lives Matter protests revitalized the affordable housing movement

Building eco-paradise in end times: Lessons from ecoaldeas (ecovillages) in Mexico

Mutual aid response during fires shows Black Lives Matter is building community

Communes – the building block of democratic confederalism. An explainer.

Responding to global crises with low-carbon social housing

Building regional autonomies for a small farm future



Food politics

‘Agricultural jihad’: A hungry Lebanon returns to family farms to feed itself

Junk agroecology

Can agroecology feed the world?

Digital fences: the financial enclosure of farmlands in South America

Vandana Shiva: The pandemic is a consequence of the war against life

Whose agriculture drives disease?

Max Ajl: Does the Arab region have an agrarian question?



Conservation vs capitalism

Capitalism – not ‘humanity’ – is killing the world’s wildlife

Conservation without colonialism

Setting out the principles of post-growth conservation

Losing ground: How are India’s conservation efforts putting the local communities in peril?



Sci-fi and the near future

To build a future without police and prisons, we have to imagine it first. A strain of science fiction called visionary fiction empowers activists, artists, and organizers to seed a better future.

Imagining the end of capitalism with Kim Stanley Robinson



Resources

An Indigenous abolitionist study guide 

Complicity in destruction III: How global corporations enable violations of Indigenous people’s rights in the Brazilian Amazon. The full report by the Brazilian Indigenous people’s alliance – APIB & Amazon Watch.


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Renewable energy

Photo: Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0

by Alf Hornborg

The concept of renewable energy is generally used for electric power that is not derived from finite sources such as stocks of fossil fuels or uranium. It includes the harnessing of flows such as direct sunlight, wind, and water. Harnessing such flows for electricity production requires technologies that are fundamentally different from the technologies used for deriving mechanical power from burning stocks of coal, oil, or gas. This applies to wind turbines and hydroelectric dams as much as it does to photovoltaic panels, but the focus here will be on solar power.

The rise of the fossil economy

The burning of fossil fuels as sources of mechanical power began with the steam engine in Britain in the 1760s. This innovation was essential to the Industrial Revolution. It marked a transition from relying on organic and flow-based energy sources propelled by current sunlight—such as human labour, draft animals, watermills, and windmills—to the combustion of subterranean mineral stocks. These mineral stocks—coal, oil, and gas—contain energy from ancient sunlight accumulated in organisms and deposited as sediments in the Earth’s crust.

The energy transition of the Industrial Revolution was not simply a discovery of how mineral energy could be converted into mechanical power. The harnessing of mineral energy required capital, that is purchasing power. As the wealthy core of the world’s greatest colonial empire, Britain was able to invest in steam technology. The expansion of steam technology in late eighteenth-century Britain was thus a process linked to the British appropriation of African slave labour and American plantation land. It saved Britain substantial quantities of labour time and agricultural land, but at the expense of great amounts of African labour and American land.

Energy technology – part nature, part society

The experience of the Industrial Revolution in Britain and other wealthy areas of the world was interpreted as a miraculous achievement of engineering. This is undeniable but does not tell the whole story. Technologies are not merely ingenious ideas or blueprints applied to nature. For them to materialize, engineers must have access to specific physical components—and at specific ratios of exchange (that is, prices). Engineering was certainly a necessary condition for the establishment of steam technology in early industrial Britain, but it was not a sufficient condition. The technology for harnessing the energy of coal was contingent on the market prices of raw cotton, African slaves, the labour of coal miners, Swedish iron, lubricants, and other inputs in relation to the market prices of exported cotton textiles. The physical existence of the machine, in other words, hinged not only on the revelation of nature, but also on social processes of exchange. However, this hybrid essence of technology—part nature, part society—has largely escaped the modern conception of engineering.

Across the political spectrum, there is a general faith in the capacity of modern society to shift to renewable, non-fossil energy sources without substantially reducing its levels of energy use

By the end of the twentieth century, natural scientists had recognized that the combustion of fossil fuels is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change. There have also been concerns about the depletion of finite mineral energy stocks and the decreasing net energy return on energy expended on extraction, also referred to as ERO(e)I (Energy Return On energy Investment). Moreover, the huge global disparities in per capita energy use are no longer easily rationalized as uneven development but suggest structural and increasing gaps between wealthier and poorer parts of world society. Given the dominant understanding of energy technology, however, these problems have generally not informed mainstream visions of the prospects of an increasingly globalized modern society. In these visions, the growing per capita use of energy continues to be fundamental to social progress, regardless of energy source. The problems with fossil energy are viewed as challenges of engineering. Across the political spectrum, there is a general faith in the capacity of modern society to shift to renewable, non-fossil energy sources without substantially reducing its levels of energy use.

Will renewables replace fossil fuels?

The main candidates for replacing fossil with renewable energy are solar and wind power. Experts are divided regarding their potential to replace fossil fuels. Some see no technical or economic obstacles to such a transition. Skeptics have argued that renewable energy technologies applied at such a scale would require impractically huge amounts of materials, space, or energy. Some have emphasized that the production and maintenance of infrastructure for production of renewable energy is based on fossil energy to such an extent that the energy derived from it is very far from carbon-free. This is particularly obvious where the manufacture of solar panels is conducted in coal-powered factories, as in China. Given that the world economy is currently propelled by fossil energy to about 90%, some have concluded that economic investments in renewable energy represent a fossil energy subsidy of similar proportions. Also, given this reliance on fossil fuels, a rise in prices of fossil energy cannot simply be hailed in terms of an increasing competitiveness for solar, as it will translate into higher production costs for alternative technologies. More centrally, given the fact that the cheapening of solar panels in recent years to a significant extent is the result of shifting manufacture to China, we must ask ourselves whether European and American efforts to become sustainable should really be based on the global exploitation of low-wage labor and abused landscapes elsewhere. The global, societal conditions for energy technologies tend to be equally overlooked whether we are accounting for the eighteenth-century shift to fossil energy or deliberating about how to abandon it. Both steam engines and solar panels have relied on asymmetric global flows of biophysical resources such as embodied labor, land, energy, and materials.

A transition to renewable energy generally focuses on electricity production, but most of the total global energy use occurs in other contexts, such as non-electric transports. Electricity globally represents about 19% of total energy use. In the year 2017, only 0.7% of global energy use derived from solar power and 1.9% from wind, while over 85% relied on fossil fuels. In March 2018, Vaclav Smil estimated that as much as 90% of world energy use derives from fossil sources, and that the share is actually increasing. Solar power is not displacing fossil energy, only adding to it. The pace of expansion of renewable energy capacity has stalled—it was about the same in 2018 as in 2017. Meanwhile, the global combustion of fossil fuels continues to rise, as do global carbon emissions.

We have every reason to dismantle most of the global, fossil-fueled infrastructure for transporting people, groceries, and other commodities around the planet

Downscaling energy needs

How should we understand and transcend this impasse? To continue burning fossil fuels cannot be an option, but to believe that modern, high-energy society can be maintained based on renewable energy is similarly deluded. We shall certainly continue to need electricity, for example to run our hospitals and computers. But we have every reason to dismantle most of the global, fossil-fueled infrastructure for transporting people, groceries, and other commodities around the planet. This means making human subsistence independent from fossil energy and substantially reducing our mobility and consumption. Solar power will no doubt be an indispensable component of humanity’s future, but this will not happen as long as we allow the logic of the world market to make it profitable to transport essential goods halfway around the world. In order to provide the conditions for a sustainable technology, we must begin by establishing a sustainable economy. Crucially, also, we must modify our understanding of the very idea of technology. Contrary to our modern worldview since the Industrial Revolution, technology is not a neutral way of revealing and harnessing the forces of nature. A better way to define technology is to acknowledge that it is a global social phenomenon and a moral and political question rather than simply one of engineering. If we forget about this distributive aspect of technology, it will likely continue to save time and space for a global elite at the expense of human time and natural space appropriated elsewhere.

Further resources

Alf Hornborg. Nature, society, and justice in the Anthropocene: Unraveling the money-energy-technology complex. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Argues that modern energy technologies, in exploiting global differences in the price of labor and resources, are based not only on politically neutral revelations of natural forces but crucially also on accumulation of the capital invested in harnessing them.

Dustin Mulvaney. Solar power: Innovation, sustainability, and environmental justice. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019.
Discusses what changes would be required in the life cycle of photovoltaic solar power technology to make it just and sustainable.

Vaclav Smil. Power density: A key to understanding energy sources and uses. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015.
Compares different energy sources in terms of the amount of energy that can be derived from them per square meter of space.

Alf Hornborg is an anthropologist and Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University, Sweden. His research focuses on theorizing the cultural and political dimensions of human-environmental relations in different societies in space and time. His books include The Power of the Machine (2001), Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange (2011), Global Magic (2016), and Nature, Society, and Justice in the Anthropocene (2019).

Degrowth

Photo: Flickr.

by François Schneider and Joanna Pope

Degrowth is a movement that explores another direction for society, one where ecological and social justice become possible, along with more meaningful lives. While there is no single definition for degrowth, this entry attempts to offer some guidance for understanding degrowth in all its diversity.

First, degrowth is a variety of challenges to the current status quo. Secondly, degrowth is not just a form of critique, but also encompasses diverse and interrelated positive utopian visions for the world. Thirdly, degrowth offers a set of paths for societal transformation in order to make these utopias possible.

1. From a missile word to other narratives: Degrowth as objection

Degrowth is a rigorous objection to dominant ideas about how economies and societies function. In this line, degrowth has been described as a ‘missile word’. Degrowth targets in particular two beliefs.

First, degrowth challenges the idea that economic growth is the only way to achieve prosperity and wellbeing for all. Growth does not improve our lives. Instead, the pursuit of infinite economic growth on a finite planet has led to both vast social inequality and ecological destruction. Degrowth also rejects claims (for which there is no empirical evidence or theoretical justification) that we would be able continue to pursue infinite economic growth without accelerating the global ecological crisis.

Degrowth is not a passive critique, but an active project of hope, with vivid utopian visions of another, better world with equality, decolonization, reparations and social justice as its foundation

Secondly, degrowth challenges the pessimistic belief that ecological collapse is inevitable, that all we can do now in response to the global climate crisis (and many other crises) is to close our communities and borders to those in need. As we will see in the next section, degrowth is not a passive critique, but an active project of hope, with vivid utopian visions of another, better world with equality, decolonization, reparations and social justice as its foundation.

The idea of degrowth as a missile word, a stone thrown, helps us grasp the radical intent of those who use it as a slogan. But degrowth is not a singular missile. Rather, it has transformed, after nearly twenty years of discussion and activism, into an entire web of guerilla narratives. These degrowth counter-narratives challenge the ideology of economic growth from a range of different perspectives, from political economy, sociology and happiness studies, to ecofeminism, social ecology and post-development theory.

2. Other worlds are possible: Degrowth as utopia(s)

Degrowth goes beyond a mere critique of the current system. It also offers genuine alternatives through theory and practice. Degrowth is not afraid to envision a utopian future for our world. The degrowth society is just, ecological, sustainable, democratic, participatory, internationalist and localized with rich cultural, ethnic and ecological diversity in each locality, and simultaneously open and global.

Like its web of counternarratives, degrowth utopias are not determined by doctrine or set in stone. They are multiple, flexible and continuously redefined based on new insights, critique and dialogue.

Who are the people who help imagine and invent degrowth utopias? Degrowth’s utopian vision has been supported by scholars and researchers from around the world. Together, their work amounts to hundreds of peer-reviewed publications, numerous special issues, and a wide range of academic and accessible books on the subject.

But it was activists and practitioners who first brought the degrowth movement into existence. For degrowth practitioners, utopias do not exist only as long term visions, but also take shape as microcosms in the here and now. The creators and inhabitants of degrowth nowtopias seek to live in the society that they believe should exist, and demonstrate that other worlds are possible. Examples of nowtopias include community gardens, cooperatives, open source technology projects, repair cafes, mutual aid networks and more. Each year, conferences in cities around the world bring degrowth theory and practice together, as participants from different fields and backgrounds debate current challenges and future visions for the movement.

There is a tendency to think that these degrowthers are a small minority. But in fact, they are in good company. The political movement of degrowth emerged in France in the early 2000s but degrowth sources like voluntary simplicity have wide and old recognition. We find traces of degrowth in the philosophies of Lao Tse, Diogenes and Epicurus, for example. On the contrary the idea of economic growth was put forward with the rise of capitalism which is relatively recent. In spite of the incredible media/political push of this idea of growth, the idea of degrowth is becoming the favored emerging utopia these days.

Many different Indigenous cultures offer practices, philosophies and ways of life that resonate with degrowth and its long term vision. Degrowthers can also look to resistance movements in the Global North and South, from MOVE to the Zapatistas for insight and inspiration as they imagine a radically different world. Beyond this, there is a wide range of social movements whose practical and theoretical knowledge, and critiques of degrowth, can help utopian degrowthers expand their own understanding of what is possible.

3. Degrowth of some things, expansion of others: Degrowth as paths of socio-ecological transformation

How can we make degrowth utopias a reality, and strengthen and expand existing degrowth nowtopias? To address this challenge, degrowth articulates practical and diverse roadmaps to a better world. It is in this way that the word ‘degrowth’ takes on a third meaning—degrowth as paths of transformation.

Rather than presenting a silver bullet solution, degrowth proposes a web of change across housing, urban planning, transport, agriculture, energy systems, money, redistributive taxation, biodiversity, supply chains, manufacturing, software, hardware and technology governance, employment and working conditions,welfare, healthcare, education, democracy and more. Together, these proposals can guide an equitable, planned downscaling of production and consumption.

But these paths do not demand that we downscale everything. Rather, the task is to shrink some sectors, while simultaneously expanding and transforming others for the better, while the sum is a move to the reduction of material and energy flow and to simpler and more meaningful lives. Degrowing aviation, for example, means reducing unnecessary flying while also making travelling by train, bike, sailboat and on foot more accessible. Similarly, advocates of housing for degrowth or degrowing tourism, propose not only doing less but also doing things differently, that is, not only reducing ecologically and socially harmful practices and models, but also fostering and expanding existing alternatives that center both the environment and human needs.

Instead of the rebound effect that accompanies attempts at eco-innovation under the growth paradigm, degrowth pathways promote debound, creating an interlinked web of technical and non-technical solutions that fulfill human needs.

These pathways also contribute to a decolonization of imaginaries—by challenging commodification, consumerism, the pursuit of profit, the Western model of development and the destructive, growth-dependent system of capitalism itself. In this way, degrowth seeks to bring about not just material and political change, but cultural change too, allowing us to understand the world, ourselves and our desires through an entirely different lens.

4. Linking diversity: Fulfilment of needs and non-violence at the core of degrowth?

Degrowth thrives on diversity, embracing a wide range of different perspectives. These diverse perspectives are actually about fulfilling diverse profound needs, material ones like food or shelter for all but also many non-material needs. Degrowth is thus a proposition to meet these multiple concomitant needs by creating the conditions for a society where cooperation becomes possible, where sources of violence dwindle. To do so involves a fundamentally non-violent approach, on the one hand through cooperative approaches within the movements for social transformation but also conflicting ones as it involves non-violent civil disobedience in the face of a highly unequal society destroying, among others, natural resources, cultures, and biomes. Responding to deep needs, whether we are talking about material needs, or needs for well-being, community, recognition outside the growth dogma requires dialogue and listening to emotions and feelings. Degrowth is thus a vast collective project in which we empathize with the deep needs of everyone. To this end we need highly democratic processes to give voice to what is not expressed in order to build degrowth narratives: narratives which make us realize that meeting the needs of all is part of the realm of what is possible.

Further resources

François Schneider, Giorgos Kallis, Joan Martinez-Alier, 2010. Crisis or opportunity? Economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability. Introduction to this special issue. Journal of Cleaner Production, 18(6), 511-518
An introduction to degrowth.

Giacomo D’Alisa, Federico Demaria, Giorgos Kallis. Degrowth: A vocabulary for a new era. Routledge, 2015.
A great collection of many topics relating to degrowth, challenging the status quo.

Federico Demaria, François Schneider, Filka Sekulova, Joan Martinez-Alier. What is Degrowth? From an Activist Slogan to a Social Movement, Environmental values, 22(2):191-215. 2013
A good overview of sources and actors of degrowth – degrowth as a frame.

Anitra Nelson & François Schneider, Housing for degrowth, Routledge, 2019.
The introduction of “spiralling narratives” for degrowth in the area of housing.

Chris Carlsson, Nowtopia, AK Press: 2008
A great review of the idea of living our utopias now.

Serge Latouche. Farewell to Growth. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007.
Where Latouche develops the notion of degrowth society.

François Schneider. Let’s degrow up and grow down!
Why degrowth is the right word to use, and why meaning “degrowth” by saying “growth” is inappropriate.

François Schneider is a Doctor in industrial ecology and a degrowth researcher since 2001. Founder and former president of Research & Degrowth, and initiator and main organiser of the first international degrowth conferences, he teaches degrowth at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. In 2012 he started the experiential project Can Decreix, the “house of degrowth”. His work on degrowth focuses on the themes of material flows, allocation problems, rebound effect, transport, housing, lifestyles, frugal innovation, open-localism and identification of pathways.

Joanna Pope is a researcher with a focus on degrowth and ecocritical theory. She is based at Trust, an incubator for platform design and utopian conspiracy in Berlin, and works as an editor and researcher at The Syllabus and is a contributing editor for Uneven Earth.

August readings

Photo credit: hansfoto

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

We’re back with a new reading list, this time highlighting a discussion about the sustainability of growing the service sector, an Internationalist take on reparations, and a Leftist critique of the Green New Deal, among others. As usual, we also center Indigenous and global land struggles, food politics, radical municipalism, and degrowth.

While we were putting together this list, the influential anthropologist and activist David Graeber died unexpectedly and far too early. We want to honor him here by featuring some of his best work, so we can keep it close as we continue our fight for the better world he spent his life imagining.

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!



Uneven Earth updates

Unequal exchange | Global trade conceals ecological and human exploitation in peripheries and maintains an unjust world order

Offsetting | A policy tool that allows us to imagine a world in which everything is replaceable, and where there are no limits

Extractivism | One of the most expansionist global enterprises—squashing any other ways of living with the land

Extractivismo | Uno de los proyectos globales más expansionistas, que aplasta cualquier otra forma de vivir con la tierra



Top 5 articles to read

Big Oil is in trouble. Its plan: flood Africa with plastic

Fermentation, rot, and power in the early modern Atlantic

Can we save the planet by growing the service sector?

Climate reparations: An Internationalist approach for the twenty-first century

‘Either you are fighting to eliminate exploitation or not’: A leftist critique of the Green New Deal



In memoriam: David Graeber

Radical anthropologist David Graeber tragically passed away on September 2nd, 2020 at the age of 59. His work and activism was, and will continue to be, formative and inspirational for Uneven Earth’s editors and mission. We have compiled a best of including his articles, talks and books below, with our Twitter followers’ input (please add any suggestions to this thread). 

Essays

Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you!

On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

Of flying cars and the declining rate of profit

How to change the course of human history

On the phenomenology of giant puppets: broken windows, imaginary jars of urine, and the cosmological role of the police in American culture

Concerning the violent peace-police

Revolution in reverse

Against economics

The truth is out: money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling in it

What’s the point if we can’t have fun

It is value that brings universes into being

Dead zones of the imagination: On violence, bureaucracy, and interpretive labor

Radical alterity is just another way of saying “reality”: A reply to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

The new anarchists

Caring too much. That’s the curse of the working classes

The center blows itself up: Care and spite in the ‘Brexit election’ 

David Graeber left us a parting gift — his thoughts on Kropotkin’s “mutual aid”

Democracy is possible in Syria. My friend knew how

There was never a West (from the collection Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire by AK Press)

Talks & podcasts

Where did money REALLY come from?

Graeber and Wengrow on the myth of the stupid savage

Debt: The first 5,000 years

BBC Podcast “Promises, Promises: A History of Debt”. In this 12-part series, David explores the ways debt has shaped society over 5,000 years.

Books

Did you know David’s books are available as free PDFs? We linked them for you here: Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Direct Action – An Ethnography, Debt: The First 5000 Years, The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement, The Utopia of Rules, and Bullshit Jobs: A Theory.



News you might’ve missed

Behind the Beirut explosion lies the lawless world of international shipping

Virus resurgence could plunge emerging economies into debt crisis, warns IMF

Global deforestation accelerates during pandemic

From genocide to resistance: Yazidi women fight back

Summary executions and widespread repression under Bolivia’s interim government reports rights advocates



Indigenous struggles

‘Green’ colonialism is ruining Indigenous lives in Norway

‘The Amazon is the entry door of the world’: why Brazil’s biodiversity crisis affects us all

Meet the people saving Canada’s native grasslands

A message from the most bombed nation on earth

To save a way of life, Native defenders push to protect the Arctic refuge



Global land struggles

For the people of the river, not investors: Guaranteeing farmers’ rights to the waters of the Nile

Land grabs at gunpoint: Thousands of families are being violently evicted from their farms to make way for foreign-owned plantations in Kiryandongo, Uganda



Where we’re at: analysis

Does nuclear power slow or speed climate change?

False Alarm by Bjorn Lomborg; Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger – review

Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature debunked

Climate apartheid is the coming police violence crisis

Africa says, “I can’t breathe”: An African civil society perspective on systemic racism

Decolonial feminism and Buen Vivir

How the world’s largest garbage dump in Staten Island became a green oasis

Lebanon, forever colonised?



Just think about it…

Emancipation in the neoliberal era: Rethinking transition with Karl Polanyi

The fantasy and the Cyberpunk futurism of Singapore

‘We’ve already survived an apocalypse’: Indigenous writers are changing sci-fi

Towards a non-extractive and care-driven academia

The world to come: What should we value?

The term “development” makes false promises and perpetuates colonial dominance thinking



Degrowth

The case for degrowth

Deliberate degrowth

We are doomed if, in the post-Covid-19 world, we cannot abandon non-essentials

Four principles of degrowth and why they matter



Food politics

The roots of food crisis in Pakistan

‘One thing I’ve learned about modern farming – we shouldn’t do it like this’

Looking beyond the pandemic: Agroecology, and the need to rethink our food system

Animal Farms. The industrial pig, garden pig, and wild boar lead us through the rise and fall of East German industrial agriculture, but also foreshadow changes around the world where such large-scale schemes are imposed without regard for people, animals, or environments.

The strategic case for animal liberation



Cities and radical municipalism

Municipalist politics and the specter of emancipation

Killing a neighbourhood

Tenant unions for the future

Moving Jackson forward: Opposing visions of a People’s Assembly



Resources

Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin: The full film

40 ways to fight fascists: Street-legal tactics for community activists

Trinational toolkit for international workers’ solidarity

9 ways you can help save the Amazon rainforest from imminent destruction by boycotting Brazil



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June readings

Illustration by Jamiel Law, via The New Yorker

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

Much as we might want it to be, the COVID-19 pandemic is not over. And the police are still racist. This month, we profile stories and analyses of the pandemic and of the Black Lives Matter protests. We tried to look for articles that take international and environmental justice approaches to these crises and struggles. There’s also plenty of great analysis coming out, reflecting on our current political moment. Finally, we highlight many articles on food politics, digging into the relationship between the food industry, race, and health – and the new political movements working in these intersections. 

A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!



Uneven Earth updates

Decoupling | “Given the historical correlation of market activity and environmental pressures, relying on decoupling alone to solve environmental problems is an extremely risky and irresponsible bet.” 

Jevons paradox | “Efficiency gains contribute to increasing production and consumption which increases the extraction of resources and the generation of wastes.”

NOlympics, everywhere | In LA, a coalition to stop the Olympics pairs localism with internationalism



Top 5 articles to read

‘Either you are fighting to eliminate exploitation or not’: A leftist critique of the Green New Deal

On technodiversity: A conversation with Yuk Hui

From rebellion to revolution

How do we change America?

We need to talk about racism in the climate movement



News you might’ve missed

Poor countries face a debt crisis ‘unlike anything we have seen’

Affluence is killing the planet, warn scientists

Turkey is bent on extinguishing a beacon of women’s liberation in northern Syria

Finland violates the rights of the Sámi people by allowing mining companies in Sámi homeland

How the legacy of colonialism built a palm oil empire



Where we’re at: analysis

Capitalist catastrophism

Neoliberalism is in critical condition

Indigenous peoples guard ‘the lungs of the planet’ for all of us

Beyond the stereotype: How dependency theory remains relevant

The world is in chaos. Embrace it.

Prolonged uprising is the new normal



Black Lives Matter

On Black women’s ecologies

Theses on the George Floyd rebellion

Black autonomy and lessons from the Black Power struggle

Black Lives Matter and the trap of performative activism

What Elinor Ostrom can tell us on defunding the police

The universal truth of Black Lives Matter — a view from Europe. Also: What Black America means to Europe, by Gary Younge.



COVID-19: where do we go from here?

In pandemic recovery efforts, polluting industries are winning big

COVID-19 broke the economy. What if we don’t fix it?

Reflections on the virus as an opportunity for radical societal change

Latin America reels as coronavirus pandemic gains pace

Pandemic municipalism, an interview with Kate Shea Baird



Food politics

Food sovereignty now and beyond COVID-19

The forest as farm

We can build a better food system through mutual aid

How red meat became the red pill for the alt-right

Socialise the food system

It’s not just meat: Covid-19 puts all food-system workers in peril

Selling out West Papua: An Al Jazeera special report on human rights abuses in billion-dollar land deals



Just think about it…

German far right infiltrates green groups with call to protect the land

Conservatism, racism, and fascism confused

Running to the now ‘reformed’ IMF would be a mistake



New politics

Constructive criticism of degrowth is NOT support for growth

What does self-reliance really mean? Amazing stories emerge from India’s villages

“To halt climate change, we need an ecological Leninism”

Life and times at the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

“A political form built out of struggle”: An interview on the Seattle Occupied protest 

Get in the zone: A report from the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle

Interview: Civil Defense Forces commanders on community policing in North and East Syria 

Police abolition and other revolutionary lessons from Rojava

The empty future of ecology. Extinction Rebellion has made waves in the mainstream media, but can it achieve its goals if it continues to whitewash climate justice?

Reclaiming the body of the witch. A review of Beyond the Periphery of the Skin from Silvia Federici.



Resources

Who will feed us? Report comparing industrial food system with peasant farming

The traumatic recent history of the Sámi. An online talk.

Read up on the links between racism and the environment

Prisons, policing, and punishment. A resource guide.



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May readings

Illustration: Alexandra Bowman

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

Following the killing of George Floyd, one in a long line of brutal murders of Black people by police, anti-racism protests have swept across the US, and conversations about structural racism and police brutality have dominated the global media. We decided to use this momentum to highlight educational readings and resources on anti-racism, police abolition, and the connections between racism and environmental issues.

In other news, this month, we launched a new section on our site: the Resources for a better future glossary! We kicked it off with Eleanor Finley’s entry on Human nature, which we linked below. In this month’s list, we also included analyses of where we’re at and where we’re going with regards to the COVID-19 pandemic, and, as usual, we collected a variety of readings and resources about new politics, cities and radical municipalism, degrowth, and activism.



Uneven Earth updates

We launched Resources for a better future – a glossary of crucial concepts in political ecology, alternative economics, and environmental justice. It offers easy-to-read, clear, and opinionated explainers of some of the most important political and ecological issues of our time.

Human nature | In the first entry of our new glossary, Eleanor Finley argues that there is no human nature, only human potential

Crisis Collage | How do we move ahead now?

Planet of the dehumanized | Environmentalism that does not center structural inequality is a dangerous nod to both eco-fascists and eco-modernists alike



Top 5 articles to read

Reimagining a world where justice is possible. “It was none other Martin Luther King Jr. who said, “injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.” We live in a world where robbing entire classes and societies; manufacturing and trading ever deadlier weapons; poisoning the air, earth, and water; torturing or wiping out entire species; etc. are the alphabet of power. The justice of such power cannot be anything but a hellish nightmare for those who are born into the margins. Such a world will always be racist, regardless of the humanist sentiments of the majority.”

Unlearning: From degrowth to decolonization

Racism, police violence, and the climate are not separate issues

We don’t farm because it’s trendy; we farm as resistance, for healing and sovereignty. Farming is not new to Black people.

We defend ourselves so we can all breathe in peace



News you might’ve missed

International Monetary Fund leverages COVID-19 economic fallout to create a land market in Ukraine despite widespread opposition

Brazil: Deforestation on Indigenous lands increases 59% in the first months of 2020

Brazilian Landless movement and economist Eduardo Moreira launch FINAPOP, a new community-supported investment fund, to support grassroots agroecological farming

East Africa facing ‘triple threat’ from coronavirus, locusts and flooding, Red Cross warns

Land conflicts flare across South-East Asia during coronavirus lockdowns



Resources on anti-racism and police abolition

Understanding structural racism, and how to fight back

Geographies of racial capitalism with Ruth Wilson Gilmore. A short film.

A Twitter thread filled with revolutionary books that can guide us during this time, a collection of Black revolutionary texts, and Frantz Fanon’s writings

Black Socialists of America resource guide 

‘Racism dictates who gets dumped on’: how environmental injustice divides the world, and more in this series: Our unequal earth

‘They chose us because we were rural and poor’: when environmental racism and climate change collide. The environmental movement has a long history in America’s south – yet people of color and impoverished communities continue to face dangerous pollution.

Black environmentalists on climate and anti-racism 

Coronavirus: its impact cannot be explained away through the prism of race. “Race is a social construct with no scientific basis. However, there are clear links between people’s racial groups, their socioeconomic status, what happens to them once they are infected and the outcome of their infection. And focusing on the idea of a genetic link merely serves to distract from this.” 

The violence of, and alternatives to, policing

The George Floyd killing in Minneapolis exposes the failures of police reform

The end of policing. According to Ruth Wilson Gilmore, this free eBook available on Verso “combines the best in academic research with rhetorical urgency to explain why the ordinary array of police reforms will be ineffective in reducing abusive policing. Alex Vitale shows that we must move beyond conceptualizing public safety as interdiction, exclusion, and arrest if we hope to achieve racial and economic justice.”

Reading towards abolition. A reading list on policing, rebellion, and the criminalization of Blackness.

Abolition study. A list of readings and resources.



Just think about it…

During coronavirus, is ‘wellness’ just being well-off? 

Why social isolation is part of Amazonian Shamanic practices 

My first lockdown was during the first Intifada. Living under a lockdown in Europe has brought back memories of my childhood in Gaza during the Palestinian uprising.

Internationalism in Vietnam, then and now. Building on the traditions established by Ho Chi Minh.

What is energy denial? A text from 2019 about “clean energy danger denial” – the tendency that we overlook the hazards of renewable energy production because fossil fuels are so bad.

The wildness is in me, too. People were excluded from the wild, historically, and in today’s rapidly digitizing West.

How ‘sustainable’ development ravaged the Congo Basin

The ugly underbelly of veganism in India

The final frontier. On why US culture is so obsessed with conquering space.

The wife glitch: Household tech makes women’s work profitable—for men



Where we’re at: analysis

Hope against hope. An Interview with Out of the Woods on COVID-19, climate crisis, and disaster communism.

Favela journalists debate ‘mistakes the press are making covering coronavirus in favelas’, the latest in RioOnWatch’s article series on Coronavirus in the favelas

The dangers of legalising public land theft in Brazil: agribusiness, deforestation, and the melting pot of future pandemics

Coronavirus in Rojava: Facing a pandemic without a state

Counting corona losses in Africa

The solution to the coronavirus recession is a global Green New Deal. A healthy, socially, and ecologically just world demands it.

How new is the Green New Deal for the Global South?

The ‘green’ new deal should not be a new imperial masterplan 

Real reconciliation starts with fair economics

Lawless ocean: The link between human rights abuses and overfishing

Canada’s forests remain under threat — and the clock is ticking for governments to step up

Food is power

The impulse to garden in hard times has deep roots



New politics

Public abundance is the secret to the Green New Deal 

Reviving Indigenous authorities in Guatemala

Indigenous leadership points the way out of the COVID crisis

Coronavirus and the life lessons from “ordinary” people to save the Earth and ourselves

Organizing is not about getting people to agree with radical ideas

Permanently organized communities



Cities and radical municipalism

How cities are clamping down on cars 

Emancipatory mutual aid: from education to liberation. A New Orleans radical mutual aid group organizes with and within communities to help transform the conditions that created the crisis in the first place.

The problem with forcing developers to provide open space. On urban design and failed green spaces.

Kowloon Walled City. In Hong Kong, it was the densest place on Earth.



Degrowth!

How GDP fetishism drives climate crisis and inequality. Jason Hickel discusses degrowth on the Citations Needed podcast.

Techno-socialism or de-growth? The second in a three-part interview on capitalism and climate breakdown from Political Economy for the End Times.

Fairytales of growth. A film on climate change, degrowth, and system change.



Resources

26 ways to be in the struggle beyond the streets

Mapping our social change roles in times of crisis

Ethnography and the struggle for social justice. Didactic video resources on how ethnographic research can be used to strengthen social justice struggles, with the Brazilian urban movement Lutas Pela Moradia no Centro da Cidade (with English subtitles).

A list of political ecology-themed podcast episodes

HackΑthens 2020 recommended readings on urbanism, cities, architecture, history, and arts from a degrowth perspective, and in the context of pandemics

22 films to watch after (or instead of) Planet of the Humans

Timothée Parrique’s Twitter account, where he shares lots of useful information and resources on degrowth

Food fermentation in Northeast India

Agroecology in Cuba, a film with English subtitles



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March & April readings

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

All of March and April, we’ve collected lots of articles on coronavirus. And we thought that, now, two months after the World Health Organization declared it a global pandemic, is a good moment to reflect on where we are and take stock of where we are going. So, this reading list, we’re only featuring articles on coronavirus.

First, we’re highlighting guides and resources for how to organize during the crisis. Second, we highlight the political actions and movements that are responding to the crisis around the world. Third, we feature articles focusing on the wave of mutual aid that has emerged following the pandemic. We are also including analysis of what caused the pandemic. Other topics include: its effects in the Global South, the importance of care & care work, its impact on cities, degrowth as a key response to the economic crisis caused by the pandemic, its effect on food systems, the emergence of eco-fascism in response, and analysis of what the world will look like after this all.



Uneven Earth updates

The only thing to last forever | An endless repetition had taken hold of the world

Where did coronavirus come from, and where will it take us? | An interview with Rob Wallace, author of Big Farms Make Big Flu

Pandemic strike | Rob Wallace says we need new tactics to show that people’s lives matter more than profit

Exploring transformative change on the brink | In moments such as these, the landscape of possibility shifts. How can activists engage on the ground?

This pandemic IS ecological breakdown: different tempo, same song | Comparisons between the toll of COVID-19 and climate change are not helpful because they view each as two separate “things”

Our contributing editor Vijay Kolinjivadi also appeared on the podcast This Is Hell! to talk about his article.

Now is the time to end the climate emergency | Reading The Green New Deal and beyond in the middle of a global crisis

To organize in times of crisis, we need to connect the dots of global resistance against Imperialism | Moving beyond a politics of confusion towards Internationalism

When viruses shatter limits | Viruses are invisibly small, cause monumental pandemics, and force us to rethink our taxonomies



Top 5 articles to read

In light of the global pandemic, focus attention on the people. A 16-point list of demands from the International Assembly of the Peoples and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Within and beyond the pandemic, demanding a care income and a feminist Green New Deal for Europe

Social reproduction theory and why we need it to make sense of the coronavirus crisis

No new normal

Pandemic insolvency: Why this economic crisis will be different



Guides, how-tos, and resources

List of resources and guides on how to do mutual aid during a pandemic

Useful list of Covid-19-related information and explanatory guides

COVID-19 tenant organizing guide

Resources on strikes during COVID-19

How to fight fascism while surviving a plague

How to organize your workplace against COVID-19

COVID-19 Left perspectives: A reading list

Feminist resources on the pandemic

Food safety and coronavirus: A comprehensive guide

Post-capitalist reading in a time of pandemic



Political actions and demands

Call of the Indigenous peoples, afro-descendants and peoples’ organizations of Latin America

A call to action: Towards a general strike to end the COVID-19 crisis and create a new world

Organizing under lockdown: online activism, local solidarity

Imagining protest in a quarantined world

Defining a space for resistance: Countering the disempowering effects of social distancing 

Essential workers: Class struggle in the time of coronavirus 

Rent strike nation

Our towns: Public libraries respond to COVID-19

Social movements in and beyond the COVID-19 crisis: sharing stories of struggles

Coronavirus has transformed the climate movement into something new

To our friends all over the world from the eye of Covid-19 storm



Mutual aid

Five quick thoughts on the limits of Covid-19 mutual aid groups & how they might be overcome

Don’t forget: disasters and crises bring out the best in people

People are fighting the coronavirus with mutual aid efforts to help each other

Autonomous groups are mobilizing mutual aid initiatives to combat the coronavirus

From mutual aid to dual power in the state of emergency

Mutual aid groups respond to coronavirus and climate change threats

Amid coronavirus pandemic, neighbors delivering what government cannot

The global guardians: Volunteering in Milan’s neighborhoods



What caused the pandemic?

‘Tip of the iceberg’: is our destruction of nature responsible for Covid-19?

Profits above all: world’s largest pork company propagates global pandemics

Think exotic animals are to blame for the coronavirus? Think again.

New research suggests industrial livestock, not wet markets, might be origin of Covid-19

COVID-19 and circuits of capital

Ten theses on farming and disease from Rob Wallace

Is factory farming to blame for coronavirus?

‘A common germ pool’: The frightening origins of the coronavirus



The pandemic in the Global South

Coronavirus hits the Global South

IMF, World Bank urge debt relief for poor nations battling virus

For autocrats, and others, coronavirus is a chance to grab even more power

Indigenous groups in Canada, Australia, Brazil brace for coronavirus

Dispatch #6 from Palestine on COVID-19, curfews & mutual aid

Stories from Kerala’s spirited virus fight

The pandemic can be a catalyst for decolonisation in Africa

Negligence, injustice, and insensitivity – Peasant situation under coronavirus crisis



Thinking about the pandemic: analysis and theory

The coronavirus pandemic, capitalism, and nation-states 

Peter Linebaugh on the long history of pandemics

The coronation by Charles Eisenstein

Coronavirus and the world-economy: The old is dead, the new can’t be born

Coronavirus and the need for a social ecology

Oxana Timofeeva, Georges Bataille: A pandemic read

Academia in the time of Covid-19: Our chance to develop an ethics of care

How the world became place where we remembered breath

Mike Davis on COVID-19: The monster is finally at the door

#CoronaCapitalism: How corporations are responding to the coronavirus crisis

COVID-19 and the neoliberal state of exception

In conflict with disease



Care during a pandemic

On social reproduction and the covid-19 pandemic

Social reproduction and the pandemic, with Tithi Bhattacharya

COVID-19 pandemic: A crisis of care

Care in the time of covid-19 

A crisis like no other: social reproduction and the regeneration of capitalist life during the COVID-19 pandemic

Asian American feminist antibodies. A zine that makes meaning of the coronavirus crisis through long-standing practices of care that come out of Asian American histories and politics.

The coronavirus fallout may be worse for women than men. Here’s why

The coronavirus is a disaster for feminism



Coronavirus and our cities

How cities can adapt to Covid-19

‘Idiocy of our current urban systems’: Inequality, not high-density cities, to blame for COVID-19’s spread

Disinvestment made our cities a powder keg in a pandemic

For urban poor, the coronavirus complicates existing health risks

Coronavirus is revealing the harm Airbnb did to urban rental markets



Growth, degrowth, and corona-crisis

Pandenomics: a story of life versus growth

In the midst of an economic crisis, can ‘degrowth’ provide an answer?

Coronavirus and degrowth

Is the economic shutdown what degrowth advocates have been calling for?

A degrowth perspective on the coronavirus crisis

Jason Hickel on Twitter: “Just to be clear: the economic contraction that’s happening right now is *not* degrowth. If you’re ever confused, you can consult this handy list of questions.”

Or, if you’re still confused, check out this handy online quiz: Is this degrowth?



How are food systems affected?

Farmworkers are risking their lives to feed a nation on lockdown

IPES special report: COVID-19 and the crisis in food systems

5 lessons for food systems thinking from COVID-19



Eco-fascism and the pandemic

Fake animal news abounds on social media as coronavirus upends life

It’s not “ecofascism”—it’s liberalism

‘We’re the virus’: The pandemic is bringing out environmentalism’s dark side

What the ‘humans are the virus’ meme gets so wrong

Coronavirus and the radical right: conspiracy, disinformation, and xenophobia



What the world will look like after coronavirus

The coronavirus is rewriting our imaginations

Technocracy after COVID-19

The coming debt deluge

Will coronavirus signal the end of capitalism?

It was the virus that did it

Coronavirus will require us to completely reshape the economy

The coronavirus is leading to a whole new way of economic thinking

COVID19 is changing the ideas that we consider politically possible

Owning the future: After COVID-19, a new era of community wealth building

We can afford to beat this crisis

What will the world be like after coronavirus? Four possible futures



Want to receive this as a newsletter in your inbox? Subscribe here.

Now is the time to end the climate emergency

by Natalie Suzelis

In The Green New Deal and Beyond: Ending the Climate Emergency While We Still Can, Stan Cox has a message for all who were counting on the Green New Deal to help save us from ecological and economic collapse: this legislation will not go far enough. Cox’s book comes at a sobering time, when the only two U.S. presidential candidates he mentions as being in favor of the Green New Deal—Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—have fallen behind a ‘more electable’ candidate who has not expressed such enthusiastic support for GND policies. In light of such developments, and in light of the global health crisis now facing the world, a manuscript devoted to many of the GND’s shortcomings might seem untimely. Yet Cox provides important insights into how our intersecting crises—ecological, economic, and epidemiological—could lead to a positive restructuring of the economy, if we can push such legislation to meet them. To do so, Cox argues, requires expanding the GND’s restorative approach to environmental justice, a willingness to reinvent the economy at a scale not seen since World War II, and the prioritizing of people and the planet above economic growth.

There are a few assumptions of the Green New Deal with which Cox takes issue, given how far we have advanced on the climate clock. These include the legislation’s vision to build up ‘green’ energy capacity and its promise to maintain and even accelerate economic growth. First, Cox addresses the common assumption that clean energy will push out old, dirty energy, by showing that there is so far no evidence to support that this will happen. As Cox shows from previous cap-and-trade policies, new energy sources are more likely to add to the existing energy supply than replace it. So far, the attempt to phase out fossil fuel energy with solar and wind power has only served to supplement the energy market and, sometimes, even enhance the production and trade of fossil fuels. Therefore, the parts of the GND which promise to re-grow the economy by replacing fossil fuels with renewable or clean energy sources are simply not realistic. To reach the goal of clean energy by 2030 through solar and wind power, we would have to build infrastructure for such industries ‘at thirty-three times the highest rate of buildup ever achieved to date’ and at scale which would infringe upon land and water which we would do better to conserve. 

Cox urges us to accept that while we must phase out fossil fuels now with a strong cap on fossil fuel production, we must also accept that such a rapid phasing out of fossil fuels will shrink GDP.

Instead, Cox urges us to accept that while we must phase out fossil fuels now with a strong cap on fossil fuel production, we must also accept that such a rapid phasing out of fossil fuels will shrink GDP. This insight brings some of the Green New Deal’s aims in conflict with one another. In the legislation’s own language, the GND proposes to bring ‘unprecedented levels of prosperity’ and a new era of ‘domestic manufacturing in the United States,’ while also ‘restoring and protecting threatened, endangered, and fragile ecosystems.’ Yet as Cox points out, land and soil restoration alone will take a massive amount of work and coordination. The GND would then have to choose between such restoration and the massive building of new industries. Cox argues that the choice should be clear for those who truly know what is at stake. Because the GND also aims to ‘promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous communities, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth’ Cox argues that it cannot do so while also drastically reducing emissions and growing a new energy market. 

What’s new is also old

To help us understand how we might avoid some of these assumptions, Cox points to a few lessons learned from the old New Deal. What is not new about the Green New Deal, for example, is its ambitious goal to take on the task of essentially planning the entire economy as a necessary response to economic and ecological crisis. Although it may seem unthinkable after decades of neoliberalism, structural adjustment, and austerity, Cox reminds us that Roosevelt himself had introduced the New Deal by publicly acknowledging that ‘free market policies and resource extraction’ had created a fiscal and ecological emergency that required an entirely new — and entirely planned—economy (3). The government’s ability to take the reins from the free market was the first step in the New Deal’s success. The second, and more essential step, was that a national labor movement held this project accountable to workers. This labor pressure, which resulted in the passing of the National Labor Relations Act, helped ensure that the projects and stimulus packages meant to plan both production and consumption specifically addressed the rights struggles of working people along with the conservation and maintenance of the environment.

Yet what made the New Deal unsuccessful was its failure to implement its goals across racial lines. As Cox acknowledges, rather than helping Black workers in the South, for example, the New Deal cemented institutional racism by deferring to locally prevailing wages for occupations dominated by Black workers. Further, the Social Security Act of 1935 did not cover farm laborers nor domestic workers, which employed two-thirds of the Black population, and the New Deal’s housing policies perpetuated residential segregation. In order to learn from this history, Cox points us to the successful campaign of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, which recruited thousands to stage a successful strike that demanded higher wages for Black and white farmworkers across northeast Arkansas. The goal of this organization was both a protest movement and a labor union: agitation and publicity, along with strikes and collective bargaining, aimed to put pressure on the New Deal and present radical alternatives to its policy. Similarly, no matter how progressive the Green New Deal’s goals, Cox argues that it must also face relentless pressure from unions, social movements, activists, and groups like Indigenous Climate Action, Sunrise Movement, Keep it in the Ground, and Fridays For Future, in solidarity with land and water protectors who are already struggling to defend some of the world’s largest carbon sinks. 

The GND does take some of the New Deal’s key mistakes into account, in arguing for the importance of protecting First Nations and marginalized communities. Yet more pressure will be required to recognize the hard truth that we have already overshot our shared limit of fossil fuel production and consumption, and that even the clean energy of new public infrastructure would rely upon dangerous extractive practices that threaten marginalized communities and the sovereignty of indigenous lands. Climate activists, scholars, and the public must therefore ask themselves: can the GND really ensure a just energy transition by building a roaring new ‘green’ economy and mining raw materials like cobalt, cooper, lithium from around the world, which, as Cox points out, are both notoriously associated with human rights abuses and harmful extraction (68)? What the optimism of the GND does not appear to be taking into account is that the mining of such materials—even those meant to produce ‘clean’ or ‘renewable’ energy—is going to remain a dirty business.

We must be willing to cut the wasteful parts of this economy in the same way that the War Productions Board of the 1940s cut, simplified, and restructured the U.S. economy of the 1940s. 

Further, what the GND seems to have not learned from the history of the New Deal is that a stimulus package by itself will not go far enough. In the case of the New Deal, as Cox points out, it was ultimately not the massive stimulus but the United States’ transition into a war economy that addressed both unemployment and overproduction. This is also why the United States, to this day, relies upon its military to help expand a GDP that is fundamentally linked to high carbon emissions. While the fact that the U.S. military is a bigger polluter than most countries is well known, what is less known, as Cox asserts, is that we must be willing to cut the wasteful parts of this economy in the same way that the War Productions Board of the 1940s cut, simplified, and restructured the U.S. economy of the 1940s. 

A rationing economy

In what has become a rather prescient observation, given the current state of emergency brought on by the spread of COVID-19, Cox reminds us that it was not the New Deal, but the ‘emergency’ of World War II which allowed the U.S. to entirely restructure its system of production and consumption. In 1936, when the Roosevelt administration began easing off stimulus support, unemployment leapt back up to 19% and remained above fourteen percent until the war effort redirected its production to war-related materials and projects. Having spent $62 billion on stimulating the economy over the last eight years, Congress then spent $321 billion over the next five years in its transitioning to a war economy. Cox points out that while this new form of spending worked in restructuring production and consumption, many forget the sacrifices that were made to ensure a successful transition. A key element often left out, for example, is the War Production Board’s mandatory clampdown on prices as well as its rationing efforts, which aimed to ensure adequate food, shelter, clothing, and other basic necessities for the entire population. To this end, the War Production Board shrank, standardized, and simplified the economy in order to reduce civilian rail travel, prohibit the shipping of retail packages, and reduce the number and varieties of most commercial products. 

Here Cox lingers on the point of the War Production Board’s tight rationing of goods, which included both food and fossil fuels. This is because, for Cox, proper rationing will be fundamental to a just energy transition. In making connections between the WPB’s tight regulation of the economy and what he argues should be a similar response to the emergency of ecological collapse, Cox chronicles how households were issued a monthly set of stamps for meats, cheeses, butter, sugar, fuel oil, kerosene, gasoline, tires, cars, bicycles, stoves, typewriters, shoes, coffee, canned fish and milk, fats, and other processed goods. Drivers began carpooling to work and families across the country planted 22 million ‘victory gardens’ to supplement the rationing system. Rather than being a hardship, Cox argues, rationing improved nutrition across economic classes and was met with overwhelming public approval. Even when ‘rationing was at its zenith,’ as Cox reports, approval outweighed disapproval by two to one, because civilians believed rationing was necessary to eliminate food shortages and conserve important raw materials. Cox insists that the same mindset must accompany the Green New Deal, which would entail a concerted effort on the part of national, state, and local legislation to ration electricity with the same zeal that this country has historically reserved for wartime.   

Rations but not population control

Rationing off of overblown production and consumption of fossil fuels will not be as difficult for some as for others. Eighty percent of the population, as Cox reminds us, does not fly. Yet for all of Cox’s attention to detail in how to redistribute equitable energy consumption, there is one part of his enthusiasm for rationing that might give us pause, however. At one point, Cox suggests that one possible rationing formula might be ‘equal numbers of credits per adult for each energy source, with an additional half-credit for up to two children per household’ (103). Readers who have been following eagerly along may experience some dismay here. Why only up to two children, why only a half-credit per child, and what about children with special needs, for example, who might require a certain amount of technology? At this point in the book, it would have been helpful for Cox to engage with critiques of Malthusian population control, which is a well-known slippery slope in seeing the violence of climate catastrophe—and even epidemics—as helping to lower carbon footprint by lowering population. Recent takes about the spread of COVID-19 being a kind of ‘vaccine’ for humanity, for example, operate in precisely this Malthusian vein. Such presumptions forget that it is the safest and wealthiest classes who are responsible for the most emissions and even the spread of global disease, and that those least responsible for ecological and epidemiological crises are most vulnerable in their lack of access to healthcare, fresh food, shelter, and a living wage. Cox cites Georgios Kallis and other degrowth scholars who explicitly critique the Malthusian position of overpopulation, but he does not bring up these critiques in his own account.

Despite the above sentence, which enters into Cox’s analysis at the end of a long discussion about solidarity rationing, Cox is committed to reminding readers that the GND aims to stop carbon emissions in ways that will fundamentally uplift the most vulnerable. To do this, he maintains, the GND must be willing to deliberately scale back the economy and completely phase out fossil fuels by 2030, curtail the production and consumption of cars, air travel, and other fossil-fuel related activities, degrow the military and militarized law enforcement, end mass incarceration, and stop giving subsidies to industries that overproduce of civilian and military products. As Cox writes, we need a lower-energy economy with fewer goods, shorter working hours, and a motto of ‘sufficiency for all.’ Standardization and simplification will help ensure equitable distribution of essential resources and cut out the most wasteful parts of the economy. 

The details of this kind of scaling back must be negotiated through local and participatory processes.

In thus countering the ‘eco-modernist’ approach of unhampered production in service of green luxury, Cox takes issue with those who do not see the need to deliberately scale back the economy. He argues instead that while many still believe that nuclear power or a battery-operated world will solve our problems, we must take a long, hard look at our ecological limits. If we are serious about meeting climate goals, for example, there can be no ‘high-speed rail’ as promised by Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, because the concrete alone involved in such a project would contribute to an already-overshot cap of emissions. Rather, existing rail lines should be refurbished and extended in scaling back private transportation, while acknowledging that we need less—not more—energy use. The details of this kind of scaling back must be negotiated through local and participatory processes, but they would aim to include more public transportation, well-insulated and high-density housing, solar electric and water heating, and a new system of rationing not unlike that of the 1940s War Production Board. The good news is that the people responsible for the majority of emissions are in a relatively small class of consumers. The bad news is that we have to find a way to convince them to scale back the most.

In highlighting the above fact, Cox points out another common assumption: that simply taxing the 1% will be enough to stimulate the economy and re-build public infrastructure. Here the ambitious policies of both Sanders and Warren are called into question for not going far enough. Instead, Cox argues that the entire upper-middle class of the United States, which has a higher income than 96% of the world, will be adversely impacted by any ‘just transition’ that can equitably phase out fossil fuels. This is why Cox argues that a fair, effective climate policy will necessitate that ‘the 33% of American households with highest incomes will bear the greatest economic burden’ both in having to pay for economic restructuring, and in scaling back their own overblown consumption (109). The consumption of both its billionaire class and upper-middle class—the world’s 4%—must be heavily capped.

Restorative environmental justice

Instead of ‘leading the fight against climate change’ then, as the Green New Deal proposes, it would be more accurate to say that such legislation will begin to take some responsibility for centuries of uneven emissions, where the poorest parts of the world (who are responsible for only 15% of global emissions) feel the harshest and most brutal impacts of tropical storms, hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, and global migration. In fully recognizing the need for the U.S. to become accountable to these uneven causes and consequences, Cox acknowledges that there are many things which the Green New Deal gets right, or at least very close to right, in its vision of restorative environmental justice. Yet if the Green New Deal continues to rely upon the dream of a green energy economy to rival that of the fossil fuel industry, Cox warns, it will have to ignore this vision, as well as many of its own mandates to improve land use, preserve soil quality, and protect indigenous lands. Even if the U.S. refrains from further extractive practices on its own land, but continues mining precious metals across the world, it will still fail to enact this vision. Cox therefore suggests that the U.S. take part in a global fair-shares energy allocation that models the Green New Deal’s pro-worker and pro-poor economics, with the aim of globally ‘raising the floor and lowering the ceiling’ to put underdeveloped countries on par with developed ones.

Ultimately, Cox’s message is that, like the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, which pushed the New Deal to ensure both workers’ rights and racial justice, the climate movement must stand in solidarity with indigenous climate struggles against market solutions, even and especially those alluded to in the Green New Deal. The good news is that those who are not already a part of the 33% of upper-class consumers will have less to sacrifice, and will likely benefit from the GND’s demands for worker’s rights, universal healthcare, housing, jobs, and universal access to clean air, water, and food. As Cox reminds us, the 40% at the bottom of the economic pyramid have a net worth of negative $22,000, which is why we must, as he says, raise the floor and lower the ceiling. Yet those who turn their noses up to a ‘sufficiency for all’ planned economy—which include, as Cox points out, the ‘fully automated luxury’ green modernists of the Left—must also be brought face-to-face with the reality that we are already approaching, at best, a future of more limited consumption.

In writing this book, Stan Cox could not have anticipated that the spread of COVID-19 may itself present an emergency situation requiring the restructuring and planning of the economy. The recently passed CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act in the U.S., which includes loan forgiveness and emergency funds for economic relief, has attempted to intervene in this emergency for the sake of stabilizing the economy. Cox would likely respond that such drastic intervention must become the new normal, but not for the sake of the market. Rather, he would argue that such an emergency should be an impetus for simplifying, standardizing, and restructuring production and consumption. Cox argues that this is not idealism, but necessity. By 2030 or 2040, if our aims and policies turn out to have been insufficient, as he points out, it will have been too late.

Natalie Suzelis is a Ph.D. candidate in Literary and Cultural Studies at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research analyzes the environmental and cultural history of capitalist development in early modern literature.

February readings

Left to right: Dinï ze’ Knedebeas, Warner William, Dinï ze’ Hagwilnegh, Ron Mitchell, Dinï ze’ Woos, Frank Alec, Dinï ze’ Madeek, Jeff Brown, Dinï ze’ Gisday’wa, Fred Tom. In back is Dinï ze’ Ste ohn tsiy, Rob Alfred. Wet’suwet’en territory near Houston, B.C. on Saturday, January 4, 2020. Amber Bracken (Source: macleans.ca)


Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

This February, we’ve collected–once again–articles that go beyond the front-page analysis of Covid-19, otherwise known as the ‘coronavirus’. Some excellent and useful pieces in there, including an intervention by Chuang, a radical Chinese journal. You might have also seen that Indigenous warriors in Wet’suwet’en were being forcibly removed from their land by Canadian armed forces–leading to blockades of key infrastructure by other Indigenous nations in solidarity with them. We’ve collected all kinds of pieces on the issue, including basic explainers, maps, background about Indigenous struggles in Canada, and deeper dives. We’re also featuring pieces on transportation and mobility, underlined by the growing call for free public transit around the world. Finally, this month, we’re highlighting rural struggles and politics



Uneven Earth updates

Remembering | Link | “I remember rent being low. But water was expensive. A lot of electricity went into the desalination plants.” 

A post-growth Green New Deal | Link | To decarbonize we must degrow, decommodify, and democratize the economy

A Wood Wide Web Story: an Apple Tree in Daegu | Link | “The surrogate mothers could only be married to the earth.” 

Who owns the Green New Deal? | Link | Making sense of remote ownership problems and place-based governance 



Top 5 articles to read

Centuries of fire: Rebel memory and Andean utopias in Bolivia

Staring at hell: The aesthetics of architecture in a ruined world

Water is life: Nick Estes on Indigenous technologies

Mapping the end of the world

Breaking development. Our concept of “development” is destructive and irrational.



News you might’ve missed

Planned fossil fuel production rise locks in dangerous levels of warming

‘History disappears’ as dam waters flood ancient Turkish town

Heathrow third runway ruled illegal over climate change

Renewable energy could power the world by 2050

Sweden’s indigenous groups report death threats after landmark court win and Reindeer tortured after threats towards Sámi community in northern Sweden (see this on the court case about land rights)

How Hindu supremacists are tearing India apart

A cobalt crisis could put the brakes on electric car sales

Fates of humans and insects intertwined, warn scientists

Is this the end of Rojava? Also: Rojava after Rojava

Agribusiness company with financial support from UK, US and Netherlands is dispossessing thousands

The quiet start of Brazil’s war on the Amazon

Europeans now have the right to repair – and that means the rest of us probably will too

Armed ecoguards funded by WWF ‘beat up Congo tribespeople’

Speeding sea level rise threatens nuclear plants



Everything you need to know about Wet’suwet’en actions

Explainers

Map of Wet’suwet’en solidarity actions

Country erupts into Wet’suwet’en solidarity demonstrations: A week in pictures

The Wet’suwet’en protest and the coastal GasLink pipeline

‘What cost are human rights worth?’ UN calls for immediate RCMP withdrawal in Wet’suwet’en standoff

In Kanesatake, women are the face of Mohawk resistance

Indigenous resistance shakes the Canadian state

Rail blockades are proving to be an effective non-violent response to state violence

GasLink, the Wet’suwet’en people and Canada’s ongoing colonialism

Background

Wet’suwet’en protests a revolutionary moment in Canada: Mohawk scholar Gerald Taiaiake Alfred

Beyond bloodlines: How the Wet’suwet’en hereditary system at the heart of the Coastal GasLink conflict works

Indigenous-led CN rail blockades could cost ‘billions’ and that’s the point: Pro-Wet’suwet’en organizers

The Wet’suwet’en are more united than pipeline backers want you to think

What does “land back” mean? A thread from âpihtawikosisân on Twitter.

Dive deeper

Being with the land, protects the land

Canada’s battle against First Nations shows slide toward authoritarianism

Here’s some resources on Indigenous rights in the context of Wet’suwet’en solidarity

‘Reconciliation is dead and it was never really alive’

Yellowhead Institute’s Land Back report delivers devastating critique of land dispossession in Canada

Wet’suwet’en: Why are Indigenous rights being defined by an energy corporation?

A short introduction to the Two Row Wampu

The ideology of reconciliation



Coronavirus

Preparing for coronavirus to strike the U.S.

Coronavirus + capitalism = sad face. Why the American capitalist system will make the coming coronavirus pandemic worse.

Social contagion: The production of plagues

Race, epidemics, and the viral economy of health expertise

Coronavirus: product of a sick system

The coronavirus’s lesson for climate change

The state of exception provoked by an unmotivated emergency

Coronavirus: China’s air pollution levels, smog show hit to the economy

Covid-19 will mark the end of affluence politics



Just think about it…

William Gibson — the prophet of cyberspace talks AI and climate collapse

The U.S. military is not sustainable

The Trump era is a golden age of conspiracy theories – on the right and left

Tech startups are flooding Kenya with apps offering high-interest loans

Biodiversity highest on Indigenous-managed lands

The war on food waste is a waste of time

A spider’s web is part of its mind, new research suggests

Crimea, Kashmir, Korea — Google redraws disputed borders, depending on who’s looking

We are drowning in a devolved world: An open letter from Devo

The volatile economics of natural vanilla in Madagascar

The climate crisis is like a world war. So let’s talk about rationing

The word ‘Anthropocene’ is failing us



Where we’re at: analysis

The illusion of centrist ecology

The EU’s green deal is a colossal exercise in greenwashing

Colonialism, the hidden cause of our environmental crisis

New Deal for Nature: Paying the emperor to fence the wind

White supremacy goes green

The fate of the planet rests on dethroning the IMF and World Bank

Feeding China is wrecking the Amazon

The struggle for democracy and socialism in Latin America



New politics

The growing global movement to end outdoor advertising

Puerto Rico’s energy insurrection

Planetary health and regeneration

Modern monetary theory in the periphery

Across the North, Indigenous communities are redefining conservation



Rural politics

An enormous land transition is underway. Here’s how to make it just.

What if we’re thinking about agriculture all wrong?

The youth are fleeing the farms: Aspiration and conflict in Kurram, Pakistan

How capitalism underdeveloped rural America

An Interview with Max Ajl on agrarian change in Tunisia

What if we only ate food from local farms?



Cities and radical municipalism

Cities fighting climate woes hasten ‘green gentrification’

Urbanist lessons from the densest neighborhoods across Europe

The case for truly taking back control – by reversing the privatisation of our cities

As sea level rises, Miami neighborhoods feel rising tide of gentrification

The ‘street food’ swindle: fake diversity, privatised space – and such small portions!

Housing discrimination made summers even hotter

Ancient ‘megasites’ may reshape the history of the first cities



Transportation

Luxembourg makes history as first country with free public transport 

In defence of fare evasion

The ride-hail utopia that got stuck in traffic

Cities turn to freewheeling public transport

Paris mayor pledges a greener ’15-minute city’



Degrowth!

Degrowth toward a steady state economy: Unifying non-growth movements for political impact

Why “de-growth” shouldn’t scare businesses

Beyond redistribution—confronting inequality in an era of low growth

India should stop obsessing about GDP, and start focusing on what matters



Resources

Extraction syllabus

Gender in academia resources

Documentary on the solidarity economy in Barcelona



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A post-growth Green New Deal

Image: Occupy Reno Media Committee CC BY-ND 2.0

by Riccardo Mastini

Over the past year the Green New Deal banner has been appropriated by so many different movements and political parties that it is difficult to agree on what it actually stands for. However, in its most radical articulations (such as the one presented in the book A Planet To Win) Green New Deal advocates prescribe the need for an active role of the State in the economy. In doing so, they heed Keynes’ advise formulated in the 1926 essay The end of laissez-faire: “The important thing for government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all.” This means moving beyond market-based environmental policy instruments (e.g. tax incentives and price signals) and fully embracing command and control regulation. Deploying the power of public investment and coordination is a historic break from the neoliberal dogma that has reigned over the world for the past 30 years. Thus, the Green New Deal is undoubtedly a step in the right direction.

A truly transformative Green New Deal cannot simply be about returning to a welfare capitalist order of days of yore. It must move beyond capitalism’s growth imperative.

However, I argue that the vision sketched out above is inadequate to deal with the current ecological emergency. A truly transformative Green New Deal cannot simply be about returning to a welfare capitalist order of days of yore. It must move beyond capitalism’s growth imperative. This is not only because there is no empirical evidence supporting the existence of a decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures anywhere near the scale needed to deal with the ecological crisis, but also because such decoupling appears unlikely to happen in the future. At least in affluent countries, therefore, a downscaling of production and consumption should be in order. But to ensure social well-being and equality in the face of a contracting economy, we need to develop a suite of post-growth policies.

Decreasing energy and material use

There is clear evidence that the deployment of renewable energy is insufficient on its own to displace fossil fuels in energy production. Historically, new energy sources have added more energy without removing older sources. The average trend in many nations around the world over the past 50 years shows that each unit of electricity generated by non fossil-fuel sources displaced less than one-tenth of a unit of fossil-fuel-generated electricity. What is, therefore, needed is a gradually declining cap on carbon emissions that a country is allowed to generate in line with its international commitments. This mechanism should be coupled with additional policies to equitably distribute the remaining national carbon budget across society and reduce energy poverty. To this end, we could think of adopting a system of carbon quotas.

Decarbonizing the energy system can be further facilitated by scaling down aggregate energy use. For instance, a recent study published in the journal Nature shows that successfully reducing emissions has historically required reductions in energy demand, which in turn was caused by a lesser growth in GDP. The objective of reducing energy use can also be pursued by decreasing material throughput since material extraction and consumption are major drivers of energy demand. This approach to reducing material throughput has the added benefit of releasing pressure on ecosystems. Post-growth policies that go in this direction include, for example, legislation for longer-lasting products, banning planned obsolescence, introducing right to repair, mandatory recyclability, mandatory long-term warranties, etc.

The decarbonization of these basic services should entail their decommodification: removing them from the market logic and subjecting them to the logic of the commons.

Decommodifying basic services

Climate change is class struggle as it forces us to rethink the material conditions of everyday life: how we move, what we eat, how we supply energy and heating to our homes. The decarbonization of these basic services should entail their decommodification: removing them from the market logic and subjecting them to the logic of the commons. One important reason why decommodification and decarbonization should proceed in lockstep is because the consumption of public services has a lower environmental impact than their private equivalents. Think of private cars vs public transportation. But even more crucial than that, reducing dependence on individual consumer goods mitigates competition for social status and, consequently, does a lot to counteract consumerism. For example, cities are being increasingly crammed with SUVs as drivers dump compact cars in a vicious race for keeping up with the trend of car-size increase. As other drivers’ cars get bigger, mine feels smaller and smaller in proportion. The proof of this is that more unequal societies tend to have higher levels of average emissions per capita. We know that purchasing power correlates with personal environmental impacts, hence we must reduce outlets in which its destructive power can be unleashed.

Some policy proposals for ensuring that everyone has their basic needs addressed in a fair and sustainable way are the following: a highly progressive tariff structure for water and electricity in which the first unit is free of charge, an enhanced and free public transport system, a large public housing plan with passive houses, public low-carbon amenities (swimming pools, libraries, community gardens, etc.).  It is time to reclaim housing, mobility, water, and energy as rights, not as commodities.

Democratising economic production

Many shades of the Green New Deal are about a return of industrial policies into the government’s toolbox. Such proposals vary considerably in boldness though: from the director of UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose Marianna Mazzucato’s mission-oriented innovation policy all the way to the leader of the climate campaign group 350.org Bill McKibben’s wartime-like mobilization. But we cannot content ourselves with a more direct role of the State in the economy, we must also democratize the workplace. It’s not enough to try and nudge consumption choices, we need to win social power over material production.

It is not so much demand that influences supply, but rather the concentration of the means of production that determines the demand.

The theory of ‘consumer sovereignty in production’, which postulates that it is up to consumers to change their spending habits to influence producers, is at the core of liberal environmentalism. But a transformative Green New Deal must reject this theory as it neglects that it is not so much demand that influences supply, but rather the concentration of the means of production that determines the demand. We have, therefore, to look for responsibilities upstream in the supply chain and put them on the shoulders of producers who have the greatest power to influence consumption options by restricting supply.

In this regard, the current shareholder model is problematic due to its concentration. Few large multinational companies and financial groups control the direction of the economy: they choose the activities in which to invest and those to be abandoned, the regions in which to place factories and those to be de-industrialized, the technologies to be used, contracts and wages to be offered, prices for consumers, and the environmental impacts from production. Hence, democratizing economic production means, first of all, involving in the decision-making processes all those who must live with the consequences of production choices, namely local communities and workers.

But even more problematic is the fact that shareholders are only concerned with a company’s ability to generate profits regardless of its social and environmental impacts. An alternative model is represented by not-for-profit cooperatives for which business activity is not an end in itself, but only a means of fulfilling the social mission of its corporate statute. This type of cooperatives are best placed to become the engine of a post-growth economy in which production decisions are taken democratically and the profit motive is impeded from acting as a pedal on the gas of productivism.

To summarize, from a post-growth perspective a Green New Deal must pursue three distinct but interrelated goals: decreasing energy and material use, decommodifying the basic necessities of life, and democratizing economic production. Any Green New Deal proposal that does not address head-on the drivers of economic growth is doomed to fall short of the challenge of steering away from the worst scenarios of ecological breakdown.

Riccardo Mastini is a PhD candidate in Ecological Economics and Political Ecology in the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is also a member of the academic collective Research & Degrowth, of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, and of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook and visit his website.

Who owns the Green New Deal?

“A reindeer stands in silent protest in front of a hydro power plant” on Indigenous Sámi land in northern Scandinavia. Image: Tobias Herrmann CC BY-NC 2.0

by Geoff Garver

Green New Deal? People, we have a problem

You go into your Wall Street investment bank and ask, “What’s a hot investment these days?”  Your super sharp investment advisor says, “Farmland in Africa! People have to eat, right? And there are more and more people. Put your money in African farmland and you’ll double your money in no time!”  She doesn’t say a word about what makes that land unique and special or about the people and other beings that live, or lived, there.

That’s a big problem. It’s a remote ownership problem. In fact, it’s a whole bunch of justice problems related to the hard-wired legacies of colonialism that come together as a multi-faceted problem about remote ownership of land and resources. In a nutshell, remote owners or rights holders often cause serious harm to far away ecosystems they know and care little about, and grave injustice to the people and other life that know those ecosystems most intimately and depend on them. 

So, what about this Green New Deal (GND)? Is it merely the old wine of capitalist growth-driven development in a new bottle, or is it a recipe for socio-political and socio-ecological transformation that will right past wrongs and reshuffle political power in favor of historically disempowered people? Any Green New Deal (GND) framed as a “just transition” has to address problems of remote ownership and empower place-based governance.

Open questions about the remote ownership problem in AOC’s GND

Some say the GND in H.R. 109 introduced by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and others is merely a shift to green or climate colonialism, by which the greening—via decarbonization and other means—of wealthy, developed countries in a growth-driven, capitalist, and globalized world will worsen injustice in developing countries. This injustice includes not only increased exposure to environmental harms and health risks from extraction of materials needed for green technologies but also ongoing wealth inequality and social and cultural upheaval as the wealth-building potential of extracted resources (jobs, profits, etc.) is mostly exported along with them. 

The GND risks continuation of the crushing of long-standing place-based governance systems.

At the heart of this injustice are international companies and their stockholders and other remote owners—land and resource grabbers—that exert enormous political power from the local to the global scale. The GND risks continuation of the crushing of long-standing place-based governance systems, permanent displacement of people with the most intimate knowledge of local ecosystems and devastation of ecosystems and the life they support, all typical of land and resource grabbing around the world.  A particular concern is that land use reform is essential to success of the GND, yet the GND does not directly confront the hard wiring of the property rights regimes that must be addressed. Another is that the GND was conceived and announced with virtually no inclusion of Indigenous voices and that unless this lack of inclusion and the superficiality of references to Indigenous ideas is overcome, the GND could maintain “broken structures that perpetuate disconnection and individualism.”

Some cautiously, others more enthusiastically, see the GND as an opportunity to end and provide restitution for these injustices.  The openings for transformative change to scale back land and resource grabbing and empower place-based governance systems, including Indigenous ones, are signaled in support for “community-driven projects and strategies” to deal with pollution and climate change; locally-appropriate ecosystem restoration; and free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous communities with respect to matters of concern to them.  For these openings to fulfill their potential, justice activist Syed Hussan argues that the GND must foster “just transition in the broadest sense” and not just deal with displaced workers in fossil fuel industries and other discrete issues that decarbonizing the economy will entail.

Where to look for answers to remote ownership problems

The good news is that worthwhile ideas about how the GND can confront problems of remote ownership and promote locally-tailored place-based governance systems are already out there. Here are some of these sources of inspiration.

The degrowth movement. Degrowth is a forceful challenge to the growth-insistent sustainable development model, and a more hopeful approach to long-term perpetuation of a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship. Degrowth combines a commitment to respecting ecologically-based limits with a commitment to developing a comprehensive, practicable approach to building thriving human communities based on conviviality and human solidarity without consumerism or material and energy excess. The reforms associated with degrowth “emphasize redistribution (of work and leisure, natural resources and wealth), social security and gradual decentralization and relocalization of the economy, as a way to reduce throughput and manage a stable adaption to a smaller economy.” Giorgos Kallis’s nine principles of degrowth should be useful in making sure the GND adequately confronts remote ownership problems: 1) End to exploitation; 2) Direct democracy; 3) Localized production; 4) Sharing and the commons; 5) Provision of relational goods, through friendship, love, healthy relationships, kinship, good citizenry; 6) Unproductive expenditures geared to communal activities, such as festivals, games and the arts; 7) Care, and treating humans and other life as ends, not means; 8) Diversity; and 9) Decommodification of land, labor and value.

The G20.  What?!? Well, it’s useful to understand the key ideas of the global political apparatus that must be overcome for the GND to lead to radical social, political and ecological transformation.  At annual meetings, the G20 typically agree on the need to “further collective actions toward achieving strong, sustainable and balanced growth to raise the prosperity of our people.” The means to do so generally involve supporting global trade and investment (much of which is tied to remote ownership) and the role of the World Trade Organization as a means to create jobs and maintain growth, with weak or marginal actions or aspirations to address inequalities, corruption, climate change and environmental harm.  The G20 supports the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, with emphasis on sustainable, inclusive economic growth. A truly progressive GND should look past the SDGs!

The EJ AtlasThe Environmental Justice Atlas documents real cases of how remote owners have created social and environmental conflict.  These compelling narratives are a rich resource for understanding in detail the problem of remote ownership and the power dynamics that must be confronted and reshuffled in order to overcome them. 

Indigenous ways of thinking and being. In many Indigenous worldviews, attachment to place, founded on respect for all life and for deep appreciation of a reciprocal relationship with the Earth and its life community, is key to a more hopeful vision of the human-Earth relationship. Indigenous activist Eriel Deranger writes, “It is Indigenous communities, locally, nationally and internationally, that continue to push for an actualization of instilling deeper spiritual connections to Mother Earth to help us relearn what systems of colonization, capitalism, and extractivism have severed.” Connecting or reconnecting to the places that nourish our bodies and souls is at the heart of the long-term promise of a GND done well. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes that “[f]or the sake of the peoples and the land, the urgent work of the Second Man may be to set aside the ways of the colonist and become indigenous to place.” But, inviting settler societies to become indigenous to place—and an invitation from Indigenous holders of knowledge of a place is essential—does not mean letting them “take what little is left.” Attaching to a place by carefully and respectfully seeking to become indigenous to it requires humility above all, and it requires direct experience with wise teachers, not merely book knowledge.

Indigenous peoples and other social groups that have been historically disadvantaged by colonization and land and resource grabbing must play a central role in developing and carrying out the GND.

Six mutually reinforcing proposals on remote ownership and place-based governance for the GND

First, Indigenous peoples and other social groups that have been historically disadvantaged by colonization and land and resource grabbing must play a central role in developing and carrying out the GND. Including Indigenous notions of justice, decolonization and self-determination through meaningful inclusion of Indigenous communities in decisions that affect them, which requires adequate time and resources, is essential.

Second, the GND should empower communities like those included in the EJ Atlas to develop strong place-based governance systems and communities of solidarity and mutual care in order to resist the social and environmental conflicts they face, often because of remote ownership. This means providing them with a determinative role in decisions affecting them directly and indirectly. It also means developing a global/international scope and strategy so remote ownership problems in one place aren’t just displaced elsewhere. Also, we should look for opportunities to scale up and out from local remote ownership problems that are avoided or justly resolved.

Third, the GND should end corporate giveaways that are tied to remote ownership problems and exclude carbon markets, offsets or emissions trading regimes, and geoengineering—all of which typically pose remote ownership problems. Instead, the Climate Justice Alliance is fighting for a GND that shifts “from global systems of production and consumption that are energy intensive and fossil fuel dependent to more localized systems that are sustainable, resilient and regenerative.”

Fourth, stocks and other investment instruments in land and resource grabbing ventures that cause social and environmental conflict and harm in faraway places should be prohibited. This may require profound restructuring, dismantling or abolition of the financial and corporate structures that allow for these kinds of investments. At the least, it would entail deep rethinking of the metaphor of corporate personhood

Fifth, the GND should explicitly reject economic growth as a rationale and driving objective. It should oppose perpetual economic growth and promote communities committed to solidarity, maximal sharing and minimal use of materials and energy.

Sixth, the GND should place limits on wealth, which would help minimize or end the remote ownership problem. The most obvious way to do this is through progressive income taxation or a tax on wealth. For this to be effective, there of course also has to be collaboration between communities worldwide against tax evasion, with the aim of abolishing tax havens. A more radical transformation would be to target the globalized currency system which makes it possible for Wall Street investors to buy African farmland with US dollars in the first place. Or, the international community could finally adopt taxes on financial transactions; already implemented in some countries, this could be expanded to more countries and international transactions.

Some tough questions to test these proposals

If the GND is a step toward post-capitalist societies where remote owners, if they still exist, are no longer able to adversely affect far away ecosystems and people, it nonetheless is starting off in a globalized capitalist economy. As John Bellamy Foster has written, “We have to go against the logic of the system while living within it.” Making the proposals above work will not be easy. It will require people power through mass organizing and consciousness building. And it will mean confronting some tough questions. Here are a few. 

Does the GND inevitably imply ongoing wealth and resource extraction in the global South to benefit the global North? If so, what are the implications for remote ownership and place-based governance? If not, what mechanisms are needed to minimize or end wealth and resource extraction in the global South to benefit the global North?

How can the GND address remote ownership in the form of ownership of financial stocks or other financial investments—keeping in mind how many people are counting on this type of investment for their retirement and long-term care?

What are some good examples that could be duplicated or scaled up of place-based governance systems that maintain fairness among humans and between humans and other life across generations? How should duplication and scaling up account for the unique features of different places and avoid one-size-fits-all approaches?

Can the GND adequately address, as Deranger puts it, the “intertwined roles of capitalism, consumerism, militarism and colonialism as foundations to the current crisis” if it remains “driven by White ENGOs, those with the resources and power, and mainstream political parties”?

Is re-establishing traditional labor protections and increasing unionization a long-term solution, or does it risk locking in an us-them worker-owner power dynamic—where the owners are often also remote owners and land and resource grabbers—that other alternatives could overcome?  What about more locally-committed, place-based employee-owned businesses or cooperatives?

Final thought

Questions like these need to be asked in relation to every single aspect of GND proposals in the advanced capitalist countries. Political organizers and activists should think about how to balance such critical questions with the visionary rhetoric that makes the GND so popular—all the while keeping in mind that the strength of a GND vision should be judged on the basis not only of its policy designs but also its ability to inspire and unite broad movement building for climate justice. Grappling with entrenched problems of remote ownership is one way to take a focused approach to building momentum for this movement.

Dr. Geoff Garver is an adjunct professor at Concordia and McGill Universities in Montreal and coordinates research on law and governance at McGill University for the Leadership for the Ecozoic initiative. He is on the steering committee of the Ecological Law and Governance Association and the board of the Quaker Institute for the Future and is active in the international degrowth movement.

January readings

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, via Counterfire


Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory. 

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth. 

We’re back from our break with fresh new readings for you! The world moves fast, and a lot has happened over the past two months. Jane Goodall’s comment at the World Economic Forum that most of our environmental problems wouldn’t exist if human population growth were at the levels they were 500 years ago sparked another debate about the validity and dangers of ‘overpopulation’ arguments. We featured a critique of her claim here. We also collected resources around green colonialism: the push to ‘green’ the Global North at the expense of the Global South. And of course, we’re sharing a couple of articles about the Wuhan coronavirus which has been dominating the news, on top of the usual news and discussions about global and Indigenous struggles, cities and radical municipalism, and degrowth.



Uneven Earth updates

Energy and the Green New Deal | Link | The complex challenge of powering societies 

Swedish colonialist neutrality | Link | A tradition of double standards from historical colonialism to current environmental injustice 

Public money for environmental justice | Link | We’ll never fund a transformative Green New Deal with money designed for capitalism 

Hayashi-san’s Green Headband | Link | “In Tokyo, New York, Montreal, Rome, Paris, Beijing, Kinshasa, millions of people were wearing green headbands … this has made you a martyr and brought the environmental movement to a level never before reached.” 

Show me the money | Link | How will we pay for the Green New Deal?

A just food transition | Link | Why the Green New Deal should give farmers a Basic Income 

Birth | Link | “Maybe then we’ll regain the access to the river, the river that is now controlled by the insiders and their obsession with energy resources.” 



Top 5 articles to read

Why we should be wary of blaming ‘overpopulation’ for the climate crisis

What if Darwin’s ideas about competition aren’t as correct as we’ve long thought?

A repair manual for Spaceship Earth

Life under the algorithm

Back to the land



News you might’ve missed

Nuclear power ‘cannot rival renewable energy’

The plastics pipeline: A surge of new production is on the way

Our pathetically slow shift to clean energy, in five charts

It’s not just Australia — Indonesia is facing its own climate disaster

Perpetual debt in the Silicon Savannah



Coronavirus

Notes on a novel coronavirus

Bat soup didn’t cause the Wuhan virus. Racist memes target Chinese eating habits, but the real causes of the coronavirus are more mundane.



Global struggles

In Hong Kong, the art of resistance and erasure

‘This place used to be green’: the brutal impact of oil in the Niger Delta

Don’t mess with French pensions

The popular assemblies at the heart of the Chilean uprising

A Mexican indigenous town’s environmental revolt

COP25, social movements and climate justice 

Rojava is a laboratory that links the environment and society with municipalism

‘This movement is just beginning’: homeless moms evicted after taking over vacant house

  • The fight for mom’s house. This is the story of a group of homeless mothers who for 58 days occupied a vacant home in Oakland, and eventually claimed a historic victory in the struggle for housing justice.

Stories of global environmental justice

Zapatista update: Forum on Defense of the Territory and Mother Earth

How the Global North’s Left media helped pave the way for Bolivia’s right-wing coup

Can Extinction Rebellion survive?




Indigenous struggles

Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs evict coastal GasLink from territory

Canada police prepared to shoot Indigenous activists, documents show

Indigenous Colombians escalate fight to rescue ancestral lands

The Wounded Knee massacre and the long tradition of Indigenous resistance

‘On my ancestors’ remains’: The fight for sacred lands

With a thousand ancestors front and back



Just think about it…

Climate change and deforestation: These 3 supertrees can protect us from climate collapse

The dark side of the Nordic model. Scandinavian countries may top every ranking on human development, but they are a disaster for the environment. 

Want to double world food production? Return the land to small farmers

Performative environmentalism won’t reverse climate change

Automation isn’t wiping out jobs. It’s that our engine of growth is winding down

Ganges River: Giulio Di Sturco’s photos capture environmental decline

A surge of new plastic is about to hit the planet

Nightmares on wax: the environmental impact of the vinyl revival

Humans will never colonize Mars

Library socialism: A utopian vision of a sustaniable, luxuriant future of circulating abundance

A future with no future: Depression, the Left, and the politics of mental health

Will Finland introduce a four-day week? Is it the secret of happiness?

Time, work and wellbeing. “Efforts to achieve decent work must encompass not just the quantity but also the quality of working time – not just time as a commodity but also as a lived complexity.”



Where we’re at: analysis

A Green New Jail

Europe’s Green Deal is a tepid response to the climate crisis 

When are we going to address the climate crisis?

A critical look at China’s One Belt, One Road initiative

Where is the rift? Marx, Lacan, capitalism, and ecology

Uber’s path of destruction

The palace of the future is nearly complete

Climate change and technology define the rural future. “No city is an autarky. For their survival, they rely on the countrysides they conveniently ignore.”



New politics

In 2030, we ended the climate emergency. Here’s how

Socialism, capitalism and the transition away from fossil fuels

The Lebanese Intifada, or the growth of an anti-capitalist mass movement 

Austria’s new anti-immigrant green government stokes fears of climate ‘nightmare’ 

What is the Green New Deal? A climate proposal, explained 

Portugal has found an antidote to right wing populism. Facing the policies of socialist Prime Minister António Costa, which include properly supporting the welfare state and investing in the public sector instead of austerity measures, right wing populists don’t stand a chance. 

The Hague must recognise ecocide 

Feminism and the social solidarity economy: A short call to action 

Moving towards low-carbon lifestyles: A question of collective action 



Green colonialism (and decolonialism)

What green costs. Deep in the salt flats of Chile lies the extractive frontier of the renewable energy transition.  

The coming green colonialism

The eco-fascists are coming

The path to net-zero emissions must include divestment, decolonization and resistance

Why a ‘Green New Deal’ must be decolonial

Decolonization requires a new economics

A view from the countryside. Contesting and constructing human rights in an age of converging crises.

Why stopping wars is essential for stopping climate change

Walls on a drowning world

Playing with fire, securing the borders of a Green New Deal

When the Green New Deal goes global

Development: A failed project 




Cities and radical municipalism

The case for making low-tech ‘dumb’ cities instead of ‘smart’ ones 

‘We’re setting a clear stop sign’: Berlin passes five-year rent freeze law

‘My Parkdale is gone’: how gentrification reached the one place that seemed immune

Study says rent control is good for cities, debunking conventional economists’ wisdom 

Tenant organizing when rising rent isn’t the (main) issue

Islands in the illiberal storm: central European cities vow to stand together 

Reclaiming the commons: The case for public bike libraries 

The case for cohousing: Where responsibilities are shared and life is a little less lonely

Time for public power for New York 

Should public transit be free? More cities say, why not? 

Ten zero-waste cities: How Thiruvananthapuram cleaned up its act 

When capital threatens to strike in your city 

The municipalist moment. Movements on the left are increasingly looking to build power at the local level. The question is how we can leverage municipal gains to transform the system at expanding scales.

Municipalism: the next political revolution? 

Heroes of the 2010s: Kshama Sawant, the socialist who beat Amazon 



Degrowth!

Ford v. Ferrari v. Malthus

Rethinking fashion: A confession of a degrowth advocate

Deadly growth: Capitalism versus life on Earth

Is degrowth an alternative to capitalism?



Resources

Case studies from The Rules about different topics related to environmental justice and alternative economics.

Economics for people. A free online lecture series from Ha-Joon Chang.

Degrowth of aviation. A report.

Regenerative farming and the Green New Deal. A policy memo.

Dual power: Issue 9 of ROAR Magazine

Diversify and decolonise your holiday reading list

How to follow the news without burning out  



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Energy and the Green New Deal

Image: Fiona Paton CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

by Tim Crownshaw

Nothing happens without energy. Literally. Lacking energy, there can be no heat, food, motion, information, or life. Commonly defined as ‘the capacity to do work’, energy has always been central to human societies, whether derived mechanically from moving wind or water, chemically from wood, oil, coal or other combustible fuels, or thermally from the sun. This is more than an abstract footnote—there are deep links between available energy and the very structure of civilizations, including their types of social organization and levels of complexity, as noted by anthropologist Leslie White [1]. While this relationship is obviously not deterministic, there are social, technological, and economic arrangements, such those we enjoy in privileged parts of the global North today, which are likely unattainable at significantly lower levels of energy consumption.

Much discussion and research in recent years has focused on the prospects for a global transition to renewable energy, motivated by growing awareness of the existential threat posed by global climate change as well as localized environmental issues attributable to the production and consumption of fossil and nuclear energy. The Green New Deal (GND), the subject of this essay, is the latest in a long line of ambitious plans aimed at accelerating this process, in addition to its social and economic goals. However, many of these energy transition plans are conceived teleologically: they start with the outcomes they seek to achieve, then fill in the gaps with implied (but uncertain) socio-technological capabilities. In the process, they typically sidestep irreducible uncertainties and fail to properly engage with the considerable challenges involved in fundamentally transforming our energy system. It must be asked whether the GND commits these same errors. Avoiding them requires recognition that the transition to renewable energy is not simply the eventual outcome of the right set of policy settings, but what systems scientists would call a complex, path-dependent, socio-metabolic process. In other words, the transition will be far more constrained in terms of what we can achieve than we often like to think and will necessarily transform the basic configuration of our societies [2, 3].

Many of these energy transition plans are conceived teleologically: they start with the outcomes they seek to achieve, then fill in the gaps with implied (but uncertain) socio-technological capabilities.

That we must one day rely solely on renewable energy is true by definition. The fossil and nuclear fuels are depleting resources and their use entails ecological harm on an immense scale. Therefore, this use will eventually become infeasible, unacceptable, and uneconomic. But how we get from here to there is radically uncertain. There is no guarantee that we will complete the transition while maintaining an industrial socio-metabolic regime (our current pattern of material and energy use and associated societal configuration). In fact, this appears highly unlikely [2, 3].

Alternative narratives

For most people in the developed world, modern energy services are so ubiquitous and ingrained in our daily lives that they have been rendered largely invisible (at least until they are interrupted). Nevertheless, understanding energy is critical to accurately discerning where we are going as a society and what we can hope to achieve. This understanding suffers from what Mario Giampietro has called a “clash of reductionism against the complexity of energy transformations” [4].

Energy is typically understood in loose terms as something produced and transported by large and highly visible infrastructures (of which there are ‘good’ kinds and ‘bad’ kinds, defined by one’s perspective). It is generally perceived that energy is used for various crucial purposes, such as moving people and things around, heating and cooling homes and workplaces, powering appliances and devices, and producing consumer goods. Beyond this, various emotionally charged and frequently oversimplified narratives come into play, which inform expectations of what lifestyles and society at large ought to look like. While the range of perspectives and positions on energy is vast, they can be broadly grouped into two opposed narratives:

  • Narrative one sees energy presenting an urgent moral duality: oil derricks, pipelines, smog-covered cityscapes, and corporate interests on one side and climate saving technologies, eco-friendly behaviours, and new political movements on the other. In this strain of thought, we already have the requisite technology to carry out the transition to renewable energy and the only serious barriers are political in nature. Nowhere is the first narrative more clearly depicted than in US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent ‘A Message From The Future’ video.
  • Narrative two considers fossil fuels to be miraculous, prosperity-building, and geo-politically important resources, which should not be disregarded in favour of unproven, unreliable alternatives. As for climate change, positions can range from “the science in not settled” to “no problem, we’ll have the tech for that”. This narrative is captured in PR communications from major oil companies (and even more transparently depicted here), frequently loaded with promises of jobs, technological breakthroughs, and nostalgia for an era of pioneering industrial vitality.

Neither of these narratives is totally correct, but neither is totally wrong either. The first rightly highlights the social and ecological imperatives we face and how some forms of energy production are significantly less harmful than others, but tends to downplay the challenges and implications of transforming the entire energy basis of modern economies. Meanwhile, the second accurately identifies the unique qualities of fossil energy resources and their role in reaching our current level of development, but fails to identify that these have a limited lifespan, both in terms of their physical abundance and the extent to which we can use them without unacceptable consequences. It is on this fraught ideological landscape that the GND must vie for influence against competing visions of our energy future.

The Green New Deal

The GND (a clear allusion to Roosevelt’s depression-era New Deal) burst onto the US political scene in 2018, emerging from the youth-led ‘Sunrise Movement’ and subsequently championed by freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, and a growing list of progressive political figures. Its supporters now include Joseph Stiglitz, Ban Ki-Moon, Paul Krugman, US senators (Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Ed Markey), and numerous organizations (including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club, 350.org, the New Economics Foundation, Extinction Rebellion, and the United Nations Environment Programme). The concept has quickly spread internationally to Canada, the UK, Australia, and the European Union due in large part to the advocacy of respective green parties in these places. A recent Yale survey found a strong majority in the US (81% of those surveyed and even 64% of republicans) ‘strongly support’ or ‘somewhat support’ the various proposals associated with the GND. With this impressive momentum, the time has come to translate zeal into workable policy.

In the US, the GND is often described with the tagline “decarbonization, jobs, and justice.” Policy proposals center around a green industrial revolution—a rapid, large-scale transition to renewable energy alongside vastly expanded public transportation and building retrofits for energy efficiency within a 10-year timeframe. The plan is to achieve near carbon-neutrality of the US economy and improved environmental quality through immense public spending initiatives, funded primarily via redistributive measures designed to tackle inequality. The draft text of the GND House Resolution includes the aim to “virtually eliminate poverty in the United States and to make prosperity, wealth and economic security available to everyone participating in the transformation.” Variations often include increased minimum wages, universal health care, improved access to education, shorter working hours, and democratized workplaces. For a more complete description of the origin story and details of the GND, see this article or this one.

As the GND ultimately hinges on energy transition, the feasibility of its assertions in this area are crucial.

Although it’s not hard to see the appeal, no one would deny that this is an immense task. In fact, there is already a chorus of critical voices from right across the political spectrum on questions of cost, timeframe, technical assumptions, and policy design. As the GND ultimately hinges on energy transition, the feasibility of its assertions in this area are crucial. To go any further, we need to cover some energy basics.

Energy primer

The global energy system is by far the largest, most technologically advanced collection of built capital, supporting infrastructure, expertise, and organizational capacity that has ever existed. Despite the hype around renewables, the global energy system is still 96% non-renewable, while solar and wind—the two renewable energy sources with the greatest growth potential—supplied just a little over 1% of total world energy in 2018 [5].

Firstly, it is important to understand that each type of energy production can satisfy only some types of energy demand: energy resources and the flows derived from them are not interchangeable. Instead, the energy system comprises a series of distinct flows spanning four basic stages, from primary resources through to delivered energy services:

Figure 1: Flows of energy travelling through four stages of the energy system

To provide a bit more specificity to this picture, the table below shows common examples of each of the four stages and sequences of flows between them:

If fully enumerated, this would look more like a complex, multi-nodal network rather than a straight line, but this simplification serves to highlight some key features:

  • Changes at one stage require corresponding changes at all other stages in order to avoid supply bottlenecks or unused excess capacity. Each new increment of supply (primary resources plus secondary conversion) must be met with a corresponding increment of demand (end-use capital plus energy service demand) and vice versa. This means that investments needed to change the system are often larger than they first appear—investments in one part of the system require corresponding investments in others—and the ways societies use energy must evolve as supply changes.
  • The common lay concept of ‘energy’ as a homogeneous, aggregate quantity is a fiction. The various flows within the energy system are non-equivalent and non-substitutable (at least not directly). For example, gasoline is produced by a refinery and fuels your car, but this is not interchangeable with the electricity generated by a gas-fired turbine powering your laptop. In particular, the flows of ‘energy carriers’ between the second and third stages—consisting of electricity, liquid fuels, and heating fuels—must be considered separately, otherwise we risk overlooking constraints integral to the system.

The non-equivalence of energy carriers is an essential concept, analogous to the metabolism of living organisms requiring fats, proteins, and carbohydrates to survive. For most animals, diet can change with food availability, but there are limits to this. Humans can substitute one food group for another, at least for a period of time, but beyond certain boundaries severe physiological consequences begin to occur, including starvation and death. The energy system functions basically the same way. The composition of supply or demand can’t be changed arbitrarily and to the extent that it can be changed, this typically requires expensive and time-consuming adjustments at other stages in the energy system.

Energy for energy

Aside from the flows ultimately ending up as final energy services (or waste), a large part of the output of the energy system must be directed back into its own construction, operation, and maintenance. These flows represent the metabolism of the global energy system. As shown in Figure 2, energy carriers are utilized in an ‘autocatalytic loop’ (energy invested to produce energy) and a ‘capital hypercycle’ (energy invested to maintain the means of turning energy into services).

Figure 2: Energy carrier flows required for the construction, maintenance, and operation of the global energy system

Our current economic structure and resource dependencies ensure that we’ll burn a lot of fossil fuels to carry out a major shift towards renewable energy—a cost of the transition that we can’t afford to ignore. Among other things, this complicates discussions around the pace of the transition; it is not necessarily true that faster is better as large, short-term increases in fossil fuel demand for a renewable energy buildout may lead to significant excess capacity, wasting resources and frustrating the transition further down the line. Generally speaking, an ‘optimum’ timeframe in terms of what would limit greenhouse gas emissions or ecological impact will not likely align with the deadlines proposed to date by the advocates of rapid transition. Vaclav Smil notes that energy transitions on this scale typically occur over multiple decades or centuries, not years [6].

The manufacturing of silicon wafers in solar PV panels and advanced metal alloys in wind turbines requires a lot of high temperature heat, currently provided primarily by burning natural gas or coal.

Examining the energy system’s own metabolism also raises questions of residual non-renewable energy dependence that may be difficult to eliminate. The energy system’s autocatalytic loop and capital hypercycle are comprised of a mixture of energy carriers, meaning any attempt to shift the system towards a renewable basis will likely run into limits (due to energy carriers required to support the energy system not likely to be produced at scale via renewable means). For example, the manufacturing of silicon wafers in solar PV panels and advanced metal alloys in wind turbines requires a lot of high temperature heat, currently provided primarily by burning natural gas or coal. Will it be possible to run solar PV panel and wind turbine production lines using solar- and wind-generated electricity in the future? We don’t know, but there are reasons to be skeptical [7]. How about all of the remote access roads, transmission towers, substations, and supply depots required to create a renewable energy infrastructure? And the rare-earths, lithium, copper, iron, coltan, cadmium, and vast quantities of other minerals needed for the renewable energy buildout? It is hard to see how all of this can subsist on renewable energy flows alone.

Electricity

And then there’s electricity. Electricity is not like the other energy carriers in one critical sense: it is not a physical substance that can be produced and set aside for later use. In effect, this means supply must match demand at all times in order to maintain the stable, functioning electrical networks that distribute electricity to end users. Demand is stochastic—it changes as industrial production ramps up and down, and more erratically as households turn on or off light switches, run appliances, or do anything else that uses electricity. Consequently, supply must be ‘dispatched’ to meet demand on very short timescales as any temporary gap leads to changes in system frequency and large gaps can cause blackouts and damage vital electrical equipment (illustrated below).

Figure 3: The supply-demand ‘seesaw’ directly affects the frequency and stability of electrical networks (image source)

The key problem with most renewable electricity production (including production from solar and wind) is that it is intermittent and can’t be counted on when it is required most. Electricity systems needs to retain the ability to meet demand when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. There are ways to maintain this ability as the share of renewables increases, such as building enough spare dispatchable generation capacity to act as a backup (often gas- and coal-fired) or building storage and additional transmission capacity. All have significant costs, in both energetic and monetary terms, and face their own social and technical limitations. For example, while there is much discussion around building better batteries to unlock renewables, this is still an exceedingly expensive option that is suitable only for shorter timescales, not the summer to winter supply-demand gaps creating most of the need for system flexibility [8]. Returning to our diet analogy, pinning all of our hopes on storage is a bit like asking a someone to put on 300 lbs every fall to survive the winter months with very little food. We wouldn’t expect a human being to be capable of this for very long and the odds of the energy system pulling off the equivalent feat are not much better.

This difficulty only increases as renewables provide a larger share of total electricity. Figure 4 below shows how the mitigation investment required to maintain stable electricity grids increases non-linearly as the share of intermittent renewables grows [9, 10]. Technical and economic limitations in the electricity sector will manifest during any large-scale transition to renewable energy. Aside from a few fortunate regions with abundant dispatchable renewable energy resources (geothermal in Iceland, hydropower in Nicaragua, etc.), with current technology, this ceiling is far below the aspirational 100% renewable goal of the GND. The importance of these electricity system barriers is underscored by the fact that the provision of many of our energy services will need to be electrified in order to align with the growth of renewable energy.


Figure 4: The level of mitigation necessary to maintain stable electricity networks increases exponentially as intermittent generation rises

A story of limits

The crux of the problem is this: renewable energy typically produces forms of energy that are poor substitutes for the energy required to manufacture, transport, install, and operate renewable energy, at least without major investments into each stage of our energy system, significantly reducing or even erasing the net energy delivered. As such, these energy sources are dependent on the existing system and function less as a replacement for the fossil fuel economy and more as a temporary extension of it. The empirical evidence agrees—renewable energy investment does a poor job of displacing fossil fuels [11]. Of course, there are exceptions (such as traditionally produced biomass), but these have nowhere near the potential scale required to run today’s enormous globalized, industrialized economy.

Wherever the existing limit lies on the path to a 100% renewable energy system, we can and should push this limit through changes to consumption behaviours on the part of both industries and households, through things like shared utilization of end-use capital and energy services (think communal kitchens), a shift away from currently preferred but inefficient types of end-use capital (e.g. prioritizing public transit and micromobility over cars), greater alignment of demand to match intermittent supply, and overall demand reduction. However, it is precisely these kinds of changes which are more difficult to motivate, especially among those following the second narrative described above who may assume that high-energy, fossil-fuelled lifestyles represent ‘the good life’. Even at the extremes of practical behaviour change, the 100% target may still be unattainable.

Leaving aside the narrow concept of limits, a fundamental change in our energy basis and socio-metabolic regime would mean becoming a very different society from the one we know today. It is tempting to opine on our society’s wasteful habits and ask how much energy we really need, but the answer depends largely on the type of society we want to live in. Do we want to be able to build smartphones? How about MRI machines and water treatment plants? We may not be able to pick and choose what we want to keep from varying levels of socio-technical complexity (while it is certainly worth discussing what we might want to keep and what we can afford to lose). There is no demonstrated historical tendency for complex societies to voluntarily downshift their energy consumption on a large-scale [12].

When politicians and activists say “we have the technology” they vastly understate the challenges, potential barriers, and ultimate consequences involved in the transition.

The main point here is that the prospects and implications of shifting toward renewable energy extend far beyond present-day cost-benefit calculations, political maneuvering, or waging war on climate change. When politicians and activists say “we have the technology” they vastly understate the challenges, potential barriers, and ultimate consequences involved in the transition.

Raised stakes and political pushback

By forcing extensive change into an expedited timeframe, the GND raises the stakes and reduces the margin for error in the transition to renewable energy. If such a policy package were embraced, people everywhere would be subject to dramatically increased risks of misallocation of resources, misalignment of capacity between the various stages within the energy system, and of consequent economic and social fallout. The calls for radical action motivating the GND stem from a sense of desperation in the face of increasingly dire predictions regarding converging climate and ecological crises. That desperation is certainly justified, and yes, time is not on our side, but we must not dismiss the existential risks of a poorly executed GND.

The GND makes some very big promises and displays unmistakeable utopian elements. The problem is not so much the aspirational decarbonization goals, but the assurances of prodigious social benefits assumed to be attainable through or while pursuing them. Universal modern healthcare and higher education, job guarantees, raised minimum income, the elimination of poverty and inequality, significantly increased taxation of the wealthy—these goals proved elusive even during the period of greatest stability and economic surplus the world has ever seen. To achieve them during what will likely be a period of profound and growing ecological disruption, climate instability, and social unrest is rather optimistic to say the least. We will need to walk a long tightrope, balancing the pace of change, unforeseen challenges, impacts on communities, and necessary sacrifices. Perhaps the most dubious aspect is the overall ethical shift underscoring the kind of social cohesion necessary to achieve the GND in developed nations, from hyper-consumerism to environmental stewardship and the voluntary curtailment of discretionary consumption—essentially expecting everyone to spontaneously drop any differences of opinion and embrace the first narrative.

Owing to the existence of embedded conflicting perspectives, the GND will always have its opponents. Assuming we go ahead with it, any unintended consequence or local failure (of which there will be many) will be met with a backlash that risks eroding public confidence in the GND. This is a dynamic heightened in direct proportion to the level of ambition the GND embodies; the more utopian the stated goals, the starker the underwhelming reality, and the greater the negative reaction will be. How would we maintain broad political support for the GND, given the inevitability of broken promises? It may be that some of these promises need to be tempered against the requirement for achievable goals. A prime example can be seen in the German Energiewende, a planned national energy transition initiated in 2010 aimed at phasing out coal and nuclear energy. Promises of clean, renewable, reliable, and affordable energy clashed against the reality of Europe’s highest power prices and unconvincing progress on decarbonization [14]. This failure dampened public enthusiasm and made other countries hesitant to follow Germany’s example. The GND must learn this lesson—to promise more than you can deliver is to ensure failure.

There isn’t one unique, unambiguous end point to travel toward in response to the challenges we face.

One might reasonably ask whether too much ambition is really a weakness. Isn’t it better to have highly aspirational goals, even if they aren’t achieved, if only to carry us further than we would have gone otherwise? Well, not necessarily. It is important to note that there isn’t one unique, unambiguous end point to travel toward in response to the challenges we face. Time and our capacity for change are both limited. A last-ditch, herculean attempt to rebuild modernity anew would forestall the pursuit of other more credible and beneficial models of development.

First things first

So is the GND a good idea? Unfortunately, not in its present form. Given current levels of understanding of the complexities and trade-offs involved in a transition to renewable energy, and inflated expectations of future energy consumption, it would almost certainly result in a catastrophic failure. However, if guided by 1) an accurate and realistic understanding of the role of energy in society and 2) a willingness to honestly confront the profound socio-economic implications of a shift to a renewable energy basis, a reformulated GND might be able to point our global system toward a more sustainable paradigm.

Here are some additional principles for a truly transformative GND that I would propose:

  1. Energy literacy: energy transition is at the heart of the GND and its current assertions in this area are highly questionable. As such, there is a pronounced need for energy literacy, both in policy formulation and post-implementation general education. This energy literacy is needed to disarm simplistic narratives and enable transformative thinking.
  2. Demand side adaptation: to help bridge the gap between ambition and feasibility and unlock energy transition to the extent possible, the GND must embrace a radical rethinking of expectations for energy consumption. This must include overall demand reduction, but also greater demand flexibility, shared utilization of energy services, and shifting away from inefficient modes of energy service provision. Supply side interventions won’t cut it, we need to talk about the energy we use as a society.
  3. Evolving timeline: a complex, socio-metabolic process cannot be forced to conform to arbitrary deadlines and attempting to do so serves only to lock in unintended, suboptimal outcomes in terms of what we really want to achieve. The GND must abandon its stated 10-year timeframe and instead incorporate an informed, contingent, and evolving target for the pace of the transition.
  4. Political realism: assuming a forthcoming, sweeping alignment of perspectives on energy and social issues and subsequent unilateral action, as if in a political vacuum, is simply wishful thinking and must be rejected. The GND’s overall strategy must remain mindful of contrary narratives and the political pitfalls of excessive ambition. There should also be more discussion on who—from movements like Extinction Rebellion to environmental justice groups—can build the necessary political power for a truly transformative GND and how.
  5. Epistemic openness: new approaches are needed to navigate radical uncertainty and conflicting socio-technical narratives regarding energy transition. The GND must engage fields like Post-Normal Science—an approach to scientific decision-making for issues where “facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent” [15, 16]—as antidotes to reductionism and ideological echo chambers.

As a parting thought, ‘deal’ may not be the appropriate language given an overwhelming level of uncertainty. How can a deal be made and subsequently serve as the benchmark of success when the most relevant details are not yet known? In place of the GND, we might be better served by scaling back our ambition and embracing a Green New Direction. This alternative could preserve many of the same essential goals, but would need to forgo the use of enticing promises to motivate action and instead do the hard work of building solidarity and commitment to collectively face an energy future which will be more complex, more unpredictable, and more challenging than anything we’ve previously encountered.

References

  1. White, L.A., Energy and the evolution of culture. American Anthropologist, 1943. 45(3): p. 335-356.
  2. Krausmann, F., et al., The Global Sociometabolic Transition. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2008. 12(5-6): p. 637-656.
  3. Haberl, H., et al., A socio-metabolic transition towards sustainability? Challenges for another Great Transformation. Sustainable Development, 2011. 19(1): p. 1-14.
  4. Giampietro, M., K. Mayumi, and A.H. Sorman, Energy analysis for a sustainable future: multi-scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism. 2013, London, UK: Routledge.
  5. BP, BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2019. 2019, BP. p. 64.
  6. Smil, V., Energy transitions : history, requirements, prospects. 2010, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
  7. Moriarty, P. and D. Honnery, Can renewable energy power the future? Energy Policy, 2016. 93: p. 3-7.
  8. Carbajales-Dale, M., C.J. Barnhart, and S.M. Benson, Can we afford storage? A dynamic net energy analysis of renewable electricity generation supported by energy storage. Energy & Environmental Science, 2014. 7(5): p. 1538-1544.
  9. Heard, B.P., et al., Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2017. 76: p. 1122-1133.
  10. Trainer, T., Can renewables etc. solve the greenhouse problem? The negative case. Energy Policy, 2010. 38(8): p. 4107-4114.
  11. York, R., Do alternative energy sources displace fossil fuels? Nature Climate Change, 2012. 2(6): p. 441-443.
  12. Smil, V., Energy in world history. 1994, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
  13. Cai, T.T., T.W. Olsen, and D.E. Campbell, Maximum (em)power: a foundational principle linking man and nature. Ecological Modelling, 2004. 178(1): p. 115-119.
  14. Schiffer, H.-W. and J. Trüby, A review of the German energy transition: taking stock, looking ahead, and drawing conclusions for the Middle East and North Africa. Energy Transitions, 2018. 2(1): p. 1-14.
  15. Funtowicz, S.O. and J.R. Ravetz, Science for the post-normal age. Futures, 1993. 25(7): p. 739-755.
  16. Tainter, J.A., T. Allen, and T.W. Hoekstra, Energy transformations and post-normal science. Energy, 2006. 31(1): p. 44-58.

Tim Crownshaw is a PhD Candidate in the department of Natural Resource Sciences at McGill University in Canada and a student in the Economics for the Anthropocene (E4A) research partnership. He studies global dynamic transition pathways from non-renewable to renewable energy resources using quantitative, systems-based modelling approaches.

November readings

A protest in Hong Kong, November 2019.Dale De La Rey / AFP, via Haaretz


Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory. 

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth. 

Welcome to the last newsletter of the decade! That’s right, we’re taking a break in December, to recalibrate and recharge. We’ve been running our monthly reading list for almost two years now, and nearly 1,000 of you seem to find it useful, so we’re excited to continue providing you with news and analysis in 2020. See you next year!



Uneven Earth updates

The technical assistant | Link | It had been a long time since human hands had touched grain bins

Trade governance will make or break the Green New Deal | Link | How the GND could, should, must redefine “protectionism” and transform international trade  

Rethinking education for the Green New Deal | Link | Governance for an eco-centered curriculum—or not?

Down Maria | Link | There was only one prisoner left, and he would not live forever



Top 5 articles to read

Extraction Rebellion. A Green Zone of hope. 

Land reform and the Green New Deal

Climate change’s great lithium problem

A Green New Deal between whom and for what?

Indonesia deforestation: The world’s demand for palm oil is igniting a climate bomb



News you might’ve missed

Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of ‘untold suffering’

New land height metric raises sea level rise risk

Heat waves and floods shattered records. Fires ravaged the Arctic and the Amazon. This was the climate crisis in 2019.

Earth nears irreversible tipping points

Coal knew, too. A newly unearthed journal from 1966 shows the coal industry, like the oil industry, was long aware of the threat of climate change. And new paper reveals rail industry was leader in climate denial efforts.

Indigenous people blocked Ecuador oil auction in growing fight to save Amazon 

WA Indigenous group’s $290 billion compensation claim could become one of world’s biggest payouts

Fearing eviction, thousands of forest dwellers protest in India

More than 1,700 activists have been killed this century defending the environment

Indigenous people pay a high price for protecting the planet 

A gathering of guardians: Indigenous monitors convene for historic knowledge exchange

Farmer depression deepens as climate warms

Climate change poses threat to children’s health worldwide 

Psychologists from 40 countries pledged to use their jobs to address climate change 




Worldwide uprisings

Welcome to the global rebellion against neoliberalism. As distinct as the protests seem, the uprisings rocking Bolivia, Lebanon, and scores of other countries all share a common theme.

From Iran to Hong Kong, the world is becoming ungovernable

This wave of global protest is being led by the children of the financial crash

Hong Kong Protests: Inside the chaos

“Rifles, machine guns, El Alto will not fall!” Dual Power in Bolivia

Debt and neoliberalism: The global roots of Chile’s crisis

A few tips on how to understand Latin American coups

More than just a “Spring”: the Arab region’s long-term revolution

Lebanon’s revolution spawns ‘direct democracy’ with citizen assemblies and people’s parliaments

Iraq is healing: The October revolution, systemic change and intergenerational trauma

Now is the time to rise up for Rojava

Indonesia protests: Land bill at center of unrest

Thousands of Romanians protest against illegal logging, attacks on forest workers

Czechs say billionaire leader must resign in mass protests

Why aren’t people in the US rising up like those elsewhere in the world?



Just think about it…

Why are rich people so mean? Call it Rich Asshole Syndrome—the tendency to distance yourself from people with whom you have a large wealth differential.

Why we are all losing sleep. With longer work hours, the rise of the gig economy and smartphone apps competing for our every waking moment, sleep has become the final frontier of consumer capitalism.

To have or not to have children in the age of climate change

Robin Wall Kimmerer on the intelligence in all kinds of life

‘Every plant and animal is useful to us’: Indigenous professor re-thinking how we deal with invasive species

After climate change apocalypse, kindness will be most important survival skill

Imagination is such an ancient ability it might precede language

Plastic has a big carbon footprint — but that isn’t the whole story

The first map of America’s food supply chain is mind-boggling

Smartphones are killing the planet faster than anyone expected

Pointless emails: they’re not just irritating – they have a massive carbon footprint

Myths of the circular economy



Where we’re at: analysis

It’s time to retire metrics like GDP. They don’t measure everything that matters

Against economics. “Any new, viable science will either have to draw on the accumulated knowledge of feminism, behavioral economics, psychology, and even anthropology to come up with theories based on how people actually behave, or once again embrace the notion of emergent levels of complexity—or, most likely, both.”

It’s not thanks to capitalism that we’re living longer, but progressive politics

The hidden cost of gold: Birth defects and brain damage 

The Native American women who fought mass sterilization

What the West doesn’t get about the climate crisis

It bears repeating: Renewables alone won’t end the climate crisis

The climate case for working less

How mindfulness privatised a social problem

The time has come to take the self out of self-care

Emergenciocracy: why demanding the “climate emergency” is risky

Geoengineering: let’s not get it back-to-front

Humanity and nature are not separate – we must see them as one to fix the climate crisis



New politics

Sowing the seeds of post-extractivism. Communities around the world are demonstrating how we can move beyond extractivism to revive cultures of care and solidarity.

Direct democracy and the passion for political participation. For a radically democratic and ecological society we need to build democratic and resilient communities capable of deepening citizen participation at all levels of public life.

Worker-owned apps are trying to fix the gig economy’s exploitation

‘Fire the bosses’: Platform co-ops set out their radical stall

Imagine a future of distributed cooperatives, or disCOs

In depth with Clark Arrington, a pioneer for cooperatives and black economic power (Part 1)

Learning to see the commons

Gig workers rising: Foodora couriers and Uber drivers organizing for justice

The climate movement needs more creative tactics

Why climate action needs to target the border industrial complex

Eco-fascists and the ugly fight for ‘our way of life’ as the environment disintegrates

Italy’s green fascists

Accelerationism: the idea inspiring white supremacist killers around the world

Primitivism and ecofascism

The Red Deal is an Indigenous climate plan that builds on the Green New Deal

All organizing is magic: Reflections on Caliban and the Witch



Food politics

For a sustainable future, we need to reconnect with what we’re eating – and each other 

Meet the activists bringing urban farms to one of America’s most deprived cities 



Cities and radical municipalism

What if… cities became car-free?

Are community land trusts a way out of the system?

Against We. What the We Company offers is commune as commodity.

Berlin renters organize to expropriate the mega-landlords

How green gentrification is compromising Seattle’s last affordable neighborhood

Who is the “public” in public transportation?

Endgame Marxism (and urbanism)

Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez unveil $172 billion ‘Green New Deal for public housing’

Under the paving stones, a vegetable garden. Joëlle Zask explores how greening citizenship – through cultivation practices – offers an opportunity for self-government which may just restore this relationship to one of perpetual regeneration rather than mutually destructive exploitation.  

If progressives don’t try to win over rural areas, guess who will



Degrowth!

Defending limits is not Malthusian

Degrowth information

The myth of green growth. “Economic growth, democracy and CO2 have always been intertwined.”

Unraveling the claims for (and against) green growth

Heaven hath limits: a review of Limits by Giorgos Kallis

10 ideas for degrowth architecture from the Oslo Architecture Triennale



Reflections on Seattle, 1999

Remembering for the future: Learning from the 1999 Seattle shutdown

Globalize liberation

Seattle 1999 and its “This Changes Everything” energy

Remembering the battle for Seattle: Organizers launch project to reflect on 20 years of lessons



Sci-fi and the near future

Cyberpunk is dead

The real-world locations of 14 sci-fi dystopias 

Cherie Dimaline and Rebecca Roanhorse are embodying Indigenous futurisms

Jeff Bezos’s vision of the future is basically Blade Runner

Space ageing: why sci-fi novels shun the badass older woman

Library Socialism: a utopian vision of a sustainable, luxuriant future of circulating abundance

Hopepunk and Solarpunk: On climate narratives that go beyond the Apocalypse

Highway to hell: the rise and fall of the car

Free BBC documentary: The worlds of Ursula K Le Guin



Nuclear energy will come back to haunt us

Climate change is breaking open America’s nuclear tomb 

In Marshall Islands, radiation threatens tradition of handing down stories by song

Germany is closing all its nuclear power plants. Now it must find a place to bury the deadly waste for 1 million years

Our children await a radioactive legacy



Resources

What is ‘ecological economics’ and why do we need to talk about it?

How to fight antisemitism

Mapping social movements and conflicts around the world

Global petrochemical map

Mary Annaïse Heglar’s list of voices of color on the climate crisis




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Trade governance will make or break the Green New Deal

by Shaun Sellers

‘The food that you buy will all be grown locally,’ says policy director at New Consensus, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, in a Vox video. This is stated simply, as an aspect of what it will be like to live in the time of a Green New Deal (GND). Yet it represents a fundamental challenge to international trade governance in ways that must be addressed if the GND is to be successful.

Green New Deals are currently being developed across Europe and North America, with policy initiatives ranging from regional to state to national levels. These Green New Deals vary in their details, but are generally an attempt to rally governments to address climate change, as opposed to letting the deregulated ‘free market’ decide if or which humans will survive the Anthropocene. GNDs are a forceful recognition that governments have a mandate to respond to the existential needs of the populace. In February of 2019, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a resolution to recognize the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal. It asserts that by 2030, the US needs to become a net-zero emissions economy, and to do this, a combination of green tech, ecological restoration, targeted growth in localizing economies and targeted degrowth in particular sectors of the economy need to all be undertaken together.

The language in the resolution is intentionally non-specific to leave room for interpretation and flexibility, yet that has not stopped conservative and centrist voices from calling it economically impractical. Others caution that the GND may be mere greenwashing of the current status quo. What is notable is that the Resolution chooses to emphasize economic security as opposed to economic growth. These are not the same thing at all. While the resolution could be read to be growth focused, it can also be read as a degrowth transition document—allowing for certain sectors to be targeted for growth but reducing the emissions of other sectors dramatically. The one place where economic development is promoted is in directing investment towards ‘deepening and diversifying industry and business in local regional economies’. And this is where trade governance comes in. To develop local economies with the goal of lessening emissions in trade is to effectively dismantle the international web of supply chains, and by extension, the current international trade regime.

To develop local economies with the goal of lessening emissions in trade is to effectively dismantle the international web of supply chains, and by extension, the current international trade regime.

Investing in local and regional economies would require a change from the ways in which our local economies function today. Nearly half of all global production today is destined for international trade. The food, goods, and services we use every day overwhelmingly come from farms and factories and call centres around the world, and government attempts to change this won’t go unanswered by the corporations that feel the effects of a changing economic climate. National and regional attempts to change the way that economic activity happens in local contexts have been regularly shut down through a process of investor state dispute resolution provisions, because these initiatives violate current international trade rules. In countries all over the world, if local or national policies appear to prevent a corporation from accessing a market—that is, selling their product ‘competitively’—that corporation can sue the government in question in the court at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The way that international trade happens today is both intentional by policy design and also particularly emissions intensive. The emissions from export-oriented production in the world economy are rising faster than global GDP, contributing to absolute increases of emissions over time. Yes, per capita GDP has risen around the world with the increases in international trade, but so too has social inequality  and environmental degradation, correlations that major trade organizations admit are concerning.

The GND Resolution calls for “enacting and enforcing trade rules, procurement standards, and border adjustments with strong labor and environmental protections to stop the transfer of jobs and pollution overseas; and to grow domestic manufacturing in the United States”. Internet commentators have pointed out the problems this would create with trade agreements and global trade governance, but they’ve missed the explicit framing of climate change as a national security threat: ‘by impacting the economic, environmental, and social stability of countries and communities around the world.’  This framing may offer insight into the policy pathway to enact such a challenging task as relocalizing economies through policy as suggested by the GND. Article XX and XXI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the core international trade governance document, allows for nations to be exempt from the free trade mandate if they are protecting the environment within their borders (though this is often hit or miss) or for reasons of national security. By declaring in the Green New Deal resolution that climate change is a national security issue, not just for the USA, but for many countries, we can envision a policy pathway to defend iterations of the GND at the WTO court of appeals.

A climate policy must change the way that the global economy works if it is to be successful, but if a policy is effective enough to disrupt global trade, it will violate global trade rules.

However, if we now enter into a world of global climate change discourse framed primarily as a national security issue, this threatens to entrench the military and security sectors at the very moment that people are calling for their drawing down. This also potentially has the power to challenge the fundamental mandate of the WTO, because economic growth through free flow of trade across borders is their goal, and emissions are intimately tied to GDP in today’s trade regime. The broad goal of indiscriminate growth in the world economy is incompatible with the goals of the GND, and with climate policy in general. It is an important climate policy paradox: a climate policy must change the way that the global economy works if it is to be successful (because decoupling of GDP and emissions is a mere myth), but if a policy is effective enough to disrupt global trade, it will violate global trade rules. If the relocalization of economies as proposed in the GND can be defended at the WTO appellate court on climate change as national security grounds, this argument is theoretically available to any country or state or municipality, which would render the WTO useless in managing trade in climate policy contexts. And because we have waited so long to act on climate change, almost everything will be within a climate change context from now on.

The trade and relocalization goals of the GND cannot be achieved without fundamentally challenging the mandate of the WTO, and today’s international trade regime oriented toward free trade and economic growth. This scenario is not a complete victory for those who protest free trade agreements, nor is it a universe-ender for those working in the WTO offices in Geneva (or elsewhere). It must be seen as an opportunity to ask what an international trade regime would look like if it were oriented towards ecological futurity. If the GND is successful in changing the way that international trade works without being clear about how, why, and who should be part of future international trade governance, we risk instability and power accumulation. We must not allow the inevitable clash between the GND and the international trade regime to be an unanticipated crisis. Planning for a GND at any scale must include larger visions for an international trade regime in which protectionism is actively redefined. Right now, protectionism means protecting domestic industry and interests, and language in the GND Resolution echoes this. But protectionism could and should reflect the goals of the GND itself, envisioning international trade governance in which protection of ecological integrity, well-being, and justice are the focus.

We must not allow the inevitable clash between the GND and the international trade regime to be an unanticipated crisis.

The Green New Deals around the world have the seeds of change within them; they are ambitious and important. But we must acknowledge that a new international trade governance approach is integral to any national or international Green New Deals. For the food we eat to be grown locally, we are going to have to do nothing less than restructure the global economy. Best to know this going in.

Shaun Sellers is a PhD Student at McGill University, studying ecological economics and trade theory.

October readings

Source: ROAR Magazine


Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory. 

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth. 

So much has happened around the world this month, it’s hard to keep up. From massive protests around the world that toppled whole governments and won people’s demands against austerity, to Turkey’s attack on Rojava, to massive wildfires in California (again). But that’s exactly why we put together this newsletter for you! This month, we feature some excellent analysis on what links these global protests against austerity, and on-the-ground analysis of protests in each country. We offer many stories that can help inform you about what’s going on in Rojava, and how we can respond to Turkey’s invasion and the US role. After Extinction Rebellion protesters tried to block commuters in London, a debate ensued about appropriate forms of direct action, which we feature here. Now that California is up in flames again, we offer some timely analyses on the economic system and built environment that have led to its current ecological crisis. We also highlight a few analyses from inside the movement for local democracy in North America, with several reflections on the Symbiosis Congress of Municipal Movements this September. There was also a lot of analysis about the role of corporations in the climate crisis, including Silicon Valley’s funding of climate change denial. 

On the whole, a thread running through this month’s events was the perceived conflict between working class demands and environmental policy. Reminding us of France’s Yellow Vest protests, in Ecuador, social movements rose up against rising gas prices; in London, Extinction Rebellion was mocked for blocking a commuter train in a working class area. In California, austerity has led to the failure of its energy companies to provide energy for millions of people, targeting the poor. What are the opportunities for environmental policies to meet people’s needs, and at the same time reconstruct the world system ecologically? How can environmentalists, especially those in the Global North, appeal to the global working class? These are some key questions going forward. 



Uneven Earth updates

Shrink the military, shrink injustice | Link | The US Green New Deal must be anti-imperialist

A Green New Deal for an ecological economy | Link | Introducing a series of proposals for a truly transformative GND

Designing for a world after climate catastrophe | Link | While architects are often told they will change the world, a new book fails to imagine what a world after capitalism could look like

Degrowth should be a core part of the just transition | Link | A review of Degrowth by Giorgos Kallis

Utopia, not futurism: Why doing the impossible is the most rational thing we can do | Link | This 1978 speech by Murray Bookchin is strikingly relevant today


Top 5 articles to read

The US city preparing itself for the collapse of capitalism

New bubbles, mounting debt: preparing for the coming crisis

Post-capitalists must understand the role of migration in global capitalism. “When reading and hearing of ambitious programmes for social transformation, it is our task to consider whether or not such programmes have a sense of the ‘real’ determinants of economic development that Marx recognised: international relations of production, the international division of labour in a world market, exploitation of resources and emigration of displaced people, and at the forefront of these processes, the inner structures of middle and working classes and relations between them.”

The stories we need: pan-African social ecology

Why mental health is a political issue, by Mark Fisher. “Depression is the shadow side of entrepreneurial culture, what happens when magical voluntarism confronts limited opportunities.”



News you might’ve missed

Unprecedented’ murder charges for loggers in deaths of indigenous activists. Two timber executives and three loggers charged in shooting deaths of activists who battled illegal logging in Peruvian Amazon.

Fishery collapse ‘confirms Silent Spring pesticide prophecy’ 

Indonesia finds one-fifth of palm oil plantations are illegal

Maquiladoras and the exploitation of migrants on the border 

Understanding extinction: humanity has destroyed half the life on Earth

Dutch development bank is financing land theft, intimidation and Landless: How the Dutch development bank marginalises farmers.

‘Consumers are not aware we are slaves inside the greenhouses’

Higher temperatures driving ‘alarming’ levels of hunger – report

Indigenous Mapuche pay high price for Argentina’s fracking dream

Cambodia’s Bunong reel from deforestation

History threatened as Turkey prepares to flood ancient city

Harvard and TIAA’s farmland grab in Brazil goes up in smoke 




Worldwide uprisings against austerity

Analysis of the common threads in global uprisings: 

The revolution isn’t being televised

Prole Wave: climate change, circulation struggles and the communist horizon

Hong Kong, Chile, Lebanon: Global protests are fueled by deeper discontent

Revolts against the neoliberal world order

The Interpreter: The global protest wave, explained

Why democracy is crumbling in the West

And analyses of protests in each country:

Massive protests in Chile force repeal of fare hikes and Chile doesn’t need to rebuild, it needs to be restructured. Also: Debt and neoliberalism: The global roots of Chile’s crisis

The Algerian Hirak: Young people and the non-violent revolution

Lebanon’s ‘October Revolution’ must go on!

As protests grow, Lebanese are ‘reclaiming’ public spaces

Lebanon is experiencing a social revolution

Update from Catalonia and “Be water”: Catalonia protesters learn from Hong Kong 

Social and political earthquake in Ecuador and a piece by Diana Vela Almeida, contributing editor at Uneven Earth: The fight against the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies in Ecuador: Lessons for environmental and social justice




Extinction Rebellion: Critique and defense

Resources on colonialism, racism, and climate justice for Extinction Rebels

The flawed social science behind Extinction Rebellion’s change strategy

How seven thousand Quebec workers went on strike against climate change

It is not just a bunch of flowers

Don’t use XR tube action to attack the climate rebels

Extinction Rebellion has a politics problem




Revolution in Rojava

Trump’s betrayal of Rojava

This Vermonter’s theories laid the groundwork for revolution in Rojava

The Kurds—a history of agony

PKK letter to the American people and President Trump

The Rojava revolution in peril

What the world loses if Turkey destroys the Syrian Kurds

New education system was central to the Kurds’ Rojava Revolution in northern Syria – now it’s under attack

Turkish attack on Syria endangers a remarkable democratic experiment by the Kurds

Not just ethnicity: Turkey v. Kurds and the great divide over political Islam v. the secular Left

This isn’t the first time the US has abandoned the Kurds

The annihilation of Rojava




Reflections on the Symbiosis Congress

Grassroots democracies form North American coalition

Symbiosis: federating municipalist movements in North America for real democracy and en français: L’émergence d’un municipalisme nord-américain

Of egg and chicken: A report back from the Symbiosis Federation Congress

Report back from the Symbiosis Congress of Municipal Movements

We do it badly, or not at all: reflections on the Congress of Municipal Movements




California’s wildfires and ecological crisis in the United States

It’s the end of California as we know it. “Our whole way of life is built on a series of myths — the myth of endless space, endless fuel, endless water, endless optimism, endless outward reach and endless free parking.” 

Ordinary life has vanished in fire-ravaged California

‘I’m standing right here in the middle of climate change’: How USDA is failing farmers

California’s power shutdown was primed by climate change




Corporations and climate injustice

Global climate laws threatened by rise in investor-state disputes

Revealed: the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions

Fossil fuel firms’ social media fightback against climate action

Money to burn: How iconic banks and investors fund the destruction of the world’s largest rainforests

Revealed: Google made large contributions to climate change deniers

In its insatiable pursuit of power, Silicon Valley is fuelling the climate crisis

How to pay for climate justice? Tax the rich, say the rich

Free Trade Agreements are fueling and shaping the oppression and injustice against women




Just think about it…

The act of giving and the chance of life on a finite planet

Has capitalism become our religion?

Being busy is eliminating the joys of shared free time

The past is still present: why colonialism deserves better coverage

Digital dystopia: how algorithms punish the poor

Humans will not ‘migrate’ to other planets, Nobel winner says

The real reason scientists downplay the risks of climate change

Mining is destroying the planet

Ancient farmers irreversibly altered Earth’s face by 3000 years ago

Climate is missing the point. We have an ecosystem emergency

How capitalism ‘solved’ the nitrogen crisis




Where we’re at: analysis

‘Racism dictates who gets dumped on’: how environmental injustice divides the world. The Guardian launched a year-long series, Our Unequal Earth, investigating environmental injustices: how ecological hazards and climate disasters have the harshest impacts on people of color, native tribes and those on low incomes.

As sea levels rise, so do ghost forests

‘Like a sunburn on your lungs’: how does the climate crisis impact health? 

Against ‘consumption’ . We must shift our perspective from reducing consumption to radically reorganising society.

Professional-managerial chasm and On the origins of the professional-managerial class: An interview with Barbara Ehrenreich

Connecting trade and climate chaos

Reflections on Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch, by Peter Linebaugh

Depoliticization is a deadly weapon of neoliberal fascism  




New politics

A growing anti-racist network takes on the rise of far-right politics in Germany

Uganda’s eco-feminists are taking on mining and plantation industries

Saving Aru: The epic battle to save the islands that inspired the theory of evolution

Burial ground acknowledgements. Land acknowledgments as acts of institutional inclusion obscure the antagonism that follows from genocide.

Farewell to the World Social Forum? And an oldie but goodie: Mzonke Poni on the World Social Forum

Germany’s big green mood lacks radicalism

For the sake of life on Earth, we must put a limit on wealth

The other Marx. Why the Communist Manifesto is obsolete

“Every time a civilization is in crisis, there is a return of the commons” – Interview with Michel Bauwens

‘One of the biggest, baddest things we did’: Black Panthers’ free breakfasts, 50 years on 

What living well means for the Tseltal and Tsotsil Maya of the Chiapas




Cities and radical municipalism

Property owners can do basically whatever they want to homeless people now. In San Francisco, they’re even getting the government’s help.

A new kind of housing co-op emerges in San Francisco

Can our ‘global city’ offer transnational solidarity?

‘Van homes’ aren’t romantic – they are proof of our horrifying housing crisis

India builds homes to resist climate-linked floods

An Athenian remedy: the rise, fall and possible rebirth of democracy

The urban shepherd of Paris – photo essay




Degrowth!

Techno-fix futures will only accelerate climate chaos – don’t believe the hype 

A Green New Deal between whom and for what?

Degrowth and the Green New Deal

Why degrowth is essential: A rejection of Left ecomodernists Phillips, Sharzer, Bastani, and Parenti

Climate futures: Renewable energy vs. technologies of degrowth




Sci-fi and the near future

Angela Davis, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Nikita Dhawan: Planetary utopias

Reclaiming sci-fi’s lost history

We need more imagination in the face of climate catastrophe

Comrades in deep future

The rise of Indigenous horror: How a fictional genre is confronting a monstrous reality




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A Green New Deal for an ecological economy

Image: Peg Hunter CC BY-NC

by Leah Temper and Sam Bliss

The Green New Deal is on everyone’s lips and policy platforms. Liberal pundit Thomas Friedman coined the term in 2007, and Left parties in the UK called for a Green New Deal during the recession that followed the 2008 global financial crash. Last year, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez rebooted the idea in the United States. Now progressive politicians from Canada to Australia are putting forward Green New Deals.

The proposals vary from place to place, but each GND is a package of policies designed to transform our economy to deal with the dual crises of climate change and social inequality. In this way they link environmental justice with economic justice in an all-encompassing vision for restructuring much of the existing social order.

It’s a tall task. The right has criticized the GND for being a laundry list of everything environmentally minded socialists have ever wanted anyway: not just publicly owned renewable energy and small-scale eco-agriculture but also universal healthcare, housing, and living-wage jobs. Centrists have argued that such a broad and deep policy package isn’t politically possible; only incremental, piecemeal changes can fight climate change successfully. Some leftists have expressed concern that the GND doesn’t go far enough: that it might cater to corporate and financial interests; that it threatens to intensify rich countries’ extraction of mineral wealth from the rest of the world (for solar panels, batteries, electric cars, and so on); that it could further marginalize Indigenous peoples; and that it risks being counter-productive by kickstarting economic growth, which would probably increase carbon emissions.

Seemingly every progressive and socialist espouses some version of the GND in part because it remains a vague outline of aspirations. Now its proponents must flesh out the details.

Despite these criticisms, the GND’s ambition has led to great excitement. The Left has been reanimated behind a common cause. Seemingly every progressive and socialist espouses some version of the GND in part because it remains a vague outline of aspirations. Now its proponents must flesh out the details. We need to publicly debate different visions of the GND. We must think strategically about how to make the GND a reality and how to ensure it is just and truly transformative.

We argue that ecological economists can play a leading role in this. In their textbook Ecological Economics, Herman Daly and Josh Farley list sustainability and justice as the field’s first two goals. If the GND’s goal is to facilitate, through policy, the transition to a socially equitable low-carbon economy, then ecological economics basically bills itself as the science of the Green New Deal. Of course, many fields have knowledge and ways of thinking to contribute to informing a GND. Part of ecological economics’ strength is its willingness to incorporate evidence, theory, methods, and perspectives from diverse disciplines.

Yet ecological economists haven’t engaged much with the GND, other than the pile of comments (compiled here) on how it might impede or enable degrowth—a downscaling of rich countries’ economies, and the global economy, that would also downscale emissions and exploitation. While making the GND compatible with degrowth is crucial (see point 2 below), we know that ecological economists have a lot more knowledge and ideas to offer to the design of such a transformative policy package.

To this end, this essay is the first in a series of articles that aim to inform the GND through the lens of ecological economics. The series will feature short position papers by students of the Economics for the Anthropocene program, a three-university collaboration to train graduate students in ecological economics, as well as by other invited experts.

These short articles will focus on thematic issues outlined in the GND, touching on questions such as: How can we pay for the GND? Would it break international trade law? What agricultural policies should an ecologically sound GND include? How do we organize to win a GND? And so on. The authors will propose specific principles and policies to ensure the GND lives up to its eco-revolutionary potential.

To introduce this series, we want to convince you that ecological economics is a science fit for scrutinizing, deliberating, and deepening the GND. That it can provide tools for exploring the intricacies of changing everything about how the economy works.

The following are just a few aspects of ecological economics—and the transdisciplinary research community it’s part of—that can enrich understandings around the GND:

1. Social-ecological perspective

Ecological economics, unlike any other school of economic thought, integrates its investigation of the biophysical, social, and financial aspects of economies. Most economists study these realms separately. Considering them as coevolving, mutually constitutive pieces of a more-than-human whole allows ecological economists to analyze policies that address climate and the economy together, as the GND endeavors to do. One emerging approach, that of ecological macroeconomics, combines modeling techniques to demonstrate how flows of money between economic sectors relate to flows of resources and pollution through the production process, and how changes in one part of this ecological economy affect the rest of the system. Such models can project how different versions of the GND might affect employment, inequality, carbon emissions, mineral extraction, and other variables. Ecological economists’ coevolutionary way of thinking about the economy within society as part of nature, moreover, allows us to consider change holistically, historically, and materially, whereas most other brands of economics study production and exchange as if they occurred separately from politics, beliefs, traditions, and ecosystems. A total social transformation like the GND cannot be reduced to its economic elements.

2. Thinking beyond growth

Ecological economists have continually shown that resource use and carbon emissions rise together with GDP, and that wealthy economies have grown beyond the capacity of society and ecosystems to support them. We have also proposed many ideas for degrowing the economy justly, in ways that do not harm vulnerable people and that enhance local autonomy. The GND could spark a degrowth transition by breaking growth’s link to employment: a government program that gives everyone a job who wants one would ensure people economic security even as the economy shrinks overall. But to avoid simply stimulating growth, a GND must provide jobs that are regenerative and reproductive rather than productive in the conventional sense: ecosystem restoration, caring for the elderly, ecological farming, and such. Ecological economists are already imagining post-growth economies that pursue plural values. Real flourishing means balancing society’s evolution toward a diverse array of worthy goals that cannot be reduced to a number next to a dollar sign. Beyond GDP, the monetary value of all production in an economy, ecological economists measure whether economies meet people’s material needs and use metrics that track the physical size of the economy—the resources used and wastes discharged. Multiple countries in Europe, as well as Japan and others have integrated these into their national accounting systems. This is a first step towards understanding economies otherwise.

The GND could spark a degrowth transition by breaking growth’s link to employment.

3. Understanding complexity and scale

Ecological economics is well positioned to reflect on the difficult-to-foresee consequences of GND policies because of its grounding in systems theory. Making big changes to any system brings unpredictable cascading effects. If economic degrowth or the transition to renewable energy decreases the amount of institutional complexity that society can maintain, it is imperative to make sure that the resultant simplification does not impinge upon democracy or the rights that marginalized people, women, and minorities have won through social movements, and that any increased labour burdens from decreasing energy use do not fall disproportionately on these groups. Managing the government programs of the GND will itself require a lot of materials and energy. If a simpler society powered by renewables cannot sustain sophisticated systems like centrally administered national healthcare as we know it, there is a need to guarantee that newly designed systems for care are based on principles of justice. Systems theory helps us think up policies and institutions that can ensure justice that’s resilient to changing conditions. Central governments can finance and oversee decentralized healthcare systems, for example, that communities construct and operate in ways that work for their local contexts. Our ideological systems might need to coevolve with social-ecological change, too. Women’s emancipation need not rely on professional employment made possible by state-funded childcare and birth control, but we can dream up alternative desirable feminisms only if our beliefs about empowerment and freedom transform along with the economy.

4. Emphasis on equity

Just distribution is a key principle of ecological economics. If we cannot solve poverty by growing the economy, then someone has to take from the rich to give to the poor. But a GND proposing that the government play Robin Hood is not enough. Ecological economists recognize that the economy is set up to continuously create inequality. Labor markets, financial markets, tax laws, property rights, inheritance, and a horde of other institutions continuously transfer wealth to the already wealthy. An economically just GND can’t merely redistribute income and capital, it must redesign the rules of society to dole out the goods more evenly in the first place, and to recognize and recompense historical injustices. Ecological economists go further than government transfers and employment programs, studying collective property systems and commons governance regimes through which people share benefits and make decisions collectively. And we devise programs that integrate equity and ecology—not just a universal minimum income but a maximum, too; a job guarantee that offers part-time work that’s enjoyable but not super productive; taxes on carbon-intensive luxury goods. Reducing inequality will itself likely lessen the competitive pressures that drive the expansion of extraction and emissions. Ecological economics can also help inform processes for recognition of ecological and colonial debts and support charting paths toward meaningful decolonization. Additionally, ecological-economic models estimate production’s effects in other places, such that policy making can account for people and ecosystems abroad. A just GND, even if implemented by one country, must be internationally equitable.

5. Justice beyond humans

Some ecological economists are beginning to adopt a broader understanding of justice, one that considers the fate of other animals, plants, and entire ecological communities. Such a perspective, in the words of our colleagues, “views maintaining the integrity of the web of biotic and abiotic processes and communities that mutually constitute the biosphere as the first principle of distributive justice.” Protecting earth’s biodiversity and life-support systems will be incredibly difficult but at least the goal is straightforward. Extending justice to non-human beings is trickier. How do we know what an individual coyote wants? How can we invite prairie grasses to the negotiation between rotational grazing and total rewilding to replace monoculture corn? This is new ground for ecological economists— to study these questions we’ll need to see worldviews in their plurality beyond the Western one and methodologies from other disciplines that may include rituals, arts-based approaches, and radical forms of listening. Yet analyzing the potential effects of different possible GNDs provides an opportunity to invent innovative methods for thinking about, say, whether wind turbines or hydropower are better for birds’ wellbeing, or if rivers and their inhabitants mind diverting some water for small-scale hydroelectricity.

The GND must be accompanied by a revolutionary movement.

6. Political framing

Ecological economists, like any critical social scientists, insist that all economics is political. Powerful actors take financial and environmental benefits for themselves while pushing burdens like difficult labor and toxic pollution onto those who are powerless to refuse them. We argue that the citizen movements from below can counteract this power with numbers, by acting together. The original New Deal, and most reforms historically, were essentially compromises authored by elites in the face of mass uprising. The GND must be accompanied by a revolutionary movement focused on the spirit as well as the details of a policy package that the ruling class will try to water down anyway. This means making big demands and taking to the streets, along with Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future, and environmental justice activists around the world, rather than simply designing an “optimal” GND.

The GND can serve as a vehicle for dreaming up a desirable future, inspired by degrowth, environmental justice, and other visionary ideas about radically different societies than our own. Parallel to designing and fighting for a state-led Green New Deal we must continue self-organizing and engaging in projects of solidarity outside the market and state. A successful GND, by ensuring certain basic needs and even a livable climate, could in fact facilitate the creation of autonomous mutual aid networks for food, care, housing, and so on by freeing people from some precarity or wage labor.

This essay is a call for ecological economists to collaborate with grassroots movements to put forward ideas about a truly transformative and just Green New Deal that bridges political aspirations, justice, and material realities. We therefore launch this series with this think-piece in hopes that ecological economists and other radical thinkers will join the conversation and bring their expertise to bear on the ideas around the GND. What should a big government program to restructure society and create an ecological economy include? How do we hold them to account?

We hope these essays contribute to the radical reimagining of economic life.


We would like to thank Martin Sers, Katie Kish, Rut Elliot Blomqvist, Vijay Kolinjivadi, and Christopher Orr for comments that contributed to this piece.

Leah Temper is an ecological economist and filmmaker based at McGill University, Montreal and the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is the founder and co-director of the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice.

Sam Bliss studies and organizes non-market food systems in Vermont. He also reads and writes about ecomodernism and degrowth.

September readings

Illustration by Delcan & Company + Julia Grayson, via The New Republic


Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory. 

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth. 

This month, we’re featuring a lot of analysis on climate politics: the climate strikes, climate apartheid, and the rise of fascism along with it. We are also featuring, as usual, many reports and articles documenting the ongoing Indigenous and land rights struggles around the world. We also highlight a debate that started with Jonathan Franzen’s article in the New Yorker, which mixes climate “realism” with a denial of the power of collective power, in favor of individual action.

We continued to collect analyses about the Amazon forest fires and Bolsonaro’s Brazil. A month after the crisis hit the news, articles coming out now are much more measured and well-researched, digging into the connections between global capital, our very own pension funds, and deforestation in the Amazon. 

Finally, analysis and debate about degrowth is picking up again. On the left, there was surprising coverage of the movement in The New Republic and Current Affairs. World-famous scientist and analyst, Vaclav Smil, has just released an authoritative book on the science of degrowth. There was also an interesting debate where Leigh Phillips, author of Austerity Ecology, published an article denouncing degrowth. In four separate replies to his piece, scientists and authors took apart each of his arguments and countered them pretty effectively. We feature the debate here. 



Uneven Earth updates

Last stand on Ménez Hom | Link | At the top of the Ménez Hom, between the earth and the sky, history had displayed the ability to repeat itself. 

Life in flames | Link | On pain and hope in the aftermath of catastrophic fires in Bolivia’s Chiquitanía and Amazon regions 

The vine underground | Link | “The unthinkable had happened. No one plans for the end of their own world.” 

Destructive space-time | Link | How war bombs and resource extractivism compress past, present, and future 



Top 5 articles to read

Indigenous people are already working “green jobs” — but they’re unrecognized and unpaid

Wendell Berry’s lifelong dissent

Rethinking cities, from the ground up – Whose society? Whose cohesion?

The Toxic Valley. How global industry turned a once green Turkish province into an environmental wasteland.

First as tragedy, then as fascism. Ecologist Garrett Hardin’s enduring gift to the nativist right.



News you might’ve missed

From Qatar to Vietnam, global heating is making the workplace deadly for millions

$1m a minute: the farming subsidies destroying the world – report

Suddenly, the world’s biggest trade agreement won’t allow corporations to sue governments

Nuclear cannot help against climate crisis

Jakarta’s sea level prompts a move – at a price. And also, where they are planning to build the new capital, there seems to be a conservation forest in the way… 

‘When is this going to end?’: Indonesians shrouded in toxic haze

The sinking class: the New Yorkers left to fight the climate crisis alone

Surveying archaeologists across the globe reveals deeper and more widespread roots of the human age, the Anthropocene



Where we’re at: analysis

Climate apartheid will only lead to more tragedies in the Mediterranean 

10 ways that the climate crisis and militarism are intertwined 

Open borders must be part of any response to the climate crisis

Naomi Klein: ‘We are seeing the beginnings of the era of climate barbarism’

Dark crystals: the brutal reality behind a booming wellness craze. Demand for ‘healing’ crystals is soaring – but many are mined in deadly conditions in one of the world’s poorest countries.

Socialism with a bit of greenwash can’t save the planet either

What went wrong with African liberation?

Failed decolonisation of South African cities fuels violence



Bolsonaro’s Brazil

Brazil’s Amazon crisis is rooted in its fascist past

Blackstone CEO is driving force behind Amazon deforestation

Revealed: major banks and investors including Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock are pouring money into global forest destruction

As the Amazon burns, students call on Harvard to divest from farmland holdings

Understanding the fires in South America

Amazon crisis: Warring tribes unite against Bolsonaro plans to devastate Brazil’s rainforests for cash

Amazon fires: Follow the money



Land and water protectors and Indigenous struggles

We can’t ‘drink oil’ Indigenous water activist tells UN 

‘Our water is our gold’: Armenians blockade controversial mine

Eco-protesters fight Moscow’s attempt to ‘trash’ Russia’s north

A Brazilian Indigenous leader shares his climate solutions

Revolutionary socialism is the primary political ideology of the Red Nation. Position paper from the Third General Assembly of the Indigenous organization The Red Nation.

Interactive: Plundering Cambodia’s forests

In 2003, a farmer killed himself to protest globalization. Little has changed.

Thai activists risk murder, abduction in fight for land rights

Communities in Africa fight back against the land grab for palm oil



Climate strikes

Twenty-five years before Greta, there was Severn and we ignored her. Time is running out to make transition to low-carbon future safe, just and inclusive.

The climate strikes are about so much more than green colonialism. Solutions to the environmental crisis won’t come in the shape of a battery – they come in the shape of justice, reparations and equity.

About the climate strike and the dark side of the ‘green new deal’ from Rojava.

Why citizens’ assemblies on climate change work

The potential for art as a vehicle for transformation



Climate de-nihilism versus climate rage

What if we stopped pretending? by Jonathan Franzen sparked an online debate about the merits of and issues with claims that it’s too late to take meaningful climate action. Franzen’s take: “The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.” This Twitter thread by climate activist Dr. Genevieve Guenther takes apart Franzen’s article and argues for an activist approach. And Mary Annaïse Heglar writes that Home is always worth it and that “doomer dudes” are “climate de-nihilists.”



Green fascism

The far right’s eco-fascism — greenwashing hate

Ecofascism: When far-right ideology fuses with ecology

The dawn of climate fascism

Why white supremacists are hooked on green living

The regrowth of eco-fascism



Just think about it…

Humanity and nature are not separate – we must see them as one to fix the climate crisis

To decarbonize we must decomputerize: why we need a Luddite revolution

Capitalism ‘solves’ the nitrogen crisis: A brief history

The limits of clean energy

For Rachel Carson, wonder was a radical state of mind

The hellish future of Las Vegas in the climate crisis: ‘a place where we never go outside’



New politics

‘Development’ is colonialism in disguise. A review of the new book, Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary.



Cities and radical municipalism

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor says there is no housing crisis: ‘It’s just housing under capitalism’ 

Why are American homes so big? 

Barcelona’s car-free ‘superblocks’ could save hundreds of lives 

How the fight for this immigrant neighbourhood became a fight for all immigrant neighbourhoods

Mutual aid networks go beyond disaster relief. They offer community empowerment.

Notes on process for assemblies

French city of Dunkirk tests out free transport – and it works

What went wrong for the municipalists in Spain?

“Pan-African social ecology” illustrates liberation in direct democracy



Degrowth!

Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that’

‘Mindless growth’: Robust scientific case for degrowth is stronger every day

Önsketänkande med grön tillväxt – vi måste agera. An op-ed by earth-system scientist Johan Rockström of Stockholm Resilience Center cites the article “Is green growth possible?” by Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis. Rockström retreats from his earlier advocacy of green growth and argues that we need to act politically for more far-reaching change—starting with setting a final date for all fossil fuels.

We need a fair way to end economic growth. The recent mainstream endorsements of degrowth ideas might be a good thing, but: “The left should be monopolizing a controlled and deliberate degrowth strategy because if it doesn’t do it, the rich and their authoritarian, ideological vanguard will. And it will be ugly.” And a similar argument from The New Republic: The delusion and danger of infinite economic growth

The sequel: life after economic growth

The degrowth delusion. The critique of degrowth by Leigh Phillips as “unnecessary, unjust, and the end of progress”. 

And the four responses: 

Growing pain: the delusion of boundless economic growth

Is the degrowth movement delusional? 

Why degrowth is the only responsible way forward

In defence of degrowth



Utopia, sci-fi, and the apocalypse

Ursula K. Le Guin’s revolutions. Le Guin’s work is distinctive not only because it is imaginative, or because it is political, but because she thought so deeply about the work of building a future worth living.

We should all be reading more Ursula Le Guin

Latin American film series offers a decolonial look at science fiction



Resources

Minim Municipalist Observatory. A database with links to articles, reports and academic papers on municipalism, and updates on the municipalist movement.

Tracking your plastic: Exposing recycling myths. A CBC news documentary about the plastics recycling industry and its environmental impact in Malaysia.

A guide to disrupting white nationalists in your community

A blueprint for Europe’s just transition




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Degrowth should be a core part of the just transition

Photo: Bridgette Meinhold

by Dustin Mulvaney

What will it take for human civilization to thrive in a more equitable and sustainable existence on Earth? The enormous violence we see directed at the planet and amongst its inhabitants adds a tremendous sense of urgency to this question. There are many answers that seem compelling. Some answers are technological—we need to be more innovative and use science and technology to solve global problems. Other answers are economic—better pricing will be our ecological salvation. While others still suggest we build and maintain institutions and movements to regulate industries and the environmental bads that flow from the economy.

Too few look more fundamental answers or probe for deeper questions about solutions. Why do we extract and produce so much? Do we need all the consumer products that are produced from natural resources to live a happy life? What kind of economy can we build that allows us to live with better relations to each other and our planet?

Enter “degrowth”

Degrowth, by Dr. Giorgos Kallis of the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (ICTA) of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, is an introduction to the ideas and genesis of a namesake concept in environmental studies that emphasizes dematerialization of the economy, but that also embodies a lot more. Kallis’ interdisciplinary scholarship contributes to the fields of political ecology and ecological economics, two fields that are heavily influential in shaping the main arguments of the book. I have used Kallis’ articles on degrowth in my courses for many years now, so it is a great privilege to have the opportunity to review this longer-form work.

The basic idea of degrowth is that there are laws of physics that dictate certain physical and natural resource limits on the economy. Most important are the laws of thermodynamics, notably the second law, which asserts that the quality of energy or its ability to do work in a closed system always declines with each transformation.

Accordingly, production—the material basis of the economy and economic growth—is entropic. The more we produce, the more we degrade our natural resources. This means there is an inherent contradiction between economic growth and ecological sustainability because eventually the energy in a system degrades in quality and there is none left that is capable of doing work. According to this theory, while resource efficiency and technological change are important to improving some environmental issues, economic growth ultimately has limitations. Either economic growth hits natural resource limitations that lead to its decline, or, eventually, as the global population begins to decline, the economy could contract.

Degrowth is just as much a prescription for scholar-activism to examine pathways towards sustainability and environmental justice, as it is a pathway for positive environmental change. In other words, when people hear degrowth, many only think only of the pathway from the material sense, as in degrowth means using less or dematerialization. But as Kallis clearly articulates degrowth embodies more than just the dematerialized pathway to sustainability, but as normative precepts that center values such as justice, equity, race, gender, and living wage work.

Degrowth as it refers to the material throughput of human civilization is a sobering reminder of the challenges ahead and the lack of progress on many environmental issues. There are examples of decarbonization of some electricity sectors around the world, for example in California. But the overall use of natural resource impacts from human civilization continues to increase.

Overview of the book

 Degrowth was coined in French scholarship in the early 1970s, where the ideas were brought into contact with theories of social change that emphasize autonomy and appropriate technology. Chapter 1 one describes these origins of degrowth as a topic of investigation and debate in environmental research. It opens with a short intellectual history of ecological economics and the emergence of the concept degrowth, drawing on contributions from Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Herman Daly, Serge Latouche, Cornelius Castoriadus, to contemporary work done with colleagues at ICTA.

Kallis’ narrative weaves together a number of influential social scientists, philosophers, and writers that offer insights on the ultimate roots of social and environmental problems such as Ursula Le Guin, J.K. Gibson-Graham, David Harvey, Hannah Arendt, Karl Polyani, Ivan Illich, André Gorz, Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, and Joan Martinez-Alier, to name a few. The articulation of ideas from these thinkers and integration into the motivation and rationale for degrowth, illustrates the breadth of Kallis’ scholarship and quality of writing.

Tracing the intellectual roots of degrowth to The Limits To Growth, Kallis shows how several key themes emerged as ideas underlying ecological economics were read alongside theories of social change, anthropology, development studies, and interpreted through the lens of environmental justice and post-colonial theory. The resulting vision for degrowth is of social relations with reduced the extraction and pollution, that maintains diverse economies, that values leisure over growth for its own sake, and is based on strong empathetic socio-ecological ties.

What is the economy? Chapter 2 grapples with the idea of a socially-constructed economy. The chapter revisits the origins of the ideas underlying how we imagine the health of economy, for example the Dow Jones Index or gross domestic product (GDP). How did it come to be that the imperative of economic growth became a core motivation of nation states in modern capitalist economies?  

One core contention is that economic policies that use gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of well-being should be abandoned. The most widely known illustration of this general point is Daniel Kahneman’s “happiness-income paradox,” where people’s happiness is not linked to the amount of money they make. This finding, which garnered a Nobel prize in economics, was a challenge to Western ideas of progress, which have long used economic growth as a yardstick of development. GDP has some glaring problems including the fact that it includes spending on activities that are negative—storm damage, deforestation, hospital visits, asthma inhalers, for example. There are other indices attempting to move beyond GDP, including the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare and Human Development Index, but these too are not without gaps and shortcomings. Also challenging is the commensuration of complex, undifferentiated social processes into numbers in the first place, as Kallis notes.

Chapter 3 recounts the emergence of economic growth in the 20th century phenomena and puts it in the context of an increase in socio-ecological metabolism, i.e., the total use of materials and energy of society, which has ushered in extinction and climate crises. As economic growth marched on, so did ecological degradation and labor exploitation.

Are growth and ecological sustainability compatible? The case for degrowth is laid out in chapter 4 starting from the basic premise that material extraction and pollution increase with economic growth. Some environmental scholars, such as economists or sociologists adhering to ecological modernization, hold that we could maximize resource efficiency through technological change and/or accurate pricing (internalizing externalities). If this were possible, growth and ecological sustainability could be compatible.

Degrowth advocates like Kallis, instead argue that the two are incompatible. This is not to argue against trends towards resource efficiency. They are not against, for example, recycling solar panels, to utilize more sustainable materials use. Instead, they argue that much more than resource efficiency and technological change is needed to avoid the worst of our relations between the economy and its environmental impacts. For example, recycling solar panels would embody certain principles of a circular economy, but so would reusing old solar panels, which is not about technology, but instead requires building new institutions, policies, and practices. Transitioning to a sustainable economy according to the theory of degrowth will require changes to wants, values, institutions, and behaviors.

Chapter 5 presents the utopian vision that motivates degrowth, its ambitions and engagements with the material world. Kallis admits that degrowth is aspirational, but nonetheless believes these utopian ideals are critical to meeting the objectives in the policy and praxis of degrowth. The precepts of degrowth include (1) end to exploitation of nature, people, gender, (2) direct democracy, (3) localized production, (4) a sharing economy, (5) good socio-ecological relationships, (6) investments in unproductive expenditures (e.g., natural capital), (7) an ethics of care, alongside the redistribution of care work.

These appear to be radical reorientations from framings that say little about social change beyond changes to technologies. Table 5.1 lists policies for degrowth, revealing that while some of the policies and practices advocated are in fact transformative, but many are similar to those advocated by the environmental and climate action communities already—tax reforms, polluter pays principle, ethical banking, green jobs investments, environmental justice. So while degrowth seeks more wholesale social and personal change, its basket of policy options reflects much of the mainstream tools used in environmental policy-making. Degrowth seems to have some agnosticism to environmental policy tools, based on the list of policies in table 5.1, except of course those policies that involve green washing, commodification, dispossession, or land grabs.

Chapter 6 explores some of the key challenges to degrowth. It offers a response to some of the critics that suggest that degrowth would lead to decreased well-being. Kallis’ contention is that degrowth means capping resource use in some way, and does not advocate income loss or declines in well-being. The idea is that a radical shift in values and motivations will change the way that happiness and well-being is measured in the first place. Kallis brings together the foundation of ecological economics with a Gramscian model—using grassroots activism to use the tools of the state to benefit the population—of social change. Is degrowth compatible with capitalism? Liberal democracy? Is it Eurocentric? These tensions are discussed as Kallis summarizes arguments of critics of degrowth.

The main contention of critics of degrowth is the issue of decoupling. The green growth perspective argues that economic growth can be decoupled from natural resource use. So unlimited growth in this view is possible if there are ways to dissociate economic growth from any material basis. Kallis contends that there is still no evidence for decoupling, suggesting that substitutionism seen in the electricity sector (most notably coal to natural gas and renewables) involves a lot of one-offs that will lead to short-term reductions in greenhouse gases, but do not clearly show a sustained rate of decline overall, and do not consider other environmental issues (land, extractive industries, waste, etc.). Critics may still say, but what if evidence of decoupling did emerge? This is the question degrowth scholars will have to continue to contend with.

Conclusion: read the book, make your students read and think about it

Irrespective of whether the reader agrees with degrowth as a normative goal, one cannot ignore the observation that there are no real world examples of decoupling. Until examples of decoupling economic growth from natural resource impact can be demonstrated, ideas embraced by degrowth for how to enagage in a just transition deserve real engagement. Furthermore, given how growth depends on natural resources, and control over natural resources figures in geopolitical contests, the pursuit of growth will necessitate the continuation of militarized capitalism, with all of the tortured and unequal socio-ecological relations that tends to reproduce.

Degrowth is an important contribution to the environmental studies canon. It synthesizes an important strand of the intellectual history of degrowth and ecological economics and integrates ideas from development studies, political ecology, cultural studies. The book is highly accessible for college students or readers with an interest in society and the environment. Each chapter ends with a summary of the argument, which is helpful for many of us who will use the book in the classroom. Degrowth is essential reading for environmental studies, political ecology, and energy transition studies courses. I commend Kallis for producing such a concise and readable book on such a critical topic, and look forward to discussing its contents with my students.

Dustin Mulvaney is an Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies Department at San José State University. His research is on just transitions in the solar industry.

Degrowth by Giorgos Kallis is available from Agenda Publishing.

July readings

Processing of local rice by a women’s cooperative in Dioro, Mali. Photo: FAO/Michela Paganini, via GRAIN


Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory. 

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

We are back with a new list of readings! In July, we collected articles on Brazil under Bolsonaro, global land conflicts and the Plantationocene, agro-ecology and food politics, the fall of the discipline of economics, and activist academia. As usual, you’ll find plenty of material on new politics, radical municipalism, degrowth and the Green New Deal, and plastics and waste; and we’re featuring some good reads on utopia, sci-fi, and the apocalypse. We also launched an exciting new project we’ve been working on behind the scenes for a while: Resources for a better future, a glossary aimed at making the tools needed to build a just and ecological society accessible to people outside of academic and activist circles.

 

Uneven Earth updates

Resources for a better future. We launched a new series! We’re looking for people to write easy-to-read, clear, and opinionated entries defining some of the most important concepts in political ecology, alternative economics, and environmental justice.

Super glue | Link | ‘Fuck, he can do this every single day. Why the fuck does he have to do it? What are we going to do? There’s no point in rushing like this and trying to save him each time he gets into a dark mood’, Ivan said, looking out of the taxi window.

Redwashing capital | Link | Left tech bros are honing Marx into a capitalist tool



Top 5 articles to read

Indigenous maize: who owns the rights to Mexico’s ‘wonder’ plant?

The dark side of renewable energy

Five myths about Chernobyl, and, related: Radiation in parts of the Marshall Islands is far higher than Chernobyl, study says

101 notes on the LA Tenants Union

Food sovereignty is Africa’s only solution to climate chaos



News you might’ve missed

Why a fight to protect a volcano sacred to Native Hawaiians is our fight and Mauna Kea day 7 – crowd swells into the thousands

Hundreds of thousands demand Puerto Rico’s governor resign

Puerto Rico, the oldest colony in the world, gives the world a master class on mobilization

Why ocean acidification could make some geoengineering schemes irrelevant

Planting ‘billions of trees’ isn’t going to stop climate change

One climate crisis disaster happening every week, UN warns. Countries in the Global South must prepare now for profound impact. 

In Somalia, the climate emergency is already here. The world cannot ignore it. Increasingly severe and frequent droughts are threatening the lives of millions of Somalis.

Starvation deaths of 200 reindeer in Arctic caused by climate crisis, say researchers. Comparable death toll has been recorded only once before.

‘Protesters as terrorists’: growing number of US states turn anti-pipeline activism into a crime 



Bolsonaro’s Brazil

Bolsanaro stands by as 20,000 miners invade the Yanomami Amazon Reserve

Brazil: Amazon state’s new law enables land thieves, critics say

Amazon gold miners invade indigenous village in Brazil after its leader is killed

‘He wants to destroy us’: Bolsonaro poses gravest threat in decades, Amazon tribes say



Global land conflicts and the Plantationocene

Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing reflect on the Plantationocene

Heart of Ecuador’s Yasuni, home to uncontacted tribes, opens for oil drilling

Two groups of Cambodian villagers protest over land disputes

Cameroon’s palm oil of discontent

Report implicates Gov’t officials in massive land grabs

The World Bank lending strategy must aim to place people above profit

Central Africa’s rainforests and people suffering from the expansion of palm oil and rubber plantations

Land, environmental activist killings surge in Guatemala: report



Agro-ecology and food politics

Monica White on food justice in the past, present, future

Putting pigs in the shade: the radical farming system banking on trees

Landscape with beavers

How we can change our food systems: Integrated Food Policy

Venezuelan food houses: a last trench against US blockade

Dalit identity and food – memories of trauma on a plate

Agroecology as innovation and Agroecological and other innovative approaches for sustainable agriculture and food systems that enhance food security and nutrition

Our veggie gardens won’t feed us in a real crisis



Where we’re at: analysis

Dancing with grief

Political scenarios for climate disaster

On flooding: drowning the culture in sameness

AI applications, chips, deep tech, and geopolitics in 2019: The stakes have never been higher

The ‘giant sucking sound’ of NAFTA: Ross Perot was ridiculed as alarmist in 1992 but his warning turned out to be prescient

5 myths about global poverty



Just think about it…

The philosophy of low-tech: a conversation with Kris De Decker

The tyranny of lawns and landlords

Gardening games are blossoming in turbulent times

When ancient DNA gets politicized

‘Climate despair’ is making people give up on life

Farmers’ markets have new unwelcome guests: fascists

We should never have called it Earth

Elephants’ diets help forests to thrive… and store more carbon 



New politics

We can’t expand airports after declaring a climate emergency. Related: Seven strategies for the degrowth of aviation and To fly or not to fly? The environmental cost of air travel

Turn on, tune in, rise up

What role do cooperatives and the “solidarity economy” play in class struggle?

Ecological politics for the working class

Shifting ownership for the energy transition in the Green New Deal: a transatlantic proposal

The tactics Hong Kong protesters use to fortify the front lines

In the age of extinction, who is extreme? A response to Policy Exchange in defense of Extinction Rebellion

Remembering the Chipko movement: the women-led Indigenous stuggle



Radical municipalism

Why suburbia sucks

Cities are beginning to own up to the climate impacts of what they consume

The problem with community land trusts

Yesterday’s tomorrow today: what we can learn from past urban visions

Finding the future in radical rural America

I’m an engineer, and I’m not buying into ‘smart’ cities

Berlin buys 670 flats on Karl-Marx-Allee from private owner and The causes and consequences of Berlin’s rapid gentrification



Degrowth and the Green New Deal

Greenwashing the status quo: ‘European green deal’ falls woefully short of what’s needed

Decoupling is dead! Long live degrowth! Also see Decoupling debunked – Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability and The decoupling delusion: rethinking growth and sustainability



Plastics and waste

The plastic industry’s fight to keep polluting the world

What you think about landfill and recycling is probably totally wrong

‘The odour of burning wakes us’: inside the Philippines’ Plastic City



Utopia, sci-fi, and the apocalypse

Optimize what? How techno-solutionism begins in the classrooms where computer science is taught

Ursula K. Le Guin’s revolutions

In Tim Maughan’s dystopian novel, the web is dead

Like mechanization, AI will make us richer. But it may not help workers.

Revolutionary dreamwork



The fall of the discipline of economics

The tragedy of the tragedy of the commons

The quiet realization of Ivan Illich’s ideas in the contemporary commons movement

The myth of the tragedy of the commons

Trickle-up economics

The fall of the economists’ empire

Eight principles of a new economics for the people of a living Earth



Activist academia

Why we need a more activist academy

What it’s like to be a woman in the academy

Why ‘open science’ is actually pretty good politics



Resources

Essential books on Marxism and ecology

Green New Deals – the degrowth perspective. A compilation of articles on the Green New Deal from a degrowth framework—many of which have been featured in this newsletter already. 

The 2019 Atlas of Utopias. A global gallery of inspiring community-led transformation in water, energy, food systems and housing.

Decolonising the economy. A new ourEconomy series focusing on the global economy and global justice.




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June readings

A Latvian ecovillage based on The Ringing Cedars of Russia. (Santa Zembaha/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA)

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory. 

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

Not Afraid of the Ruins is back! In June, we launched the second season of our series of science fiction with an environmental justice twist. And we have two excellent new articles for you, one on women’s organizing against extractivism in southern Africa, another continuing the debate on utopia and science, by Max Ajl. We also highlight more articles criticizing Fully Automated Luxury Communism, and feature a discussion on the merits of and problems with utopian thinking. Finally, we are featuring an older article by Peter Staudenmaier on fascist environmentalism—something every ecologist should be aware of. 

 

Uneven Earth updates

The right to say no | Link | Women organizing against extractivism in southern Africa

All the water | Link | “Everything was on autopilot; the only thing the operator had to do was push a virtual button to engage the missiles.”

Dispatch from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec | Link | What it will take to build alliances with our neighbors to the South

How much will the US Way of Life © have to change? | Link | On the future of farming, socialist science, and utopia


Top 5 articles to read

Ecofascism / fascist ideology: the “green wing” of the Nazi Party and its historical antecedents

Social collapse and climate breakdown

Climate change, dust bowls, and fishery collapse: metabolic rifts of capitalism and the need for socialism

“Batshit jobs” – no-one should have to destroy the planet to make a living

Why a hipster, vegan, green tech economy is not sustainable


News you might’ve missed

State projects leave tens of thousands of lives in the balance in Ethiopia

Dam in Ethiopia has wiped out indigenous livelihoods, report finds

Only 60 years of farming left if soil degradation continues

Climate change-fueled valley fever is hitting farmworkers hard

340+ organisations call on the EU to immediately halt trade negotiations with Brazil on the grounds of deteriorating human rights and environmental conditions.

Faces of war: Kurdistan’s armed struggle against Islamic State

Carbon emissions from energy industry rise at fastest rate since 2011

African city heat is set to grow intolerably

To stop destruction of Liberia’s rainforest, he put his life on the line. Alfred Brownell had to flee Liberia after challenging the powerful palm oil and other extractive industries that were clearing its forests. But he remains committed to seeing that the West African nation’s biodiverse lands be developed sustainably and the rights of its indigenous peoples respected.

Public concern over climate crisis reaches record high in UK



Indigenous struggles

Old neighbors, new battles

White allies, let’s be honest about decolonization

The shoreline still provides dinner, despite climate change and private property



Utopia, sci-fi, and the apocalypse

Change is divine: How sci-fi visionary Octavia Butler influenced this Detroit revolutionary

Utopia isn’t just idealistic fantasy – it inspires people to change the world

The end of the world will be a non-event

The empty radicalism of the climate apocalypse



Where we’re at: analysis

The Great Wheel.  A 2015 article debating accelerationism vs. autonomism. 

The dictatorship of the present

Touted as ‘development,’ land grabs hurt local communities, and women most of all

Largest animal epidemic in history is due to industrial farming

US military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries – shrinking this war machine is a must

The significance of the Sudanese revolution

One hundred years after World War I, are we heading back to the abyss?

Connecting the dots: Insane trade and climate chaos

The roots of the French far right’s rise

The European far right’s environmental turn

How to truly decolonise the study of Africa

A Chernobyl guide to the future

Who owns tomorrow?



Just think about it…

Will climate change kill everyone — or just lots and lots of people?

Ancient water-saving can help modern Peru

Decentralized microgridding can provide 90% of a neighborhood’s energy needs, study finds

Carmageddon: it’s killing urban life. We must reclaim our cities before it’s too late

Why ‘Game of Thrones’ was about ecomodernism

The mindfulness conspiracy. It is sold as a force that can help us cope with the ravages of capitalism, but with its inward focus, mindful meditation may be the enemy of activism.

Training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes

The easy way out: How the pursuit of convenience produces new forms of inconvenience

How a ‘repair economy’ creates a kinder, more caring community

How ‘maintainers’, not ‘innovators’, make the world turn. “The vast majority of technologies that surround us and underpin our lives are not innovations, and the vast majority of labor in our culture is not focused on introducing or adopting new things, but on keeping things going.”

The Chinese government should support small scale agriculture for a green China

Think prairie grasslands are just “boring grass”? Think again

As climate change worsens, some people might decide to DIY a solution

The reason Australia doesn’t have nuclear power: the workers fought back

Steven Pinker is selling Reason™, not reason



Fully automated luxury communism—and its critics

Fully Automated Luxury Communism

Artificial stupidity

Gee Whiz! Communism is sure gonna be keen!

A utopian vision of communism’s techno-future



New politics

To free ourselves, we must feed ourselves. Leah Penniman on bringing people of color back to the land.

Building the new left economics: public-commons partnerships and new circuits of ownership

We don’t just need a Universal Basic Income, we need a Universal Basic Services System. Here’s what it would look like.

Agroecology: a systems approach. How scientists propose that we feed the future… and solve a host of other problems at the same time.

Modern Monetary Theory: meet the economists fighting the economy

Paper straws won’t save the planet – we need a four-day week

I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle. Fight the oil and gas industry instead.

The new left economics: how a network of thinkers is transforming capitalism

Why I’m no longer Vegan™. A video essay on why vegan activism needs to be anti-capitalist.



Radical municipalism

Is Strong Towns NIMBY, YIMBY, or what?

Every NIMBY’s speech at a public hearing

What if a city decides it can live without a freeway?

How a Montreal working-class neighbourhood’s activists changed Quebec and Canada 

Tenants won this round

From green gentrification to resilience gentrification: An example from Brooklyn

Berlin senate approves a five-year rent freeze

Follow the carbon. The case for neighborhood-level carbon footprints.



Degrowth and the Green New Deal

Is it time to end our fixation with GDP and growth?

Economic growth: a short history of a controversial idea

The Green New Deal: whither capitalism?

10 pillars of the Green New Deal for Europe

New study dismisses green growth policies as a route out of ecological emergency

Degrowth: a call for radical socio-ecological transformation

The “do more” mindset is ruining the planet. A video explainer.



Plastics and waste

We might not have enough materials for all the solar panels and wind turbines we need

The economy of wastefulness: the biology of the commons

The feminist, anti-colonialist scientific approach to micro-plastics and pollution

Where does your plastic go? Global investigation reveals America’s dirty secret

Boom goes the plastics industry

Humans have made 8.3bn tons of plastic since 1950. This is the illustrated story of where it’s gone



Resources

An alternative economics summer reading list

Against militarism on Mother Earth. A collection of readings.

Caring labor. An archive of resources.




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May readings

Illustration by Annie Xing Zhao

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

This month, we’re highlighting a few articles on the work of activist organizing, the work of gestation, and… on doing less work. There’s also been a flurry of conversation about futurism on the left, spurred on by the release of Aaron Bastani’s new book, Fully Automated Luxury Communism. We highlight several critiques. From the recent setback to the municipal movement in Barcelona, to urban environmental justice struggles, we once again feature lots of pieces on radical municipalism. And, our section on the Green New Deal and Degrowth has basically become permanent, as the debate between them rages on.


Top 5 articles to read

Spadework. On political organizing.

The radical plan to save the planet by working less

Aaron Bastani just released his book, Fully Automated Luxury Communism. Read two critical reviews of the book: Cookshops of the future and Climate, communism and the Age of Affluence?. And two previous articles on the subject by our co-editors Aaron Vansintjan and Rut Elliot Blomqvist here: The shitty new communist futurism, Where’s the ‘eco’ in ecomodernism?, and Pulling the magical lever.

How a beloved Bay Area bakery is tackling the housing crisis

Labor does you



News you might’ve missed

Let’s be clear, says Mexico environment minister, ‘parasitic and predatory neoliberalism’ to blame for climate crisis

The rise of the superbugs – and why industrial farming is to blame

Sudan protesters plan general strike as talks falter. And an update. And another (bad news).

The Yellow Vests of France: six months of struggle

MPs make history by passing Commons motion to declare ‘environment and climate change emergency’

New Zealand’s world-first ‘wellbeing’ budget to focus on poverty and mental health

Why the Guardian is changing the language it uses about the environment

Corporate trade tribunals used by mining companies against communities and governments

The West has been dumping tens of millions of tons of trash in Southeast Asian countries for more than 25 years – now they want to send it back



Indigenous struggles

The long read: bullet ants and stolen land

The Yurok nation just established the rights of the Klamath river

Brazilian Indigenous peoples propose boycott

Native knowledge: What ecologists are learning from Indigenous people

Dam violence against environmental defenders

The Zapatista women’s revolutionary law as it is lived today



Where we’re at: analysis

The ruin of the digital town square

The price of meat. And Two amputations a week: the cost of working in a US meat plant.

Far-right identity politics and the task for the Left

Time’s up for capitalism. But what comes next?

The problem of the Left is its reactive position in politics

It may not be fully visible, but we’re in the final years of the American Empire

The reason renewables can’t power modern civilization is because they were never meant to

Favelado’s diary. “The criminalization of poverty is the strategy to keep the system functioning against black populations in Brazil and in the world, because if the favela exists and is marked by the stigma of social violence, it does not come free or without interest.”



Just think about it…

The Blackfoot/Maslow connection. How Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs was stolen from Indigenous Blackfoot spirituality.

New Yorkers’ poop will soon be used to fuel their own homes

How to make wind power sustainable again

Psychedelic socialism

Loving a vanishing world. I want to move this away from the instrumental question of what you can do about climate change, important though that is, and back to the intrinsic value of what it means to love the world.

Why green pledges will not create the natural forests we need

International Relations Theory and ‘Game of Thrones’ are both fantasies

AirPods are a tragedy. If AirPods are anything, they’re future fossils of capitalism.

Could you give up flying? Meet the no-plane pioneers

When climate change starts wars. Rising temperatures are bringing ethnic tensions to a boil in Central Asia.



New politics

For the love of winning: An open letter to Extinction Rebellion

How to build a sustainable food system

Solidarity economy: Case studies from Rojava and Jackson, Mississippi

Cymru burns, but Northern Syria may help us douse the flames

‘Now is the time of monsters’: The future at a crossroads in Rojava

Inside the growing Indonesian anarchist movement

Water democracy. Farmers in New Mexico have banded together to protect scarce water resources from developments that could end their way of life. Their collective activity is a model for grassroots politics in the age of climate change.



Radical municipalism

Can Barcelona rekindle its radical imagination? Barcelona En Comú narrowly lost the popular vote, and possibly the city government. But there is much more to life than governance.

Why America can’t solve homelessness

NYC’s segregation was carefully planned. Its integration must also be.

Dozens died from heat in Montreal, yet zero in Ontario. Here’s why

How parks help cities adapt to climate change

How communities are contesting green inequities

Rebel Cities 24: How Catalonia’s CUP party is helping reclaim towns, cities and nation

Mobile home residents are trying to save affordable housing

Why councils are bringing millions of pounds worth of services back in-house

Which US cities have concrete strategies for environmental justice?



Degrowth and the Green New Deal

A ‘Green New Deal’ needs to be global, not local

Plan, mood, battlefield – reflections on the Green New Deal

A Green New Deal beyond growth (II) – Some steps forward

How the Green New Deal happened: the view from 2030

Our obsession with growth is ruining the planet. A Green New Deal can save us

An Indigenous critique of the Green New Deal

The ‘green new deal’ supported by Ocasio-Cortez and Corbyn is just a new form of colonialism. And a prior companion piece: A Green New Deal must deliver global justice.

Between ecosocialism, extractivism, the future and the Left in power

Time for Europe to stop growing and grow up

Debate between Giorgos Kallis (Degrowth) and Ted Nordhaus (Ecomodernism)



Resources

Elements of the democratic economy

History from below: a reading list with Marcus Rediker

Global tapestry of alternatives. An initiative seeking to create solidarity networks and strategic alliances amongst radical alternatives to the dominant capitalist, patriarchal, racist, statist, and anthropocentric regime on local, regional and global levels.



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April readings

Source: Ecohustler

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

This month, we’ve focused on the ongoing debates over different takes on ecological politics in connection to Extinction Rebellion, the Green New Deal, and degrowth. And there are quite a few articles about how capitalists are reacting to climate change –  like blaming you for having children while they are continuing to spew out carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and prepping for disaster. You will also find the usual range of themes, including radical municipalism, Indigenous resistance, alternative politics, farming, and the limits to extractivism.


Uneven Earth updates

Degrowth is utopian, and that’s a good thing | Link | A response to Socialist Forum on degrowth by Giorgos Kallis


Top 5 articles to read

All crises, THE crisis (the industrial agri-food system is central to all of them)

It gets worse. What’s in store as the planet heats up.

Heaven or high water. Selling Miami’s last 50 years.

Climate chaos is coming — and the Pinkertons are ready

Degrowth vs. the Green New Deal



News you might’ve missed

Restoring forests rules out growing crops

Resource extraction responsible for half world’s carbon emissions

Major victory for Indigenous rights. On April 26th 2019, the Waorani people won a historic legal victory to protect 500,000 acres of their rainforest from oil extraction.

‘It’s a groundswell’: the farmers fighting to save the Earth’s soil

The mass movement that toppled Omar al-Bashir

Women are leading the protests in Sudan

Bolsonaro’s three-month rule is a disaster

‘Decades of denial’: major report finds New Zealand’s environment is in serious trouble

Half of England is owned by less than 1% of the population


Extinction rebellion

Let’s talk about Extinction Rebellion. What can we learn from it? And how can we build on its momentum?

Extinction Rebellion: inside the new climate resistance

The origins and rise of the Extinction Symbol

The life of Extinction Rebellion. The lifelike DNA, structure and story of Extinction Rebellion can be used to revive socialist organisation.

If politicians can’t face climate change, Extinction Rebellion will. “If real passion and vision are necessary, they will have to come from outside the system.”

Only rebellion will prevent an ecological apocalypse. Mass civil disobedience is essential to force a political response.


Where we’re at: analysis

Western industrial farming is eating our forests and accelerating climate change

How robots became a scapegoat for the destruction of the working class

What Karl Marx has to say about today’s environmental problems

Agrarian social movements: The absurdly difficult but not impossible agenda of defeating right‐wing populism and exploring a socialist future


Green New Deal

Between the devil and the Green New Deal

A comradely critique of Jasper Bernes’ “Between the devil and the Green New Deal” in Commune Magazine

It begins with the land

The Green New Deal must have a zero waste policy

What’s the deal with the Green New Deal?

Could a Green New Deal make us happier people?

Organizing to win a Green New Deal

How to build the zero-carbon economy. The Green New Deal sets an ambitious goal. Here’s how to get there.


Limits to extractivism

The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust

U.S. nuclear power plants weren’t built for climate change

Going 100% renewable power means a lot of dirty mining

Rotten eggs: e-waste from Europe poisons Ghana’s food chain

Political ecologies of waste: Salvaged livelihoods and infra-structural labour

No more Hoover dams: Hydropowered countries suffer higher levels of poverty, corruption and debt

The dirty truth about green batteries


Just think about it…

The story we’ve been told about America’s national parks is incomplete

What lies beneath: Robert Macfarlane travels ‘Underland’

Who owns the country? The secretive companies hoarding England’s land

When the hero is the problem.“Positive social change results mostly from connecting more deeply to the people around you than rising above them, from coordinated rather than solo action.”

Imagining social movements: from networks to dynamic systems

The tragedy of “the tragedy of the commons”

Uprooted: old tree transplants for China’s new cities – in pictures

A case for small climate stories

The real estate sector is using algorithms to work out the best places to gentrify

Don’t bother waiting for conservatives to come around on climate change

Don’t blame the babies. “It’s hard to think of a more neoliberal bit of gaslighting than telling a young woman to take responsibility for the crimes of capital by making a huge personal sacrifice — one that for some people would feel as unnatural and inhuman as giving up on love or sex — while letting those with all the money and power off the hook.”

Names and locations of the top 100 people killing the planet


Radical municipalism

A collective hub in Ridgewood wants to realign your gaze away from the abyss

Shade

These neighbors got together to buy vacant buildings. Now they’re renting to bakers and brewers

The anarchists who took the commuter train

The alarming state of civic space in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sudan and Venezuela: a global trend

How gentrification impacts community bonds

Barcelona and urban planning: the ultimate potential of superblocks

Superblocks: Barcelona’s radical urban plan to take back streets from cars

The Airbnb invasion of Barcelona

Why grocery co-ops build strong towns and how to start your own

Where it hits, gentrification hits hard

New Orleans gentrification tied to Hurricane Katrina

This is how borrowing things from our neighbors strengthens society. A comic.

How to design our neighborhoods for happiness

How to make friends, build a community, and create the life you want

The healing power of gardens


New politics

Patterns for cooperative networks and associations

What’s in a just transition?

Youths strike for climate change

A new social contract for the 21st century

Gilets Jaunes may be the start of a worldwide revolt against climate action

A new chance for climate justice? New climate movements are demanding equity, not just urgent action. They need to get even bolder about global demands for climate justice.


Sci-fi and climate change

17 writers on the role of fiction in addressing climate change


Resources

Get up and get going: How to form a group

10 tips on receiving critical feedback: A guide for activists

The MappingBack network. Mapping has long been used as a tool for colonial dispossession; MappingBack seeks to reverse this by using mapping as a tool to fight back. Using maps as a weapon to resist extractive industries on Indigenous territories.

Learning: Exploring post-extractivism

Areas of the world where biodiversity collapse is being driven by US consumption patterns

A guide to climate violence


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Degrowth is utopian, and that’s a good thing

by Giorgos Kallis

What we dream about the future affects how we act today. If utopias express our desires, dystopias distill our fears. Utopias and dystopias are images we invoke to think and act in the present, producing futures that often look very different from either our dreams or our nightmares.

An oft-repeated criticism against the green movement is that it is dystopian and catastrophist (some call this ‘Malthusian’) when it comes to its diagnosis, and utopian when it comes to its prognosis. On the one hand, greens warn of a scary future of planetary disaster, and on the other, offer a peaceful dreamland where people bike to their artisanal work and live in picturesque houses with well manicured food gardens and small windmills. Nowhere to see is a realistic political plan on how we could ever escape from the current capitalist nightmare, and move to something remotely close to an egalitarian and ecological future.   

I won’t deny that some green writings, especially in the 1970s and 80s (but also still today) merit this critique. But in the meantime, there has been a lot of new thought, under the labels of ecosocialism, degrowth, or environmental justice that cannot be caricatured and packaged in this simplistic mold. And yet this is what geographer Matt Huber does in a recent article published at the Socialist Forum, entitled Ecosocialism: Dystopian and Scientific. Huber argues that there are two types of green socialism, one that is utopian and unscientific, and one that is realistic and scientific, his.

Tired dichotomies

Democratic socialism is a project in the making, and it is important to avoid tired dichotomies and divisions of the past, especially between green and not-so-green socialists. I find a lot to agree with in Huber’s socialist climate politics and would fully sign on to his concluding agenda in the Socialist Forum piece, where he defends an ‘inspiring and positive political program that can win the masses of the working classes … built on the decommodification and universal access to [their] needs, but also a more radical and democratic vision of organizing production to integrate ecological knowledge’ based on ‘public transport, green public housing … and public ownership of energy’. Yet, before that Huber argues that ‘degrowth oriented ecosocialists’ (his term), like us are too utopian, and not scientific. And here I disagree.

What I want to argue is that, first, being utopian is not a problem as Huber makes it seem it is, and second, we are scientific, at least as scientific as Huber can claim his position is.

Dialectical utopias

To begin with: what does Huber mean by ‘utopian’ and ‘scientific’?

By utopia, Huber, following Engels, understands a social arrangement that does not and cannot exist (a place that has no place, a u-topos). If such an arrangement cannot exist, then it is a waste and misdirection of our energies, Huber implies. 

Forgive me the heresy, but thinking about utopias has progressed – fortunately – a lot since Engels’ time.

Forgive me the heresy, but thinking about utopias has progressed – fortunately – a lot since Engels’ time. David Harvey, who Huber certainly reads, wrote a wonderful book on cities and utopias almost 20 years ago (Spaces of Hope). Harvey says we should oppose utopias that are meant as models or blueprints – not so much because they are unrealistic, but because the realization of a perfect ideal tolerates no objection and crushes everything that stands in its way. Harvey recognizes, however, the value of ‘dialectical utopias’ – contradictory and incomplete images that express desires about the future, that challenge and make us reflect, that generate conflict with prevalent visions and open up new syntheses.

Ernst Bloch famously called utopias the education of desire. As Hug March and I argued, the future prefigured in the degrowth literature is indeed a dialectical utopia that wants to reshape desires.  When French activists and intellectuals launched the word ‘degrowth’ in the early 90s, they intentionally meant it as a missile slogan that would generate a conflictual antithesis to the prevalent, and taken for granted, imaginary of growth-based development. The hope was – and is – that this conflict would catalyze a new synthesis – maybe not the bio-region of low-tech eco-communes utopia that Huber sees in degrowth writings, but at least some unpredictable new future other than one which would look exactly like capitalism, only with the workers in command.

Unscientific socialism?

Huber claims this vision is ‘unscientific’. A scientific socialism, Huber tells us, is one ‘grounded in analysis of what kind of socialist society is possible given historical and material conditions’. So far so good. Only one problem: who is to judge what is really ‘possible’?

Huber, for example, seems to think that something close to the energy or material consumption of an average American, secured for everyone in the world, is possible (Huber is against wasteful capitalism, and implies that unnecessary production and consumption could be curtailed, but is not clear what he classifies as waste –and in any case, insists on the point of ‘abundant energy’, which one can only think means at least as much energy as it is currently consumed, if not more). Energy should come from renewable energy, or why not 80% renewable and 20% nuclear, which is fine, Huber claims – and food from robotic agriculture. Moreover, we will do all this without exploiting anyone, taking everyone’s concerns democratically into account, somehow minimizing damage, or at least making those on the receiving side of such damage concede to it ‘democratically’.

I am a scientist too, and I think this vision is unrealistic. To use Huber’s terms, it is ‘materially impossible’.

I am a scientist too, and I think this vision is unrealistic. To use Huber’s terms, it is ‘materially impossible’. I explain why here or here in more detail. The emissions, land use and material extraction involved in a scenario like Huber’s make impossible a sort of American standard of energy abundance available for everyone (or more precisely, it can be possible but just for a few at the expense of many others, as it has been actually till now).

And if we were to take really into account everyone’s concerns (those who live next to mines where the lithium for the batteries and the uranium for the reactors will come from, those who will have to be relocated or see their landscape destroyed to put windmills, etc) and actually compensate them for the damages our consumption causes, then production would be inevitably much, much lower than it is today on average. (Not to mention how much the economy would slow down if we were to devote time to reach decisions on such matters truly democratically).

The past is not proof of the future

Granted, I might be wrong, and Huber right. But who is to judge whose science about what is possible is right and whose is wrong? And what makes Huber so sure that he is right and scientific while others are not? Any science—scientific socialism including—is bound to be incomplete, uncertain and debatable. There are different, contested views, of what is possible – crucially, these views cannot be separated easily from our desires about the future.

Huber, for example, thinks it is undesirable to live with less energy. His argument is that since agricultural work is drudgery and no one wants to do it, societies without fossil fuels to power tractors had to and will have to have slaves. First, it is questionable whether the historical and anthropological record supports the claim that all societies without fossil fuels were slave-based.

Second, even if many were, this does not mean that we cannot have a future society without fossil fuels, with more manual work and without slaves. The fact that something did not exist in the past is not proof that it cannot happen in the future – if it were, then we wouldn’t be discussing socialism to begin with.

The fact that something did not exist in the past is not proof that it cannot happen in the future – if it were, then we wouldn’t be discussing socialism to begin with.

Third, no one that I know in the ecosocialist, degrowth or other environmentalist communities that Huber seems to have in mind has argued for a total substitution of fossil fuels by manual labour. It doesn’t  help to take the arguments of others to their extremes just to prove that they are impossible and unscientific. The claim of those who support decentralized renewables or peasant agro-ecology for example is much more nuanced and is based on the recognition that a sustainable future would involve both cleaner energy and less energy use, as well as less use of chemicals in agriculture. Agro-ecological, lower-intensity models that would involve more human labour than is currently the case in countries such as the U.S., are advocated. But these arrangements are generally envisioned as a mix of old and new, peasant and industrial experiences, not a total overhaul of modern techniques or a return to a pre-capitalist mode of living.

Engels was right and it turned out materially possible for capitalism to produce plenty of goods at a fraction of the time they needed before. But that doesn’t mean that it is today possible to power ever-growing energy use with renewable and nuclear energy, with no harm done to others (or with harm done at levels that can be ‘democratically’ tolerated by others). These are different times and different arguments, and the fact that siding with a ‘pro-technology’ (so to speak) argument at one moment in time may have proved right, does not make all similar arguments always and everywhere right or ‘scientific’.

Degrowth: radical abundance

Capitalism produced (more than) enough, quite soon after Engels’s time, but there is still poverty amidst an overabundance of goods and productive possibilities. This should make us pause for a moment. The problem may not be that we are not producing enough, but as Marx and Engels were among the first to note, that we are not distributing equally what we are producing.

As Jason Hickel argues in ‘Degrowth. A call for radical abundance’, the continued enclosures and dispossessions that sustained capitalism have always been justified in the name of growth. The story we are constantly being told is, as Malthus first put it, in the service of his argument in defense of capitalist growth (yes, Malthus was a defender of growth, not of limits to growth), is that ‘there is not enough for everyone to have a decent share’. The artificial scarcity created in turn by enclosures makes everyone live in need, and therefore work harder to stay afloat, which is essential if the engine is to keep going and growing. So the problem isn’t that we don’t produce enough, but that we can’t share the abundance that we already have.  

Huber’s vision of sharing and public luxury is not as far as he thinks from a degrowth vision. I would only add that this has to take place in a context of private sobriety – a sobriety that actually socialist revolutionaries of all times have espoused and lived in their everyday lives. It is what Enrico Berlinguer, leader of the Italian Euro-communists called ‘revolutionary austerity’. It is the sort of personal austerity that real revolutionaries of all times have practiced in their personal lives.

Relative versus absolute scarcity

Defending Berlinguer’s revolutionary austerity does not make one accomplice to Thatcherite austerity. On the contrary, what is Thatcherite is the liberal assumption of a God-given right of each and everyone to mobilize all resources possible in their pursuit of their individual (or collective) goals. According to this ingrained liberal view, we cannot tell people that we could perhaps live better with less, because it is people’s god given right to want more and more, as much as those richer have. What is more revolutionary instead than Gandhi’s plea to ‘live simply so that others may simply live’?

Huber agrees that there is so much waste going on within capitalism, and so much work expended just to goods and services whose purpose is no other than to pay for rents and profits. Then just ending profits and rents could reduce resource use significantly. Why insist on robots and nuclear plants if we could live with less and sustain a decent material standard of living for everyone?

Note also that what counts as ‘decent’ living is always socially determined and it makes little sense to defend an average, or middle class standard of living. A poor person today does not die from diseases that royals died in bygone eras. But if your loved one dies from a curable disease that a rich person can pay to treat, this creates a real sense of scarcity.

Crucially, this scarcity is relative. If housing was public and cheap, Hickel argues, then people could live with well with a fraction of their salary – and produce and consume much less than they do now. To imagine an absolute scarcity, and use it as a justification for mobilizing ever more work and ever more resources in the name of making everyone have what the rich persons of their epoch happen to have, is a fundamental myth that sustains capitalism. 

Bending material reality is not scientific

Huber also has a second take on the meaning of ‘scientific’. He writes that ‘let’s get real, or ‘scientific’ … we are not going to win the masses of workers with a socialist program based on … ‘drudgery for all’. Science here seems to refer to realism about how can ‘we’ (sic) win the masses of workers. There are problems with this formulation too.

Even if there were a mass of workers that wouldn’t be mobilized to anything that sounds like ‘less’, that still wouldn’t make it materially possible to have ever more stuff.

First, even if Huber were right and there were a mass of workers that wouldn’t be mobilized to anything that sounds like ‘less’, that still wouldn’t make it materially possible to have ever more stuff. Huber argues that given that the workers will never buy into a degrowth utopia then ‘the key to an ecosocialist future is finding some way to replicate the labor-saving aspects of the fossil economy with clean energy’.

This actually seems to me a very unscientific, and utopian in the bad sense – having to ‘find some way’ to make something possible, independently of whether it is materially possible or not. Rather than consider integrating your political strategy to what is materially possible, the call here is to bend material possibility, one way or the other, to what you came to think as the only possible political strategy.

Fixed desires

But, second, like the statement on material possibility, the idea that some of us can know with certainty the limits of political possibility – that is, know what the workers really want – is also problematic. Who is to say that workers everywhere and always would only be attracted to visions of ‘more’?

Our mayor, Ada Colau won the municipal elections with the support of a substantial fraction of the working class. Her program emphasized dignity and equality, not growth and material affluence.

I live in Barcelona, and our mayor Ada Colau won the municipal elections with the support of a substantial fraction of the working class. Her program emphasized dignity and equality, not growth and material affluence. Colau wanted to stop evictions and secure decent housing for everyone, she did not have to promise air-conditions and cheap charter flights for all (I am not saying that Huber advocates these, but Leigh Phillips, a provocateur who Huber for some reason enthusiastically cites twice, does).  

Third, Huber implicitly assumes that what workers want is fixed, and that desires cannot be shaped through reflection and dialogue. This leaves no space for new ideas or new desires and makes one wonder, how is it that workers come to want what they want, and how does this ever change in time? If we follow Huber’s logic then we can only cater to what exists, never shape the possible – this to me seems a quite restricted view of the political.

Politics has a make-believe quality. Pre-defining what is possible leads to self-fulfilled prophecies. If we assume that we cannot even utter our dreams of a different future, because they are unrealistic and impossible, then of course ‘workers’ will want what they currently want and alternative dreams will remain unrealistic and impossible.

But fourth, and more importantly, it is not clear why, for Huber, ‘we’ who write these things are not part of the working class, and can’t understand what ‘they’ want. If the working class is those who have to sell their labour in order to survive, then it is not only coal miners and Joe the plumbers that make the working class, not even only nurses and teachers, but also we University professors and the precarious post-docs and students that read our musings. Those among us who desire some sort of a degrowth future are not some weird romantic animals, different from the rest of working people – we are not people who live from rents, we are workers like anyone else who have to work in order to make it from month to month.

Of course there are different experiences, and different power positions within a broadly defined working class, or the 99%. We shouldn’t be blind to our positionalities, for example, as academic urbanites, with a decent income, a health insurance, flying regularly and so on. But the desires of education workers or precarious youngsters are as legitimate as those of factory workers. And our desires do not necessarily have to be different either (actually keeping them different is essential for the hegemony of capitalism). And they are increasingly not different, as the incomes, social protections and privileges of the professional middle income groups are collapsing.

Chris Carlsson and Fransesca Manning write about a new ‘nowtopian‘ experience of class, shared among parts of the precariat which finds work and meaning outside wage labour, in urban gardens, social centres or pirate programming. Nowtopians formed the backbone of the occupied squares. Waving away dreams like theirs as unscientific (and implicitly, elitist) is not doing the building of a broad movement any service. 

Reducing complex debate into outdated binaries

In conclusion, both material and social conditions are much more complex and uncertain than Huber allows for. Huber, I am afraid, is reducing a complex debate into simple binaries of the sort ‘(post)-industrial future’ versus ‘back to slavery’ (if not back to the caves).

The choices ahead are much more nuanced than that and will involve different hybrids of advanced and simplified techniques and modes of living. Consumption will have to go down and production will need to be cleaner – fortunately this can be experienced as an improvement in living if the commons are reclaimed and shared equally. The discourses and visions that will mobilize the 99% to an eco-socialist future are bound to be context-specific, but I firmly believe they can be constructed in a Colau-style fashion around ideas of sufficiency and sharing the commons equally, while securing a dignified life for all.

If something disappoints me, and motivated me to write this essay, it is the feeling that no matter how hard some of us work to advance and refine a certain strain of green-left thought (call it degrowth, ecosocialism or else), we are bound to be caricatured as a blend of socialist utopians of the 19th century and neo-Malthusians of the 1970s (never mind the stark differences between these two sets of ideas).

We owe ourselves and the few people who might read us a more informed and refined debate than a repetition of tired dichotomies from the 1970s. Reality is complex, what is possible and what not is hard to know, and the roads to ecosocialism (or however else you might want to call an egalitarian and sustainable future) are many.

Aaron Vansintjan commented on a previous draft and helped me improve this text.

Giorgos Kallis is an ICREA professor of political ecology and ecological economics at ICTA-UAB in Barcelona. He is the author of Degrowth (2018, Agenda Publishing). A collection of his essays and media articles, ‘In Defense of Degrowth,’ can be downloaded free of cost.

February & March readings

Illustration by Paige Wickers.

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

We’ve all been swamped with work and life, so we decided to skip last month’s newsletter and combine February and March into one bigger reading list. It’s ok, because February is so short, right? That said, a lot has happened these past two months. From the Christchurch shooting to the flooding in Mozambique, to Amazon’s defeat in Queens, New York and the growing children’s climate strikes. In this newsletter, we’ve collected some of the best analyses of these events: talking about the need to understand how eco-fascist ideology drove the Christchurch shooter and the significance of local organizing against Internet giants. We highlight some critiques of development discourse, and a bibliography on “post-extractivism” in Latin America. We also include our usual collection of articles about alternative politics, radical municipalism, plastics and waste, and degrowth vs. the green new deal. And, yes, there’s a whole article about why lawns are bad.

Uneven Earth updates

Is Heidegger’s philosophy anti-semitic? | Link | Considering the new book, Heidegger and the Jews.

After mass mobilizations, what direction for the Belgian climate movement? | Link | A report from a participant.

Top 5 articles to read

Eco-fascism is undergoing a revival in the fetid culture of the extreme right. Some see looming ecological collapse as an opportunity to re-order society along their preferred, frankly genocidal, lines.

In mourning. We must pay attention to who we are not supposed to mourn, to what mourning is under-reported or discouraged.

Why science needs philosophy

Lessons from the history of environmentalism

The case against lawns

News you might’ve missed

WWF funds guards who have tortured and killed people

Most Europeans think the environment should be a priority even at the expense of growth

Study finds racial gap between who causes air pollution and who breathes it

SF considers ‘sweeping smart city’ installation of devices with cameras, microphones

China experiences a fracking boom, and all the problems that go with it

West Papua: The genocide that is being ignored by the world

The shells of wild sea butterflies are already dissolving

‘First-of-its-kind’ law will protect Lake Erie from pollution by granting it civil rights

Shipibo women healers on the challenges and opportunities of the Ayahuasca boom

Perspectives on well-being and development

The happiness-energy paradox: Energy use is unrelated to subjective well-being

The only metric of success that really matters is the one we ignore. “Regardless of one’s sex, country or culture of origin, or age or economic background, social connection is crucial to human development, health, and survival.”

Workism is making Americans miserable. For the college-educated elite, work has morphed into a religious identity—promising transcendence and community, but failing to deliver.

Well-being: a Latin American response to the socio-ecological crisis

Arturo Escobar: Farewell to development. Over the years, ‘development’ has undergone multiple modifications. All these approaches stay within the conventional understanding of development: they don’t constitute a radical departure from the prevailing paradigm. What we need to do is get rid of ‘development’ itself.

A letter to Steven Pinker (and Bill Gates, for that matter) about global poverty, from Jason Hickel.

Where we’re at: analysis

Congo’s miners dying to feed world’s hunger for electric cars   

Cyclone Idai lays bare the fundamental injustice of climate change

Guns, fire and violence in the name of conservation in Loliondo, Tanzania. Exploring the relationship between wildlife conservation and communities.

Why it’s so hard to trace the patterns of unsustainable fossil fuel use

The hidden environmental toll of mining the world’s sand  

What comes after extractivism? Reliance on resource rents keeps Latin American countries stuck in relations of dependency and undermines the core leftist goal of equality. The left must find another way.

Bolsonaro and the death of social housing

Bolsonarism and “frontier capitalism”

The Philippine left in a changing land

How the US has hidden its empire. The United States likes to think of itself as a republic, but it holds territories all over the world – the map you always see doesn’t tell the whole story.

Climate politics after the yellow vests. Far from being anti-environment, the gilets jaunes have exposed the greenwashing of Macron’s deeply regressive economic and social agenda.

How Google, Microsoft, and Big Tech are automating the climate crisis

Good enough to eat? The toxic truth about modern food

Degrowth and the Green New Deal

Climate breakdown is coming. The UK needs a Greener New Deal

A Green New Deal must not be tied to economic growth

Growthism: its ecological, economic and ethical limits

A bold new plan to tackle climate change ignores economic orthodoxy

Organizing to win a Green New Deal

“It’s eco-socialism or death”. Cooperation Jackson leader Kali Akuno on the Green New Deal, the need for mass civil disobedience, and the necessity of building an internationalist movement for eco-socialism.

How a Green New Deal could exploit developing countries

An ecosocialist Green New Deal: Guiding principles, from the DSA Ecosocialists.

White power and eco-fascism

The Christchurch massacre and the white power movement

Nature writing’s fascist roots. When the Christchurch shooter described himself as an “eco-fascist”, he invoked the age-old and complicated relationship between nature writing and the far right.

Plastics and waste

The Chernobyl syndrome. “Chernobyl should not be seen as an isolated accident or as a unique disaster, Brown argues, but as an “exclamation point” that draws our attention to the new world we are creating.”

Mapping USA electronics manufacturing pollution

As pollution gets worse, air-filtering face masks get fashionable

The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust

Manufacturers beware: The ‘right to repair’ movement is gaining ground

‘Moment of reckoning’: US cities burn recyclables after China bans imports

Just think about it…

Go home to your ‘dying’ hometown

Caretaking. Helena Norberg-Hodge and Wendell Berry, two giants of the local economy movement, sat down together for a far-reaching discussion.

The Reddit war. How the site became a front in the Syrian civil war.

BirthStrikers: meet the women who refuse to have children until climate change ends

The global South is changing how knowledge is made, shared and used

Indigenous knowledge has been warning us about climate change for centuries

Speak to the shoemaker. Philosophy need not be arcane, argued Aristotle, as he led by example, writing treatises for peers and public alike.

Don’t blame robots for low wages

Anthropocene doesn’t exist and species of the future will not recognise it

Concrete: the most destructive material on Earth

Native American Libertarian Socialism

Capitalism is destroying the Earth. We need a new human right for future generations

Human rights mean nothing unless we defend real, threatened people. “If we allow states to detain, abuse and bar migrants on the grounds that they are not citizens, if we permit authorities to vilify and discriminate against minorities on the grounds that they don’t truly belong, if we accept that governments can arbitrarily revoke citizenship on the grounds that some are politically unacceptable, we not only deny others their rights; we expose the fragility of our rights, too.”

Radical municipalism

Bottom-up socialism at a crossroads. Grungy, post-industrial, artsy, and cheap, Montreal has a bit of a “Berlin of the North” feel to it. But what many people don’t know is that it is one of the most politically vibrant cities in North America.

To save urban planners, cities need community organizers

The Green New Deal is already at work in one Portland neighborhood

How poor Americans get exploited by their landlords

To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

The real estate sector is using algorithms to work out the best places to gentrify

The Amazon drama

Amazon’s defeat is local and global

Ownership as social relation: Nonprofit strategies to build community wealth through land

In defense of tenants: An interview with Omaha tenants united

Berlin’s grassroots plan to renationalise up to 200,000 ex-council homes from corporate landlords

New politics, hope, and visions for the future

New group looks to unite North America in a cooperative economy. The Symbiosis network is linking cooperative movements offering alternatives to hyper-capitalism.

Where do good organizers come from?

How to seize the means

Voices of Bakur

There’s just one way to confront neoliberalism: democratic ownership

We need to live differently. To end our fossil fuel addiction we need a fundamental technological change — but this cannot happen without changing our social and economic systems.

As the climate collapses, we ask: “How then shall we live?” The first part of a Truthout series that is intended to help us “come to terms, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually, with where we are as a species, and how to plunge forward to face our future.”

By reconnecting with the soil, we heal the planet and ourselves

Why the world needs Barry Lopez. His new book, Horizon, is the crowning achievement of a writer whose eyes never stray from the long view.

Thank you, climate strikers. Your action matters and your power will be felt  

Can the imagination save us? Social movements are driven by imagination. I am not prepared to declare the death of dreams.

Resources

Enough is Enough: Full film on YouTube. Based on the book by Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill, this film lays out a visionary but realistic alternative to the perpetual pursuit of economic growth — an economy where the goal is enough, not more.

A video introduction to Elinor Ostrom’s work

Decanonizing anthropology. Reworking the history of social theory for 21st century anthropology, a syllabus project.

Exploring post-extractivism. A library.

Bibliography of critical approaches to toxics and toxicity

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January readings

Photo: Amber Bracken for The New York Times

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

This month, we’re once again featuring analysis about radical municipalism, degrowth and the green new deal. We’ve also published another piece about the Gilets Jaunes movement in France. Most importantly, though, we are featuring analysis about the Indigenous struggles against pipelines in Canada, the threat of a coup d’état in Venezuela, and farming politics. We’ve also collected some resources on Indigenous allyship. Enjoy!

Uneven Earth updates

Gilets Jaunes: A slap in the face of our vocabulary | LinkA report from an observer


Top 5 articles to read

Twelve step method to conduct regime change

Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong

Her left hand, the darkness

An interview with Max Liboiron on what it means to do anti-colonial, feminist science

The political economy of Half-Earth


Venezuela

Venezuela crisis: Former UN rapporteur says US sanctions are killing citizens

There is nothing more undemocratic than a coup d’état. Former UN Rapporteur speaks to Democracy Now and talks about the threat of civil war.

US Coup in Venezuela Motivated by Oil and Corporate Interests – Militarist John Bolton Spills the Beans | The Grayzone

The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela’s Coup Leader | The Grayzone

Venezuela Speaks Out against the Coup | Venezuelanalysis.com


News you might’ve missed

The United Nations backs seed sovereignty in landmark small-scale farmers’ rights declaration | GreenBiz

Gilets Jaunes “Assembly of Assemblies” calls for massive strike | Roar Magazine

Brazil’s grief turns to anger as death toll from Vale disaster hits 60 | Reuters

Bolsonaro government reveals plan to develop the ‘Unproductive Amazon’

Poor southerners are joining the globe’s climate migrants | Scalawag

Vancouver City Council votes to declare ‘climate emergency’ | Globalnews.ca

How Police Are Preparing for a Standoff Over Enbridge Line 3


The future (and past) of farming and energy

How Aquaponics, A.K.A. Fish Poop, Can Grow Food Using Less Water And Land | HuffPost Canada

Can we ditch intensive farming – and still feed the world? | News | The Guardian

We need regenerative farming, not geoengineering | Guardian Sustainable Business | The Guardian

What would Australia look like powered by 100% renewable energy? | Nicky Ison | Opinion | The Guardian

Mexico’s Energy Transformation? — THE TROUBLE. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has promised a “fourth transformation” of the Mexican state and is taking back control of the national oil and gas firm. Workers, indigenous groups, and the environmental movement in Mexico and internationally can push the agenda further.

Farm Women, Dairymaids, and the Welfare State: Story of an International Collaboration | Rural Women’s Studies

‘Freedom Farmers’ Tells the History of Black Farmers Uniting Against Racism | Civil Eats


Where we’re at: analysis

Headless populism and the political ecology of alienation | ENTITLE blog

Climate Change, Not Border Security, Is the Real National Emergency

The Problem Isn’t Robots Taking Our Jobs. It’s Oligarchs Taking Our Power

REDD+: A lost decade for international forest conservation | Heinrich Böll Foundation

The zombie technofix: Carbon capture and storage | The Ecologist

George Orwell said the world’s bureaucrats couldn’t take spring from us, but they are | Jeff Sparrow | Opinion | The Guardian

Davos and ‘capitalist time’

Vampire finance sucks the lifeblood out of the economy: An interview with Saskia Sassen | Red Pepper

A mad world: capitalism and the rise of mental illness | Red Pepper

Silvia Federici: Every Woman Is a Working Woman | Boston Review

Degrowth and the Green New Deal

Opinion: Sooner or later, we have to stop economic growth | Ensia

Discussing Degrowth with Giorgos Kallis – Plan A Academy

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘Green New Deal’ is actually an old socialist plan from Canada | Fox News

That Green Growth at the Heart of the Green New Deal? It’s Malignant – Resilience

Inequality and the ecological transition — Jason Hickel

Economic expansion boosts carbon emissions, despite green-tech gains


Indigenous struggles

The women fighting a pipeline that could destroy precious wildlife | US news | The Guardian

Canadian teen tells UN ‘warrior up’ to protect water | CBC News

‘The Nation Has Stood Up’: Indigenous Clans in Canada Battle Pipeline Project – The New York Times

Using Art to Explore Indigenous Rights, Activism and Environment | The Tyee


Just think about it…

Fascinating new map shows EVERY river basin on the globe with a different colour | Daily Mail Online

Scientists are working on a pill for loneliness | US news | The Guardian

PTSD is a western concept, says Palestine’s head of mental health services — Quartz

Collapse: You cannot prepare for what remains unthinkable – Jussi Pasanen


Radical municipalism

Fate of castles in the air in Turkey’s £151m ghost town | World news | The Guardian

Rebel Cities 18: Eight Years After Jasmine Revolution, Jemna Is Tunisia’s Oasis of Hope | Occupy.com

Did a green development project drive up the rent in a Montreal neighbourhood? | National Observer

‘Shared equity’ model for U.S. housing boosts home ownership for poorer families | PLACE

The municipalist revolution | International Politics and Society – IPS. The ‘new municipalism’ might just be the only really innovative process inside the European left.

Degrowth and the City – e-flux Architecture – e-flux

How Cities Make Money by Fining the Poor – The New York Times

Suburb Socialism – Dispatchula – Medium


New politics

Space the Nation: Dissing Utopia | SYFY WIRE. Conservatives aren’t just arguing against having to part with individual wealth, they’re arguing against change; they’re not just dismissing utopia, they’re rejecting the future itself.

Some Notes On Mass Refusal: Kim Kelly Interview with IGD – It’s Going Down

Remembering Erik Olin Wright | Dissent Magazine

A Black-Owned Food Co-op Grows in Detroit | CityLab

Chile’s feminists inspire a new era of social struggle | ROAR Magazine

Seeing Wetiko: An interview with Alnoor Ladha – Ecologise

If we want to solve complex environmental and social problems, we need to think in terms of systems | Ensia


Resources

When your research is attacked | Discard Studies

What Is Settler-Colonialism? | Teaching Tolerance

Montreal non-profit launches toolkit on how to be an Indigenous ally | CBC News

Sci-Fi & Fantasy Books with a Powerful Message of Social Justice – The B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog

An Annotated Bibliography on Structural Racism Present in the U.S. Food System, Sixth Edition – Center for Regional Food Systems

New book, Fearless Cities edited by Ada Colau and Debbie Bookchin. The first book written by and for the global municipalist movement.

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Why we need alternatives to development

by Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria, and Alberto Acosta

The seductive nature of development rhetoric, sometimes called developmentality or developmentalism, has been internalized across virtually all countries. Decades after the notion of development spread around the world, only a handful of countries that were called ‘underdeveloped’ or ‘developing’, now really qualify as ‘developed’. Others struggle to emulate the North’s economic template, and all at enormous ecological and social cost. The problem lies not in lack of implementation, but in the conception of development as linear, unidirectional, material and financial growth, driven by commodification and capitalist markets.

Despite numerous attempts to re-signify development, it continues to be something that ‘experts’ manage in pursuit of economic growth, and measure by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a poor and misleading indicator of progress in the sense of well-being. In truth, the world at large experiences ‘maldevelopment’, not least in the very industrialized countries whose lifestyle was meant to serve as a beacon for the ‘backward’ ones.

A critical part of these multiple crises lies in the conception of ‘modernity’ itself – not to suggest that everything modern is destructive or iniquitous, nor that all tradition is positive. Indeed, modern elements such as human rights and feminist principles are proving liberatory for many people. We refer to modernity as the dominant worldview emerging in Europe since the Renaissance transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. The cultural practices and institutions making up this worldview hold the individual as being independent of the collective, and give predominance to private property, free markets, political liberalism, secularism and representative democracy. Another key feature of modernity is ‘universality’– the idea that we all live in a single, now globalized world, and critically, the idea of modern science as being the only reliable truth and harbinger of ‘progress’.

Among the early causes of these crises is the ancient monotheistic premise that a father ‘God’ made the Earth for the benefit of ‘his’ human children. This attitude is known as anthropocentrism. At least in the West, it evolved into a philosophic habit of pitting humanity against nature; it gave rise to related dualisms such as the divide between humanity and nature, subject and object, civilized and barbarian, mind and body, man and woman. These classic ideological categories both legitimize devastation of the natural world, as well as the exploitation of sex-gender, racial and civilizational differences.

There is no guarantee that development will resolve traditional discrimination and violence against women, youth, children and intersex minorities, landless and unemployed classes, races, castes and ethnicities. As globalizing capital destabilizes regional economies, turning communities into refugee populations, some people cope by identifying with the macho power of the political Right, along with its promise to ‘take the jobs back’from migrants.. A dangerous drift towards authoritarianism is taking place all over the world, from India to USA and Europe.

Development and sustainability: matching the unmatchable

The early twentieth-century debate on sustainability was strongly influenced by the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth argument. Regular conferences at a global level would reiterate the mismatch between ‘development and environment’, with the report Our Common Future(1987) bringing it sharply into focus. However, the UN and most state analyses have never included a critique of social structural forces underlying ecological breakdown. The framing has always been on making economic growth and development ‘sustainable and inclusive’ through appropriate technologies, market mechanisms and institutional policy reform. The problem is that this mantra of sustainability was swallowed up by capitalism early on, and then emptied of ecological content.

In the period from 1980s on, neoliberal globalization advanced aggressively across the globe. The UN now shifted focus to a programme of ‘poverty alleviation’ in developing countries, without questioning the sources of poverty in the accumulation-driven economy of the affluent Global North. In fact, it was argued that countries needed to achieve a high standard of living before they could employ resources into protecting the environment. This watering down of earlier debates on limits opened the way for the ecological modernist ‘green economy’ concept.

At the UN Conference for Sustainable Development in 2012, this hollow sustainability ideology was the guiding framework for multilateral discussions. In preparation for Rio+20, UNEP published a report on the ‘green economy’, defining it ‘as one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities’. In line with the pro-growth policy of sustainable development advocates, the report conceptualized all living natural forms across the planet as ‘natural capital’ and ‘critical economic assets’, so intensifying the marketable commodification of life-on-Earth.

The international model of green capitalism carried forward in the declaration Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development reveals the following flaws:

  • No analysis of how the structural roots of poverty, unsustainability and multidimensional violence are historically grounded in state power, corporate monopolies, neo-colonialism, and patriarchal institutions;
  • Inadequate focus on direct democratic governance with accountable decision-making by citizens and self-aware communities in face-to-face settings;
  • Continued emphasis on economic growth as the driver of development, contradicting biophysical limits, with arbitrary adoption of GDP as the indicator of progress;
  • Continued reliance on economic globalization as the key economic strategy, undermining people’s attempts at self-reliance and autonomy;
  • Continued subservience to private capital, and unwillingness to democratize the market through worker–producer and community control;
  • Modern science and technology held up as social panaceas, ignoring their limits and impacts, and marginalising ‘other’ knowledges;
  • Culture, ethics and spirituality sidelined and made subservient to economic forces;
  • Unregulated consumerism without strategies to reverse the Global North’s disproportionate contamination of the globe through waste, toxicity and climate emissions;
  • Neoliberal architectures of global governance becoming increasingly reliant on technocratic managerial values by state and multi-lateral bureaucracies.

The framework of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), now global in its reach, is thus a false consensus

We do not mean to belittle the work of people who are finding new technological solutions to reduce problems, for instance, in renewable energy, nor do we mean to diminish the many positive elements contained in the SDG framework. Rather, our aim is to stress that in the absence of fundamental socio-cultural transformation, technological and managerial innovation will not lead us out of the crises. As nation-states and civil society gear up for the SDGs, it is imperative to lay out criteria to help people identify what truly is transformative. These include a shift to well-being approaches based on radical, direct democracy, the localization and democratization of the economy, social justice and equity (gender, caste, class etc), recommoning of private property, respect for cultural and knowledge diversity including their decolonisation, regeneration of the earth’s ecological resilience and rebuilding our respectful relationship with the rest of nature.

This article is an excerpt of the introduction to the forthcoming book Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary by Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria, and Alberto Acosta (editors).

Ashish Kothari is with Kalpavriksh and Vikalp Sangam in India, and co-editor of Alternative Futures: India Unshackled.

Ariel Salleh is an Australian scholar-activist, author of Ecofeminism as Politics and editor of Eco-Sufficiency and Global Justice.

Arturo Escobar teaches at University of North Carolina, and is author of Encountering Development.

Federico Demaria is with Autonomous University of Barcelona, and co-editor of Degrowth: A Vocubalary for a New Era.

Alberto Acosta is an Ecuadorian economist and activist, former President of the Constituent Assembly of Ecuador.

November readings

Photo illustration by Matt Dorfman. Source photograph: Bridgeman Images.


Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

This month had no shortage of good writing from around the web. The migration debate and the Green New Deal dominated the news, as well as some of the fallout from Jair Bolsonaro’s recent election. We also saw many articles advancing the debate on whether livestock can be sustainable. As usual, we collected the latest news in degrowth and radical municipalism, and found some fun stories on and by science fiction writers.

Uneven Earth updates

How circular is the circular economy? | Link | Why this proposed solution is little more than a magic trick

Why libertarian municipalism is more needed today than ever before | Link | To fight fascism and climate change, the left must rebuild political life

Techno-fantasies and eco-realities | Link | What role does technology play in our ecologically sustainable future, and how do we get there?

Top 5 articles to read

Legacies crucial for the commons. Why Gandhi and Marx are more relevant now than ever before, by Ashish Kothari.

The typical workplace is a dictatorship. But it doesn’t have to be. Socialists and progressives have a variety of ideas to bring democracy into the workplace.

Maintenance and care. A working guide to the repair of rust, dust, cracks, and corrupted code in our cities, our homes, and our social relations.

Apocalyptic climate reporting completely misses the point. Recent news commentary ignored the UN climate report’s cautiously optimistic findings.

Escaping the iron cage of consumerism. “If consumption plays such a vital role in the construction and maintenance of our social world, then asking people to give up material commodities is asking them to risk a kind of social suicide.”

News you might’ve missed

Modern slave ships overfish the oceans. “Seafood caught illegally or under conditions of modern slavery is laundered by mixing it with legally caught fish before it enters the supply chain.”

After a long boom, an uncertain future for big dam projects. The rise of wind and solar power, coupled with the increasing social, environmental and financial costs of hydropower projects, could spell the end of an era of big dams. But even anti-dam activists say it’s too early to declare the demise of large-scale hydro.

Invisibility is the modern form of racism against Native Americans. “I’ve never seen Native people in media at all.”

Policies of China, Russia and Canada threaten 5C climate change, study finds. Ranking of countries’ goals shows even EU on course for more than double safe level of warming

Denmark plans to isolate ‘unwanted’ migrants on remote island. Taking inspiration from the Australian immigration system, the Danish centre-right government together with the right-wing populist Danish People’s Party have proposed yet another anti-migrant measure.

Mapping Europe’s war on immigration. Europe has built a fortress around itself to protect itself from ‘illegal’ immigration from the South, from peoples fleeing civil war, conflict and devastating poverty. The story is best understood through maps.

Inside geoengineers’ risky plan to block out the sun. Some scientists say it’s necessary to save the climate. An indigenous-led opposition says it will only save the fossil fuel economy.

The insect apocalypse is here. What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth?

Exclusive: The Pentagon’s massive accounting fraud exposed. “In all, at least a mind-boggling $21 trillion of Pentagon financial transactions between 1998 and 2015 could not be traced, documented, or explained, concluded Skidmore. To convey the vastness of that sum, $21 trillion is roughly five times more than the entire federal government spends in a year. It is greater than the US Gross National Product, the world’s largest at an estimated $18.8 trillion.”

Extremes of heat will hit health and wealth. A new and authoritative study warns of an “overwhelming impact” on public health just from extremes of heat as the world continues to warm.

Why covering the environment is one of the most dangerous beats in journalism. “In both wealthy and developing countries, journalists covering these issues find themselves in the cross-hairs. Most survive, but many undergo severe trauma, with profound effects on their careers.”

Migration

New maps of land destruction show why caravans flee Central America. Detailed maps show worldwide land degradation, including the deforestation that is now forcing migrants to leave Guatemala and Honduras.

A century of U.S. intervention created the immigration crisis. Those seeking asylum today inherited a series of crises that drove them to the border

If we want to survive on this planet, we need to abandon the cause of the nation state. If we really care for the fate of the people who comprise our nation, our motto should be: America last, China last, Russia last, says Slavoj Zizek.

Resistance in Bolsonaro’s Brazil

Brazil’s next president threatens the people and forests of the Amazon. Jair Bolsonaro’s victory in Brazil’s presidential election could be a disaster for the Amazon, but his opponents can unite.

Stop eco-Apartheid: The Left’s challenge in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. The horrors threatened by Brazil’s new president are compounded by a potential war on the Amazon. It is up to the left to build a coalition capable of overcoming it.

In the Amazon rainforest, this tribe may just save the whole world. The Surui in Brazil are fending off illegal ranchers, gold miners and loggers. Their weapons: boots on the ground, satellite images and smartphones.

Tax havens and Brazilian Amazon deforestation linked: study

4 indigenous leaders on what Bolsonaro means for Brazil

The great grazing debate

In these times has published a series of articles discussing whether cattle can be sustainable:

We can fight climate change and still eat beef. How grass-fed cattle can sequester carbon and rebuild soil.

Climate-friendly beef is a myth. Don’t buy it. There’s no way around it: Take on the meat industry or face ecological disaster.

Anything cows can do, elk can do better. Most sustainable food models rely on domesticated animals. They don’t need to—and shouldn’t.

From Dayton Martindale, editor at In these times: “Paige Stanley argues that it is imprecise to demonize the meat industry with a broad brush, given that carefully managed grazing can provide certain ecological benefits; Jennifer Molidor that this is mostly irrelevant to the actually existing meat industry in this country, including the vast majority of grass-fed beef–the situation requires collective action against animal agriculture; and Nassim Nobari that even if Paige Stanley is right about the benefits of grazing, there are ethical and ecological reasons not to commodify those grazers and breed them for slaughter–the solution, she says, is a mix of rewilding and vegan agroecology.”

And from around the web…

The landscape of the U.S. could be part of its climate solution

Livestock’s contribution to the 1.5˚C Pathway. Where transformation is needed

Radical municipalism

A government from below. Political revolution is a process, not an event – and we can start it now by creating new institutions wherever we live and work.

Rebel Cities 16: Cape Town housing movement uses Occupy tactics to battle Apartheid’s legacy

How local communities can transition to sustainable energy systems

The suburbs are changing. But not in all the ways liberals hope. Though Democrats dominated the suburbs in the midterms, some of those gains may be fragile.

Single-family housing upholds the patriarchy and hurts moms

Automated vehicles can’t save cities.

Triumph of the commons: how public spaces can help fight loneliness. A decline in common, community space is helping drive social isolation

On the frontline: Loneliness and the politics of austerity.

California’s “Yimbys”. The growth machine’s Shock Troops

Degrowth

The politics of post-growth. The Post-Growth 2018 conference at the European Parliament marked a milestone in the history of the post-growth debate, which has predominantly been contained within academic circles. In the first part of a two-part interview, Riccardo Mastini discusses the possibilities and challenges for imagining a world beyond growth with two key post-growth thinkers at the conference. In part two, they trace the history that led to growth being prized above all else and discuss how to conceptualise a future beyond growth. What does this mean for capitalism as we know it?

An economy that does not grow? While it may be clear that the wager on endless growth is a bad one, a more difficult question arises: “what would be the characteristics of an economy that does not grow?”

Faustian economics. Hell hath no limits.

Degrowth as a concrete utopia. Economic growth can’t reduce inequalities; it merely postpones confronting exploitation, a review of Giorgos Kallis’ book, Degrowth.

Here’s a simple solution to the green growth / degrowth debate. The evidence piles up.  And in the face of this evidence, proponents of green growth begin to turn to fairy tales.

Giorgos Kallis’ Degrowth. Rethinking our economic paradigms is an urgent and fundamentally important task. Giorgos Kallis’ new book Degrowth is adding to a joint endeavour of postgrowth thinking, CUSP PhD candidate Sarah Hafner finds. It offers both, a justification as well as a vision and new imaginary for the degrowth agenda.

Degrowth is the radical post-Brexit future the UK needs

New politics

A complete idiot’s guide to the Imaginary Party. At the current moment, the size of the Imaginary Party in the US is nearly 200 million people, constituting the vast majority.

The ‘new’ climate politics of Extinction Rebellion? Creating a movement that can have the impact XR aims for will require confronting the political as well as the moral challenges posed by climate change.

The illegitimacy of the ruling class. Americans are losing faith in governance by the elite.

Libertarian municipalism & Murray Bookchin’s legacy

Be careful with each other. How activist groups can build trust, care, and sustainability in a world of capitalism and oppression

I used to argue for UBI. then I gave a talk at Uber.

Why we need alternatives to development

Green new deal

Ocasio-Cortez-backed Green New Deal sees surprising momentum in House.

With a Green New Deal, here’s what the world could look like for the next generation

Canada needs its own Green New Deal. Here’s what it could look like. An Indigenous perspective.

Beyond the Green New Deal

To slow down climate change, we need to take on capitalism. When widely read Anglophone climate fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson tries to imagine non-fossil post-capitalism through a Green New Deal, his imagination takes him to a romanticized version of present-day Scandinavia.

An agro-ecological Europe by 2050: a credible scenario, an avenue to explore

Where we’re at: analysis

The writing of “Silent Spring”: Rachel Carson and the culture-shifting courage to speak inconvenient truth to power

Don’t get fooled again! Unmasking two decades of lies about Golden Rice

Fascism, ecology, and the tangled roots of anti-modernism

Populism without the people. On Chantal Mouffe’s latest book.

But see also… Exiting the ‘realm of facts’: A plea for climate agonism, “Why would anyone make an argument based on premises they themselves do not hold? Providing the answer is Chantal Mouffe, a Belgian political theorist largely credited with helping foster the intellectual renaissance currently taking place on the European left.”

David Attenborough has betrayed the living world he loves. By downplaying our environmental crisis, the presenter’s BBC films have generated complacency, confusion and ignorance. But… David Attenborough: collapse of civilisation is on the horizon. Naturalist tells leaders at UN climate summit that fate of world is in their hands.

Just think about it…

China’s Silk Road is laying ground for a new Eurasian order

Why the Enlightenment was not the age of reason

A vexing question: why do men recycle less than women?

Blockchain study finds 0.00% success rate and vendors don’t call back when asked for evidence. Where is your distributed ledger technology now?

They thought they were free: The Germans, 1933-1945. An excerpt from the 1955 book by Milton Mayer about the gradual rise of fascism: “To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop.”

Here’s why focusing on money misses the big climate picture. If an asteroid was going to hit the Earth in 2030, we wouldn’t be justifying the cost of the space mission to blast it out of the sky. We’d be repurposing factories, inventing entire new industries, and steering the global economy toward solving the problem as quickly and as effectively as we can — no matter the cost.

The concept creep of ‘emotional labor’. The term has become a central part of an important conversation about the division of household work. But the sociologist who coined it says it’s being used incorrectly.

Culture and nature in the epic of Gilgamesh

The case against cruises. Cruises are increasingly popular, but they raise safety and environmental concerns.

Indian folklore and environmental ethics. Storytelling and collective reflection can enrich efforts in environmental restoration.

Modern life is rubbish. We must recognize excessive waste for what it is: a shocking loss of resources at the cost of our environment, engineered by the very system we are living under.

Why racism is so hard to define and even harder to understand

What to do once you admit that decentralizing everything never seems to work

Climate change and the role of art

The influence of climate fiction: An empirical survey of readers

Why we need utopian fiction now more than ever

N.K. Jemisin is trying to keep the world from ending

Weathering this world with comics

What really happens after the apocalypse. The myth that panic, looting, and antisocial behavior increases during the apocalypse (or apocalyptic-like scenarios) is in fact a myth—and has been solidly disproved by multiple scientific studies.

Dystopias Now. The end of the world is over. Now the real work begins, by Kim Stanley Robinson.

“Eco grime” artists blend natural sounds & electronics to depict a polluted world

Why everyone should read The Dispossessed

Resources

Citation matters: An updated reading list for a progressive environmental anthropology.

A syllabus for radical hope

Inhabit: Instructions for autonomy

Land acknowledgements: uncovering an oral history of Tkaronto

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How circular is the circular economy?

Illustration: Diego Marmolejo.

by Kris De Decker

The circular economy has become, for many governments, institutions, companies, and environmental organisations, one of the main components of a plan to lower carbon emissions. In the circular economy, resources would be continually re-used, meaning that there would be no more mining activity or waste production. The stress is on recycling, made possible by designing products so that they can easily be taken apart.

Attention is also paid to developing an “alternative consumer culture”. In the circular economy, we would no longer own products, but would loan them. For example, a customer could pay not for lighting devices but for light, while the company remains the owner of the lighting devices and pays the electricity bill. A product thus becomes a service, which is believed to encourage businesses to improve the lifespan and recyclability of their products.

The circular economy is presented as an alternative to the “linear economy” – a term that was coined by the proponents of circularity, and which refers to the fact that industrial societies turn valuable resources into waste. However, while there’s no doubt that the current industrial model is unsustainable, the question is how different to so-called circular economy would be.

Several scientific studies (see references) describe the concept as an “idealised vision”, a “mix of various ideas from different domains”, or a “vague idea based on pseudo-scientific concepts”. There’s three main points of criticism, which we discuss below.

 

Too complex to recycle

The first dent in the credibility of the circular economy is the fact that the recycling process of modern products is far from 100% efficient. A circular economy is nothing new. In the middle ages, old clothes were turned into paper, food waste was fed to chickens or pigs, and new buildings were made from the remains of old buildings. The difference between then and now is the resources used.

Before industrialisation, almost everything was made from materials that were either decomposable – like wood, reeds, or hemp – or easy to recycle or re-use – like iron and bricks. Modern products are composed of a much wider diversity of (new) materials, which are mostly not decomposable and are also not easily recycled.

For example, a recent study of the modular Fairphone 2 – a smartphone designed to be recyclable and have a longer lifespan – shows that the use of synthetic materials, microchips, and batteries makes closing the circle impossible. Only 30% of the materials used in the Fairphone 2 can be recuperated. A study of LED lights had a similar result.

The large-scale use of synthetic materials, microchips, and batteries makes closing the circle impossible.

The more complex a product, the more steps and processes it takes to recycle. In each step of this process, resources and energy are lost. Furthermore, in the case of electronic products, the production process itself is much more resource-intensive than the extraction of the raw materials, meaning that recycling the end product can only recuperate a fraction of the input. And while some plastics are indeed being recycled, this process only produces inferior materials (“downcycling”) that enter the waste stream soon afterwards.

The low efficiency of the recycling process is, on its own, enough to take the ground from under the concept of the circular economy: the loss of resources during the recycling process always needs to be compensated with more over-extraction of the planet’s resources. Recycling processes will improve, but recycling is always a trade-off between maximum material recovery and minimum energy use. And that brings us to the next point.

 

How can you recycle energy sources?

The second dent in the credibility of the circular economy is the fact that 20% of total resources used worldwide are fossil fuels. More than 98% of that is burnt as a source of energy and can’t be re-used or recycled. At best, the excess heat from, for example, the generation of electricity, can be used to replace other heat sources.

As energy is transferred or transformed, its quality diminishes (second law of thermodynamics). For example, it’s impossible to operate one car or one power plant with the excess heat from another. Consequently, there will always be a need to mine new fossil fuels. Besides, recycling materials also requires energy, both through the recycling process and the transportation of recycled and to-be-recycled materials.

To this, the supporters of the circular economy have a response: we will shift to 100% renewable energy. But this doesn’t make the circle round: to build and maintain renewable energy plants and accompanied infrastructures, we also need resources (both energy and materials). What’s more, technology to harvest and store renewable energy relies on difficult-to-recycle materials. That’s why solar panels, wind turbines and lithium-ion batteries are not recycled, but landfilled or incinerated.

 

Input exceeds output

The third dent in the credibility of the circular economy is the biggest: the global resource use – both energetic and material – keeps increasing year by year. The use of resources grew by 1400% in the last century: from 7 gigatonnes (Gt) in 1900 to 62 Gt in 2005 and 78 Gt in 2010. That’s an average growth of about 3% per year – more than double the rate of population growth.

Growth makes a circular economy impossible, even if all raw materials were recycled and all recycling was 100% efficient. The amount of used material that can be recycled will always be smaller than the material needed for growth. To compensate for that, we have to continuously extract more resources.

 Growth makes a circular economy impossible, even if all raw materials were recycled and all recycling was 100% efficient. 

The difference between demand and supply is bigger than you might think. If we look at the whole life cycle of resources, then it becomes clear that proponents for a circular economy only focus on a very small part of the whole system, and thereby misunderstand the way it operates.

 

Accumulation of resources

A considerable segment of all resources – about a third of the total – are neither recycled, nor incinerated or dumped: they are accumulated in buildings, infrastructure, and consumer goods. In 2005, 62 Gt of resources were used globally. After subtracting energy sources (fossil fuels and biomass) and waste from the mining sector, the remaining 30 Gt were used to make material goods. Of these, 4 Gt was used to make products that last for less than one year (disposable products).

Circular-economy-diego
Illustration: Diego Marmolejo.

The other 26 Gt was accumulated in buildings, infrastructure, and consumer goods that last for more than a year. In the same year, 9 Gt of all surplus resources were disposed of, meaning that the “stocks” of material capital grew by 17 Gt in 2005. In comparison: the total waste that could be recycled in 2005 was only 13 Gt (4 Gt disposable products and 9 Gt surplus resources), of which only a third (4 Gt) can be effectively recycled.

About a third of all resources are neither recycled, nor incinerated or dumped: they are accumulated in buildings, infrastructure, and consumer goods. 

Only 9 Gt is then put in a landfill, incinerated, or dumped – and it is this 9 Gt that the circular economy focuses on. But even if that was all recycled, and if the recycling processes were 100% efficient, the circle would still not be closed: 63 Gt in raw materials and 30 Gt in material products would still be needed.

As long as we keep accumulating raw materials, the closing of the material life cycle remains an illusion, even for materials that are, in principle, recyclable. For example, recycled metals can only supply 36% of the yearly demand for new metal, even if metal has relatively high recycling capacity, at about 70%. We still use more raw materials in the system than can be made available through recycling – and so there are simply not enough recyclable raw materials to put a stop to the continuously expanding extractive economy.

 

The true face of the circular economy

A more responsible use of resources is of course an excellent idea. But to achieve that, recycling and re-use alone aren’t enough. Since 71% of all resources cannot be recycled or re-used (44% of which are energy sources and 27% of which are added to existing stocks), you can only really get better numbers by reducing total use.

A circular economy would therefore demand that we use less fossil fuels (which isn’t the same as using more renewable energy), and that we accumulate less raw materials in commodities. Most importantly, we need to make less stuff: fewer cars, fewer microchips, fewer buildings. This would result in a double profit: we would need less resources, while the supply of discarded materials available for re-use and recycling would keep growing for many years to come.

It seems unlikely that the proponents of the circular economy would accept these additional conditions. The concept of the circular economy is intended to align sustainability with economic growth – in other words, more cars, more microchips, more buildings. For example, the European Union states that the circular economy will “foster sustainable economic growth”.

Even the limited goals of the circular economy – total recycling of a fraction of resources – demands an extra condition that proponents probably won’t agree with: that everything is once again made with wood and simple metals, without using synthetic materials, semi-conductors, lithium-ion batteries or composite materials.

This article first appeared on Low-tech Magazine.

Kris De Decker is editor of Low-Tech Magazine and lives in Barcelona, Spain.

 

References:

Haas, Willi, et al. “How circular is the global economy?: An assessment of material flows, waste production, and recycling in the European Union and the world in 2005.” Journal of Industrial Ecology 19.5 (2015): 765-777.

Murray, Alan, Keith Skene, and Kathryn Haynes. “The circular economy: An interdisciplinary exploration of the concept and application in a global context.” Journal of Business Ethics 140.3 (2017): 369-380.

Gregson, Nicky, et al. “Interrogating the circular economy: the moral economy of resource recovery in the EU.” Economy and Society 44.2 (2015): 218-243.

Krausmann, Fridolin, et al. “Global socioeconomic material stocks rise 23-fold over the 20th century and require half of annual resource use.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017): 201613773.

Korhonen, Jouni, Antero Honkasalo, and Jyri Seppälä. “Circular economy: the concept and its limitations.” Ecological economics 143 (2018): 37-46.

Fellner, Johann, et al. “Present potentials and limitations of a circular economy with respect to primary raw material demand.” Journal of Industrial Ecology 21.3 (2017): 494-496.

Reuter, Markus A., Antoinette van Schaik, and Miquel Ballester. “Limits of the Circular Economy: Fairphone Modular Design Pushing the Limits.” 2018

Reuter, M. A., and A. Van Schaik. “Product-Centric Simulation-based design for recycling: case of LED lamp recycling.” Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy 1.1 (2015): 4-28.

Reuter, Markus A., Antoinette van Schaik, and Johannes Gediga. “Simulation-based design for resource efficiency of metal production and recycling systems: Cases-copper production and recycling, e-waste (LED lamps) and nickel pig iron.” The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 20.5 (2015): 671-693.

Techno-fantasies and eco-realities

by Corporate Watch

As part of Not the Anarchist Bookfair in London, Corporate Watch along with Uneven Earth and Plan C London organized a discussion on technology, ecology and future worlds. The event, named Techno Fantasies and Eco Realities, was attended by about 20 people and included some wide ranging and at times lively discussion around the role of technology and ecology in future worlds. In particular it focused on how we can free our imaginations from the grip of capitalist realism (the idea that capitalism is the only option for organizing society), picturing possible future worlds and the role that technology will play in them, while keeping our imagined worlds grounded in social and ecological realities. For example, not forgetting that we are living on a planet with limited natural resources or that we have to consider how to make these imagined futures real.

Participants were invited to read three short pieces ahead of the discussion:

Fully Automated Green Communism” by Aaron Bastani, “Accelerationism.. and Degrowth? The Left’s Strange Bedfellows” by Aaron Vansintjan and “Pulling the Magic Lever”, by Rut Elliot Blomqvist.

Although initially a tongue in cheek provocation, Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC) has morphed into a serious proposition of how technology and automation could be used to provide for everyone’s needs and free people from the drudgery of wage labour. Bastani’s piece attempts to counter some of the ecological critiques of the idea, arguing that FALC can be green. Instead of trying to halt the progress of technological development, and reduce energy consumption, Aaron argues that we should ride the technological horse to move beyond scarcity, proposing a kind of accelerationism where technology is rapidly advanced in order to bring about radical social change.

In “Accelerationism.. and Degrowth? The Left’s Strange Bedfellows”, Aaron Vansintjan looks at accelerationist ideas like FALC and compares them to ‘degrowth’, evaluating the similarities and differences between the two frameworks. Degrowth is a movement that has emerged from environmentalism and alternative economics and is focused on theorising and creating non-growth based economies and societies.

Although accelerationism and degrowth are apparently opposed, Vansinjtan finds some shared ideas, including their recognition of the need for deep, systemic change, their calls for democratisation of technology and their rejection of ‘work’ (or at least the idea that work is inherently good). The key differences centre around accelerationism’s focus on reappropriating technology to achieve a resource-unlimited society, versus degrowth’s aim of limiting the development of certain forms of technology and staying within resource constraints. Degrowth also seeks to slow the metabolism of society, whereas accelerationism aims to increase the pace of social change. Ultimately, while supportive of accelerationism’s inspiring vision, Vansinjtan finds it seriously lacking in dealing with ecological critiques.

Rut Elliot Blomqvist examines three different visions of possible future worlds and the role that technology plays in them. ‘Pulling the Magic Lever’ is a reference to how technology is used to answer social or ecological problems without explaining how it will do so: you simply ‘pull the magic lever’ of technology and hey presto, it’s all solved. It’s a running theme in all three of the imagined futures Blomqvist chooses to analyse. The first is in The World We Made, a novel by environmentalist Jonathon Porrit, then The Venus Project, a technology based political proposition, and finally Fully Automated Luxury Communism. In their analysis, Blomqvist uses a World Systems Theory approach to evaluate the ideas, critiquing the story of modernisation by framing it around colonialism.

The World We Made is based on Design Fiction, where fiction inspires possibilities of new designs. It sees the human species in general as the villain responsible for destroying the environment. In the novel’s fantasy scenario, however, humans manage to turn things around and start to use technology and various existing world institutions for the common good. As Elliot points out, this book flags up an important discussion around the idea of the ‘anthropocene’ (a proposed name for a new human-affected geological epoch), which may support the view that the human species in general is the problem, rather than certain humans or, say, a capitalist growth-based economy. They also describe the book’s tendency towards technological optimism: it presents technology as providing the answers, without explaining how, and ignores the socio-cultural-political reasons for current ecological destruction.

The Venus Project is found to be even further along the techno-optimist spectrum and again ignores how its proposed technological utopia might be brought into existence. As well as highlighting its fetishisation of the scientific process, Elliot explains how The Venus Project often engenders conspiracy theories, a number of which are dangerously close to anti-Semitism.

Continuing the trend, FALC is found to involve similar techno-utopianism, where the working classes seize the means of production and use automation to create a world of plenty. Elliot points to a blind spot, as FALC doesn’t consider the limits of post-industrialism beyond the western world. Elliot describes how all three rely heavily on ‘pulling the magic lever’. While they show imagination, they are limited by the fossil-fuelled mentality they seek to criticise.

In our discussion at Not the Anarchist Bookfair, we asked participants to discuss two questions:

  • What role does technology play in our ecologically sustainable future, and how do we get there?

and

  • How can we move beyond the techno-optimist versus primitivist dichotomy? (I.e. beyond  viewing technology as either the solution to or source of all our problems).

The questions were discussed in pairs, in small groups and then with everyone participating, and led to a broad discussion of the various themes raised. Some key points that came out included:

  • The importance of considering the social power necessary to make futures, and how human agency is often missing in visions of techno utopias.
  • The need to change who makes technology, how it is produced and the inherent politics of technologies.
  • The need to highlight and develop technology’s potential within the ecological movement, including within degrowth discussions.
  • The need to positively promote ecological future visions, and how to counter environmentalism’s ‘hair shirt’ image.
  • Considering whether we should assume that technologies will inevitably be developed, and so ride the tech bandwagon, or try to intervene and prevent or hinder certain developments.
  • Thinking about if/how we can change the basis on which automation takes places and is implemented. E.g. is non-capitalist automation possible, and if so, how could it be made non-capitalist?
  • Thinking about ways of bringing ecological and technologically based visions of the future back together.

A number of participants were keen to continue discussions and we are considering further forums to hold related future discussions. Corporate Watch is currently working on a technology project, if you are interested in knowing more or collaborating on future work, please email contact@corporatewatch.org. To get involved with discussions as part of the Plan C Climate cluster contact london@weareplanc.org

This article was also published on the Plan C blog, here.

 

 

October readings

Art by Jocine Velasco. Source: Commune Mag

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

Yet again, we’ve collected a wealth of news and worthwhile readings from last month. October brought us material on the situation in Brazil, responses to the apocalyptic IPCC report, and Sveriges Riksbank’s prize in economics (what some call the ‘Nobel Prize in Economics’) won by Paul Romer and William Nordhaus; and as usual you’ll find articles on degrowth, radical municipalism, and new technologies and false solutions.

Uneven Earth updates

Meet catabolic capitalism: globalization’s gruesome twin | Link | We’ll soon discover that capitalism without globalization is much, much worse.

Dark municipalism | Link | The dangers of local politics

Top 5 articles to read

A subaltern perspective on China’s ecological crisis. The path of modernization has left China deeply mired in the mud of ecological and socioeconomic injustice.

Beyond the Green New Deal. One of the issues is not so much producing solutions as it is one of institutionalizing the capacity to listen and learn from those who already have good solutions, but whose solutions are almost always ignored. It is time to start listening. Not before it is too late. But precisely because it is already very late.

The freedom of real apologies

The automation charade. The rise of the robots has been greatly exaggerated. Whose interests does that serve?

Eco-pioneers in the 1970s: how aerospace workers tried to save their jobs – and the planet

News you might’ve missed

Mexico is on the verge of a major human disaster. Mexico City’s controversial new airport promises growth at the expense of human progress and the environment.

White House drops scheme to bail out coal, nukes

Surprise acquittal in Enbridge pipeline protesters’ case

New outlook on global warming: Best prepare for social collapse, and soon

‘Adults in the room’: Greens surge across Europe as centre-left flounders

Cuba embarks on a 100-year plan to protect itself from climate change

Changing climate forces desperate Guatemalans to migrate

Rise of the ‘megafarms’: how UK agriculture is being sold off and consolidated

World Bank and IMF guilty of promoting land grabs, increasing inequality

Europe’s dirty air kills 400,000 people every year

Mining crisis in Kiruna, Sápmi/Northern Sweden. The world’s largest underground iron ore mine and a cornerstone in the Swedish capitalist economy will soon be depleted. “The ore deposit in Kiruna has a more complex geometry at depth than was previously assumed. … This has to do with LKAB’s future, with mining beyond the life expectancy of the current main level, which extends to about year 2035. One could say that LKAB is now a mining company like any other and must search diligently for new ore volumes in order to survive.”

Google abandons Berlin base after two years of resistance. Kreuzberg residents were concerned about tech giant’s unethical practices and gentrification driving up rents

A 14-year-long oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico verges on becoming one of the worst in U.S. history

Indigenous suicide in Canada. This article provides some context, analysis, and profiles of initiatives working to address the severe ongoing crises of Indigenous suicide in the country.

“Catastrophic” effect of climate change on mental health found in new study

We’ve got 12 years: responses to the IPCC

There’s no time for gradualism. The urgency of climate change has never been clearer. We need a bold vision of a good and livable future — and a political program to match.

The uses of disaster. Climate change is here. In the midst of the storm, an opportunity arises to break with capitalism and its vicious inequality. Let’s seize it while we can. The alternatives are unthinkable.

The hope at the heart of the apocalyptic climate change report. Along with their latest dire predictions, the world’s leading climate scientists offered a new path forward—but will anyone take it?

To fix the climate crisis, we must face up to our imperial past.

Why catastrophic climate change is probably inevitable now. How capitalism torched the planet by imploding into fascism.

IPCC report: First thoughts on next steps by Sydney Azari

Who is the we in “We are causing climate change”?

Climate breakdown, capitalism and democracy

Fossil fuels are a threat to civilization, new U.N. report concludes

Billionaires are the leading cause of climate change

The case for climate pessimism. A frightening report on climate change has some experts pondering the perils of optimism about the future.

It’s already here. Left-wing climate realism and the Trump climate change memo

Burnout: Arguing the case against addressing Climate Change purely on Leftist terms

Sveriges Riksbank’s prize in economics

Why call it the Nobel prize in economics? Anyway, this year, William Nordhaus and Paul Romer won it for their work on the costs of climate change, which stirred quite a bit of controversy. We’ve collected a bunch of articles, blogs, and essays that lay out the dispute.

A Nobel Prize in honor of economic growth. William Nordhaus and Paul Romer have spent their careers studying ways to make and keep economies strong.

Nobel Prize for the economics of innovation and climate change stirs controversy. “I would say [this prize] is the last hurrah of a certain old guard of the economics profession that want to preserve the idea of growth at all costs,” says Julia Steinberger, an ecological economist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom.

Nobel Prizes in economics, awarded and withheld

The Nordhaus Nobel. Perhaps that is the greatest irony here – that even the most Neoclassical view of climate that economics has to offer still recommends action.

Climate change and growth – Nordhaus and Romer

Why economists can’t understand complex systems

The Secret of Eternal Growth. The physics behind pro-growth environmentalism. “The award of the Nobel Prize in Economics to Paul Romer and William Nordhaus (i), in the same week as the IPCC report, can only be interpreted as a huge slap in the face for the champions of “degrowth”.

Bolsonaro in Brazil

Why Bolsonaro won: beyond the cliches. If  mind-stopping cliches of violence and corruption do not correspond with voting patterns or Bolsonaro’s governmental plan why did he win the election? It was not a free or fair process.

Glenn Greenwald on Bolsonaro: Brazil has elected “most extremist leader in the democratic world”

“The proletariat of Brazil was defeated by democracy, not dictatorship.”

Neo-fascist Bolsonaro followers attack people throughout Brazil

Crisis in Brazil. An older analysis by Perry Anderson laying out what got Brazilians where they are now.

Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil is a disaster for the Amazon and global climate change

Understanding the global rise of the extreme right, by Walden Bello

Radical municipalism

Anatomy of a rent strike in Los Angeles. “It was amazing,” Camero recalled. “It felt like God was in our favor.”

LATU rent strikes and the geography of extraction in LA’s housing market

The EU’s obstacle course for municipalism. Radical democratic programmes face obstacles from both EU and national neoliberal legislation. Despite this, cities can and are finding ways to bypass these obstacles.

The mayors and the movements. In 2015, a wave of social movements lifted left-wing mayors to power in Spain. Their experience in office shows the importance of linking institutional power to bottom-up mobilization.

Spain to close most coalmines in €250m transition deal

Václav Havel’s lessons on how to create a “parallel polis”

Organizing the suburbs. The electoral success of the right is the result of decades of disengagement by the left and sophisticated politicking by right-wing politicians.

How real estate segregated America. Real-estate interests have long wielded an outsized influence over national housing policy—to the detriment of African Americans.

The housing revolution we need. A decade after the crash of 2008, a growing movement has thrust our prolonged housing crisis to the center of the national agenda. Could this generation finally make the right to housing a reality?

Degrowth

Beyond visions and projects: the need for a debate on strategy in the degrowth movement

Degrowth in the suburbs

Economic growth: The party’s over, says IMF

Degrowth: A call for radical abundance. One of the core claims of degrowth economics is that by restoring public services and expanding the commons, people will be able to access the goods that they need to live well without needing high levels of income.  

Gathering degrowth in the American pluriverse. A report on the 2018 DegrowUS Gathering

Degrowth: closing the global wealth divide

What’s the point of growth if it creates so much misery?

New technologies and false solutions

Half-Earth: A biodiversity ‘solution’ that solves nothing

Against geoengineering. Geoengineering is a risky business. It is so risky, in fact, that it should be banned. Avoiding climate imperialism: A leftist vision of geoengineering

We need to talk about technology: Now is the time for experts, activists and workers to collaborate on well-designed, affordable and energy-positive buildings.

“What lasted for 3000 years has been destroyed in 30”: the struggle for food sovereignty in Tunisia. Today is the International Day of Action for Peoples’ Food Sovereignty, organised by La Via Campesina. In this article, Max Ajl reports from Tunisia on the struggles for food sovereignty there, and on what it means for the Global South.

Farms race. Advocates of “open-source agriculture” say they can build a better food system. Should we believe them?

Universal basic income Is Silicon Valley’s latest scam. The plan is no gift to the masses, but a tool for our further enslavement

Jacques Ellul: A prophet for our tech-saturated times

Plastics and waste

Are the days of recycling with a clear conscience over? Our whole recycling culture is an illusion masking a growing problem of unsustainable manufacturing and consumerism.

Microplastics are turning up everywhere, even in human excrement

Japan bursting with plastic garbage in the wake of China’s 2017 waste import ban.

New politics

Taiwan is revolutionizing democracy

Rojava: Between city and village, between war and ecology

Communism might last a million years. Two giants of revolutionary thought passed from this world in 2018. Through them, we can glimpse the distant shores of a classless society.

Aggressive advertising is bad for us – we must fight back like Sydney. The decision to project a horse-race ad on the Sydney Opera House has triggered a huge backlash. It’s a reminder of why we should all be protesting against the effects of late capitalism

The communes of Rojava: A model in societal self direction. This amazing video and documentary, produced by Neighbor Democracy, details the evolving communal organs within the Rojava Revolution, from security to health care.

Land and labour. When we understand that settler-colonialism and capitalism are inextricable, we might begin to see that workers and Indigenous land defenders have more affinity in struggle than we previously thought.

Baby steps on the road to basic income. Seven Dutch towns and cities are beginning experiments with versions of a ‘basic income light’.

Where we’re at: analysis

A people’s rebellion is the only way to fight climate breakdown

How to restore Florida’s dammed waterways

A critical look at China’s One Belt, One Road initiative

Landgrabbing, illicit finance and corporate crime: an update. Land grabbing is now considered a crime against humanity, but few land grabbers end up in jail. Instead, if you search the specialised website farmlandgrab.org for news about law suits, court proceedings, convictions or imprisonment related to land deals, what you will largely find are reports of local communities being accused of wrongdoing for defending their own territories against powerful companies! Yet the links between crime, corruption and those engaging in agricultural land deals are real.

Flipping the corruption myth. Corruption is by far not the main factor behind persisting poverty in the Global South.

Fracking democracy, criminalising dissent

I was jailed for my fracking protest. But others face much worse

Colonialism can’t be forgotten – it’s still destroying peoples and our planet

The rise of border imperialism

Tribalism isn’t our democracy’s main problem. The conservative movement is. In the real world, the conservative movement — and the economic elites that it serves — have an interest in perpetuating both social polarization, and the unresponsive governance that it produces.

A Greek tragedy: how the EU is destroying a country. The problem could be solved tomorrow through the usual remedy of significant debt write-offs

Why the distribution of wealth has more to do with power than productivity

Just think about it…

Welcome to Jurassic Art. That’s where we were in the early 1960s — dinosaurs were sad, cold blooded, dead ends in the history of life… But paleontology was about to go through a spectacular shift.

Why do we feel so busy? It’s all our hidden ‘shadow work’

Can’t sleep? Perhaps you’re overtired

Far right, misogynist, humourless? Why Nietzsche is misunderstood. The German philosopher has been adopted by the alt-right, but he hated antisemitism. He has been misappropriated and misread, argues his biographer.

If you’re suffering from climate grief, you’re not alone

The real seeds producers: Small-scale farmers save, use, share and enhance the seed diversity of the crops that feed Africa.

How to write about a vanishing world. Scientists chronicling ecological destruction must confront the loss of their life’s work and our planet’s riches.

Racial purity is “scientifically meaningless,” say 8,000 geneticists

No future: From punk to zapatismo and connected multitudes

Endgame: how Australian preppers are bugging out and hunkering down. “We all have different skills and, in a real-life situation, how much better to talk to each other and pool our resources. Society would have to rearrange. We couldn’t all just lock ourselves away and, if we did, we wouldn’t last for very long.” 

Resources

An interactive map of China’s wildcat strikes

UNDER WATER: How rising waters cost us all

A gorgeous visualization of commutes around the world

America is warming fast. See how your city’s weather will be different in just one generation.

A podcast and blog dealing with the anti-capitalist permaculture movement.

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September readings

Source: Shareable

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

Over the past month we saw an uptick in conversations on degrowth in both mainstream and leftist media in the aftermath of two degrowth conferences in Sweden and Mexico and in connection to a “post-growth” conference in the EU Parliament in Belgium. We’ve also been reading about resistance, community building, and struggle for autonomy and control of land in cities and rural areas around the world—and about criminalization of this resistance. And as usual there are articles about environmental and climate injustice, socialism and the limits of “green” technologies, and new political organizing practices.

Uneven Earth updates

We’re excited to announce our new call for submissions for futuristic imaginaries! We are looking for science fiction, science fiction-inspired thoughts, and critical analyses of sci-fi, this time with a focus on pieces that engage with place-based histories and geographies.

The shock doctrine of the left | Link | New book by Graham Jones is part map, part story, part escape manual

How the world breaks | Link | Stan and Paul Cox describe the destructive force of nature in the context of climate change

How radical municipalism can go beyond the local | Link | Fighting for more affordable, accessible places to live means fighting for a less carbon-intensive future

Top 5 articles to read

Save us the smugness over 2018’s heatwaves, environmentalists. In this historically precarious moment, we need something more fundamental than climate strategies built on shame and castigation. But, note that there is no evidence that environmentalists are at all smug.

‘For me, this is paradise’: life in the Spanish city that banned cars

Rise of agri-cartel: Control of land drives human rights violations, environmental destruction

Where are the Indigenous children who never came home?

Disaster collectivism: How communities rise together to respond to crises

News you might’ve missed

Harvard’s foreign farmland investment mess. An article in Bloomberg highlights a new report by GRAIN on Harvard’s investment in land grabbing.

Modi’s McCarthyist attack on left-leaning intellectuals threatens India’s democracy

There’s been a worrying trend of criminalizing earth defenders around the world:

‘Treating protest as terrorism’: US plans crackdown on Keystone XL activists

Criminalization and violence increasingly used to silence indigenous protest, according to UN report

Fracking protesters’ ‘absurdly harsh’ jail sentences spark calls for judicial review backed by hundreds of scientists

After five years of living in trees, a protest community is being evicted. The German police is evicting activists who are occupying the 12,000 year old Hambach Forest to block the expansion of lignite coal mining. (The yearly Ende Gelände mass action of civil disobedience against the open-pit mine is coming up this month, on 25th-29th October.)

Declaration: No to abuse against women in industrial oil palm plantations  

New politics

Learning to fight in a warming world. Andreas Malm spoke at the Code Rode action camp against a gas pipeline in the Netherlands, addressing crucial questions for anti-fossil fuel organizing: Who are the political subjects in this struggle? How can people be mobilized? Should we think of the climate justice movement as a vanguard? Which methods and strategies should we use? What are the roles of non-violent and violent resistance?

Building food utopias: Amplifying voices, dismantling power

No justice without love: why activism must be more generous. I want to be a member of a thriving and diverse social movement, not a cult or a religion.

Resisting Development: The politics of the zad and NoTav

A story of the creation of the first commune in Kobane, and the struggle against authoritarianism within.

From Rojava to the Mapuche struggle: The Kurdish revolutionary seed spreads in Latin America

Seizing the means of reproduction. Unrecognized, often unpaid, and yet utterly necessary, reproductive labor is everywhere in our lives. Can it form the basis for a renewed radical politics?

Co-ops might not transform people, but the act of cooperation often does.

An interview with the Internationalist Committee of the Rojava revolution

The emerging idea of “radical well-being”. An interview with Ashish Kothari by Paul Robbins.

Radical municipalism

The radical solution to homelessness: no-strings homes

What should a 21st century socialist housing policy look like?

The city as a battleground. If cities are becoming amusement parks for tourists, a vehicle to earn money, what space is left for its citizens?

Radical democracy vs. retro social democracy: a discussion with Jeremy Gilbert

The labor movement once built thousands of low-cost co-op apartments for working class New Yorkers. It could do so again.

Internationalism and the New Municipalism

Bologna again takes center stage resisting fascism

First we take Jackson: the new American municipalism

The common ground trust: a route out of the housing crisis

Revitalizing struggling corridors in a post-industrial city

The persistence of settler colonialism within “the urban”. As long as the urban agenda is so tangled in the mess of capitalism, how can urban practitioners work to free the ever expanding and increasingly complicated field of urban studies from its colonial shackles? Is it even possible to think about the urban without colonialism?

Where we’re at: analysis

Five principles of a socialist climate politics. Overall it is quite surprising how well the challenge of climate change overlaps with some classical principles of socialism.

The Rise of the Robot: Dispelling the myth. The ‘march of the robots’ idea relies tacitly on the assumption that the limits to growth are negotiable, or indeed non-existent. It buys into the idea that there can be a complete – or at least near complete – decoupling of production from carbon emissions.

Ten years on, the crisis of global capitalism never really ended

Dirty rare metals: Digging deeper into the energy transition. “Western industries have deliberately offshored the production of rare metals and its associated pollution, only to bring these metals back onshore once cleansed of all impurities to incorporate them into intangible ‘green’ technologies.”

Farmers in Guatemala are destroying dams to fight ‘dirty’ renewable energy

The real problem with free trade. As trade has become freer, inequality has worsened. One major reason for this is that current global trade rules have enabled a few large firms to capture an ever-larger share of value-added, at a massive cost to economies, workers, and the environment.

A special issue in Meditations Journal on the link between the economy and energy

The environmentalism of the poor in the USA. A review of the book Environmental Justice in Postwar America: A Documentary Reader.

Half-Earth: A biodiversity ‘solution’ that solves nothing. A response to E. O. Wilson’s half-baked half-Earth.

Gender egalitarianism made us human: A response to David Graeber & David Wengrow’s ‘How to change the course of human history’

The growth debate

Following from the success of the two International Degrowth Conferences in Mexico and Sweden in August, scientists and politicians gathered at the EU Parliament in Brussels this month to discuss the need to move to a “post-growth” economy. Degrowth has always been a term meant in great part to provoke conversation. And that it did: what followed was a month careful commentary, knee-jerk responses, and thoughtful criticism.

The EU needs a stability and wellbeing pact, not more growth. 238 academics call on the European Union and its member states to plan for a post-growth future in which human and ecological wellbeing is prioritized over GDP. Sign the petition based on this letter: Europe, it’s time to end the growth dependency.

Degrowth considered: A review of Giorgos Kallis’ book, In defense of degrowth

Why growth can’t be green. New data proves you can support capitalism or the environment—but it’s hard to do both. An article by Jason Hickel in Foreign Policy.

Saving the planet doesn’t mean killing economic growth. A response to the criticism of growth by Noah Smith, a columnist at Bloomberg.

Soothing Noah Smith’s fears about a post-growth world. A response to Noah Smith’s piece by Jason Hickel. “The whole thing is based on either awkward confusion or intentional sleight of hand.” For a similar analysis, see our 2015 article, Let’s define Degrowth before we dismiss it.

The degrowth movement challenges the conventional wisdom on economic health

Beyond growth. Imagining an economy based in environmental reality: an article featured in Long Reads.

The new ecological situationists: On the revolutionary aesthetics of climate justice and degrowth

Degrowth vs. a Green New Deal. An article in The New Left Review by Robert Pollin criticizing the degrowth position, and proposing an alternative. Is the ecological salvation of the human species at hand? A response to Pollin’s piece from an ecological economist. And New deals, old bottles: Chris Smaje responds to Pollin’s piece.

While economic growth continues we’ll never kick our fossil fuels habit. George Monbiot calls for degrowth.

The Singularity in the 1790s. A retrospective and enlightening analysis of the science fiction-tinged debate between William Godwin and Thomas Malthus.

Addressing climate change’s unequal impacts

Nature-based disaster risk reduction

Puerto Rican ‘anarchistic organizers’ took power into their own hands after Hurricane Maria

The unequal distribution of catastrophe in North Carolina

That undeveloped Land Could Be Protecting Your City from the Next Flood

Carbon removal is not enough to save climate

Climate action means changing technological systems – and also social and economic systems

Plastics, waste, and technology

Maria-Luiza Pedrotti is illuminating the unseen worlds of plastic-eating bacteria that teem in massive ocean garbage patches.

The spiralling environmental cost of our lithium battery addiction

Forget about banning plastic straws! The problem is much bigger. A feature on the artist and scientist Max Liboiron.

The air-conditioning debate isn’t really about air-conditioning

Just think about it…

Pay your cleaner what you earn, or clean up yourself

Scientific publishing is a rip-off. We fund the research – it should be free

Humans are destroying animals’ ancestral knowledge. Bighorn sheep and moose learn to migrate from one another. When they die, that generational know-how is not easily replaced.

The agrarian origins of capitalism. This 1998 essay by Ellen Meiksins Wood is still worth a read (or re-read).

Searching for words in Indian Country. A non-Native journalist encounters a tribal-managed forest and an indigenous garden. “I had no idea how to use the English language to describe what I was seeing.”

Dead metaphors, dying symbols and the linguistic tipping point. An interview with Rob Nixon, author of Slow Violence.

W. E. B. Du Bois and the American Environment

Forget the highways: America’s social infrastructure is falling apart, and it’s hurting democracy.

Resources

A factsheet on global plastic pollution

A timeline of gentrification in the US

A blueprint for universal childhood

The best books on Moral Economy

An economy for the people, by the people. A report by the New Economics Foundation.

The anatomy of an AI system. The Amazon Echo as an anatomical map of human labor, data and planetary resources.

A YouTube channel with accessible, informational videos on political ecology and economy

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EXTENDED DEADLINE Not afraid of the ruins #2: Local science fictions

UPDATE: Call for submissions deadline is extended to January 31st, 2019!

Utopian dreamers, other-worldly explorers, and psychonautic adventurers; scholars, activists, students, and critics: drawing inspiration from the online political ecology magazine Uneven Earth (http://www.unevenearth.org/) and following the success of our 2017 round of submissions (http://unevenearth.org/not-afraid-of-the-ruins/), we are excited to announce the 2019 call for submissions for the collaborative writing project Not Afraid of the Ruins. The goal for this year’s call will be to once again showcase new, original, creative, and critical reflections to foster intimate and productive conversations across the intellectual and creative arts.

The fertile ground between science fiction and social/environmental justice has long been an arena for speculation and exploration by academics, activists, and creative writers. From the academy to the field and beyond, the works of science fiction writers such as Octavia E. Butler, Ursula Le Guin and Margaret Atwood (among many, many others) have presented unique corollaries to the diverse worlds and experiences we encounter in political ecology and social/environmental justice research and activism. Our goal with this project is to create a space explicitly open to exploring such convergences, a space that is neither formally academic nor wholly creative fiction, but instead, in the true spirit of Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, seeks to tap the potential that exists in the liminal space between these otherwise isolated worlds of thought. We hope that such an endeavor will produce seeds for imagining that will go forward and populate unexpected places both far and near.

Submission Criteria

This year, we are asking for more focused submissions with the goal of highlighting people, places, stories and characters that are not typically represented in the traditional Science Fiction canon. We are particularly interested in exploring ‘local science fictions’ through pieces that engage with place-based histories and geographies. Some examples for inspiration:

  • Aliens landing in Soweto, South Africa
  • Solarpunk in Belgrade, Serbia
  • The development of a sharing economy in a post-mining community, Northern Sweden
  • Local revolution against the soy plantation industry in the Cordoba Province, Argentina
  • Space colonisation, inter-planetary mining and a water-based economy in Singapore
  • Anti-petroleum activism in Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia

While we are not strict about word count, we strongly encourage writers to limit their submissions to approximately 2,500 words. Submissions can be either fiction or non-fiction.

Not Afraid of the Ruins is a collaborative project and all submissions are vetted and edited by our friendly NAOTR comrades; it is not a peer reviewed academic journal. As such, we hope that both fiction and non-fiction submissions alike are written in a clear and accessible style and we discourage strictly academic writing and excessive jargon. While we are unable to provide funding or financial compensation for submissions, we are hoping to create the possibility for publication opportunities beyond the blog.

This year, we are accepting full submissions only (no proposals). To submit, please send an email to ruins@unevenearth.org by January 15, 2019 January 31, 2019 which includes:

  • A short biographical paragraph about yourself (2 to 4 sentences)
  • A manuscript of the full submission
  • Any accompanying artwork or visuals (We highly encourage a number of visuals for each piece. These can be photographs, digital art, video, or anything else you can think of! Please be sure to follow proper copyright rules and cite sources when appropriate.)

If you are interested in submitting in a language other than English, we encourage you to contact us to check if we have the capacity to edit your piece.

In an age of unprecedented climatic, social and political change, we believe that such a project continues to be as relevant and urgent as ever. We feel compelled, as academics and activists and human beings, to not only critically reflect upon our shared human and ecological condition, but to dare to dream otherwise; to imagine things not only as they are, but to reimagine them as they could be. It is our hope that this blog will provide both space and motivation for doing just that.

For a better idea about the NAOTR project as well as more submission inspiration, visit our online blog at http://unevenearth.org/not-afraid-of-the-ruins/ or feel free to contact us.

Much love and happy world building!

– Claire, Aaron, Hannah, Dylan, Elliot, Srđan, Freya, and Mario

August readings

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory.

We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

The summer has been slow, and we haven’t been publishing much. But the fall promises some exciting new initiatives, so stay in the loop. We received some feedback that our list just has too much good stuff. How to read it all? To address this, we’ll now start highlighting our top 5 must-reads for the month. Skip all the rest if you must, these are worth reading surreptitiously at the office.

This month, we invited Anthony Galluzzo to offer some of his favorite readings. He is an adjunct professor at New York University, specializing in 19th century literature and the history of utopia.

Anthony Galluzzo’s links

The editors at Uneven Earth asked me to collect those readings that stood out from August 2018. Both my recent work and political convictions focus on potential intersections between Marxism and the degrowth movement in the service of a decelerationist program. This puts me in what feels like a very lonely position these days, when much of the Anglo-American left, from social democratic near to sectarian Marxist far, is once again enamored of Prometheanism of various sorts—accelerationism, fully automated luxury communism, and “left” eco-modernism”—all of which can be subsumed under the rubric of Jetsonism.

Eco-modernism is largely the provenance of techno-utopian libertarians, associated with outfits like the Breakthrough Institute, whose adherents propose large-scale and scientifically dubious technological solutions to the climate crisis, such as geoengineering, the better to safeguard specifically capitalist patterns of ecologically ruinous and exploitative “growth.” Why would self-described socialists and communists push such a thing? We should not underestimate the dangerous marriage of ossified dogma—regarding the development of the forces of production—and puerile sci-fi fantasy—about weather control and terraforming Mars and building Star Trek—that we often find among many of today’s extremely online toy Bolsheviks.

Arctic fire. Richard Seymour offers a moving and powerful rejoinder to the ecomodernists, including various flavors of Jetsonian leftists, who minimize the ecological crisis in promoting unlikely technological “solutions” to anthropogenic global warming in lieu of a radical socio-ecological transformation (such as ecosocialist degrowth). These Jetsonians preach “anti-catastrophism” against the “hairshirts” in the midst of an actual catastrophe—all the while dreaming of how they’ll beam themselves up to some fully automated luxury Martian retreat—a socialist one of course! Against this dangerous whiggery, I say: if you aren’t a catastrophist, you aren’t a comrade.

Major plan to deal with climate change by geoengineering the Earth would not work, scientists reveal and Rain dancing 2.0′: should humans be using tech to control the weather? Speaking of “unlikely technological solutions” or schemes designed to protect capital’s growth imperative rather than our dying biosphere, precautionary principle be damned, geo-engineering and the interests that are driving it have come under scrutiny of late.

Also see the enduring nuclear boondoggle, even as various ecomodernist voices on the left are pushing it as THE solution to the energy crisis, once again: Scientists assessed the options for growing nuclear power. They are grim; and an older, but still relevant, piece on this matter: Socialists debate nuclear, 4: A green syndicalist view.

To freeze the Thames and If you want to save the world, veganism isn’t the answer. Troy Vatese offers an alternative model of decarbonization through what he calls “natural geoengineering”: rewilding farm land through a program of “compulsory veganism” in order to effect hemispheric cooling along the lines of the little ice age. But what if veganism, with its reliance on industrial farmed monocrops, such as soy, is part of the problem, as organic farmer Isabella Tree argues?

Artificial saviors. And speaking of Jetsonism, this essay on Silicon Valley solutionism, transhumanism, and techno-utopianism—by radical computer scientist tante—as theology is right on the mark, as is the entire special issue of boundary 2, “On The Digital Turn,” from which it comes.

The belly of the revolution: Agriculture, energy, and the future of communism and Logistics, counterlogistics and the communist prospect. Jasper Bernes’s critical appraisal of (capitalist) logistics and supply chains in Endnotes 3 is one of the more rigorous left communist explorations of the way our megatechnics embed exploitation and the capitalist value form in their very architectures, against those who argue for socialist or eco-socialist “repurposing.” Bernes grapples directly with the ecological crisis—and the central questions of energy and agriculture—in this latest essay, as he marries critical Luddism to ecocommunist critique.

Losing Earth, Capitalism killed our climate momentum, and How not to talk about climate change. Nathan Rich’s informative 70+ page NYT investigative piece “Losing Earth” on the failed attempt to stop climate change on the part of various US government scientists and policy-makers in the late 70s and 80s is just as notable for what it leaves out: the role of capitalism and its growth imperative.

Plastic straws and the coming collapse. In the same way that magical techno-solutions to the ecological crisis are a morbid symptom—weaponized wishful thinking—so too is the ethical consumerism most recently exemplified by the campaign against plastic straws, as Rhyd Wildermuth demonstrates in her piece.

Richard Powers: ‘We’re completely alienated from everything else alive’ and The king of climate fiction makes the Left’s case for geoengineering. At this point, I will take Richard Powers over Kim Stanley Robinson—despite Aurora’s definitive imaginative crystallization of the anti-Promethean position—who, drunk on his more ridiculous techno-fantasies, equates geoengineering and the ecomodernist fantasia with “science.” Powers, on the other hand, implicitly understands that a radically different set of eco-social relations is the only adequate way to begin devising a collective solution to our predicament.

Uneven Earth updates

Pulling the magical lever | Link | A critical analysis of techno-utopian imaginaries

The social ideology of the motorcar | Link | This 1973 essay on how cars have taken over our cities remains as relevant as ever

Top 5 articles to read

Engineering the climate could cost us the earth, by Gareth Dale. “Do leftist geoengineering fans pray that, in a cunning of chemistry, the molecular forces that bind CO2 will weaken under a socialist order, easing its capture?”

Eugene Odum: The father of modern ecology

The 2018 flood in Kerala is only a gentle warning. It will not be enough for us to rue the past, writes Arundhati Roy

What happened in the dark: Puerto Rico’s year of fighting for power.

Building the future. Innovative municipal projects are tackling local housing problems worldwide.

News you might’ve missed

Samir Amin has died. Don’t know who he was? Read Death of a Marxist, by Vijay Prashad and Revolution and the Third World, an interview with Ali Kadri.

Scientists warn the UN of capitalism’s imminent demise

New report warns dire climate warnings not dire enough.

Land grabbing companies becoming more powerful than countries

Platform Cooperativism Consortium awarded $1 million grant. “We talked to these 2,000 Uber drivers in Cape Town who wanted to drop out and start a platform co-op, we talked with trash pickers in the informal economy in Cairo, Egypt. There is no trash collection there and so through the Coptic Church these people get organized and want to start a platform where people can order trash pick-ups from them, and they would get paid for them.”

Community vs. company: A tiny town in Ecuador battles a palm oil giant

New politics

Rojava: frontline of capital’s war on the environment

What has caused the number of US worker co-ops to nearly double?

Should rivers have rights? A growing movement says it’s about time

What is democratic confederalism?

The 1.5 Generation. My generation is radically remaking climate activism. Will it be enough?

Radical municipalism

“The price on everything is love”: How a Detroit community overcomes a lack of city services. A range of neighbor-to-neighbor efforts address basic needs, from healthcare to food access, that are going unmet by local government agencies.

How do you build a new society, from local places, in the shadow of the old? Symbiosis Collective shows one way

These democratic socialists aren’t just targeting incumbent politicians. They’re going after slumlords and real-estate speculators.

How marginalized communities are getting control over development

Tenant organizing is picking up steam in Rochester

Public land is a feminist issue. Community housing groups across London are putting women and non-binary people at the forefront of their plans for building affordable housing.

Four reasons to consider co-housing and housing cooperatives for alternative living

Small and shared vs McMansions and slums? Degrowth housing experiments demonstrate a different future.

A call for socialists to connect the dots between housing, racial, migrant justice, and climate change.

Where we’re at: analysis

The lure of elections: From political power to popular power. “You don’t need the excuse of canvassing for a politician to knock on your neighbor’s door; you don’t need to cast a vote to influence an election; and we don’t need a campaign rally to advance our vision for a better world.”

Medicalizing society. The rise of psychiatry was funded by America’s Gilded Age industrialists. Their aim: to cast society’s ills as problems of individual “mental health.”

Ecomodernism and nuclear power: No solution for climate change. In ‘Energy: A Human History,’ Richard Rhodes trivializes the dangers of nuclear power and plunges into the abyss of ecomodernist technobabble.

How green groups became so white and what to do about it

Exiting the anthropocene and entering the symbiocene

Who really pulls the strings? The director of Global Witness asks who really is responsible for corruption and extractive industry crimes.

World poverty: capitalism’s crime against humanity

Only radicalism can prevent an irreversible “Hothouse Earth”

“Hothouse Earth” co-author: The problem is neoliberal economics

What is enough? On waste and sufficiency

A sufficiency vision for an ecologically constrained world.

Human waste is a terrible thing to waste. If major global cities repurposed human waste as crop fertilizer, it could slash fertilizer imports in some countries by more than half.

Almost everything you know about e-waste is wrong

The ugly truth of ugly produce by Phat Beets collective.

In India’s largest city, a ban on plastics faces big obstacles

Just think about it…

“Deindustrialization”: a word you virtually never hear in the debate around global warming. A call for public discussion of the role of deindustrialization in building an alternative to the catastrophic course of 21st century capitalism.

‘Eco-grief’ over climate change felt by generations of British Columbians

There is nothing green or sustainable about mega-dams like the Belo Monte

On the labor of animals. The place of animals in relation to left movements.

Bitcoin shows the scale of change needed to stop the climate crisis. The cryptocurrency produces as much CO2 a year as a million transatlantic flights – and that number is set to grow.

Why all fiction should be climate fiction: A conversation with Lauren Groff

How ‘natural geoengineering’ can help slow global warming. By preserving top predators to control populations of herbivores, we can limit grazing, which reduces CO2 absorbed by ecosystems.

Even the smallest urban green spaces can have a big impact on mental health

The 1680 Pueblo Revolt is about Native Resistance. As Pueblo People, how do we develop a common political consciousness around our unique history and present situation? The first step  is looking at the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and understanding its significance.

Meet the companies that are trying to profit from global warming

Science alone won’t save the world. People have to do that.

Imagining a world with no bullshit jobs

Resources

22 noteworthy food and farming books for summer reading

Seaside reads to change the world. 300 reads on topics ranging from social change, individual action, and new economy to women and feminism, collected and compiled by Lucy Feibusch and Kate Raworth.

The book Indigenous and decolonizing studies in education, edited by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck, and K. Wayne Yang is now available to read for free online.

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Blueprint for an Earth jurisprudence economy

Julia Francisco Martinez, widow of Indigenous activist Francisco Martinez Marquez who was killed in January 2015 after months of death threats. Photograph: Giles Clarke/Global Witness

 

by Leah Temper

This speech was presented at the United Nations General Assembly on 23 April, 2018, as part of the Eighth Interactive Dialogue of the General Assembly on Harmony with Nature.

Sea levels are rising, fish stocks are depleted, temperatures may climb by 6% this decade. Inequality between us is growing, with the richest 1% owning half of global wealth.

We all know this so I won’t repeat it. Instead I would like to propose a collective thought experiment. Let us imagine that in this assembly that unites delegates from all the human nations of the world, delegates from the non-human world were also here with us. Let us welcome the delegates from the Animal nations, the Plant nations and the Rock nations. While we may not understand their language, let us try to listen to their claims and to hear their interests.

In this task we have of course much to learn from Indigenous communities in Turtle Island and elsewhere who have maintained such relationships with other life-forms for millennia. Nishnabeg scholar Leanne Simpson writes about how twice yearly “the fish nations and the fish clans gathered to talk, to tend to their treaty relationships and to renew life”. Their treaty included principles such as: take only what you need, waste nothing, respect cycles and seasons, and return fertility to the soil. These relations are founded on responsibility and reciprocity and ensure the health and flourishing of both parties.

We are here today in commemoration of Earth Day to discuss how we can rebuild these relationships with the community of life. How can we transform our systems of production and consumption in harmony with nature and other humans? How can we move from extraction to restoration? From overconsumption to reproduction? From domination to care? What would an Earth Jurisprudence economy look like?

The environmental (in)justice atlas. www.ejatlas.org

Over the past 10 years my work has entailed examining these questions through the experiences of those defending the environment and their health and livelihoods. We have been collecting these stories in the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (http://www.ejatlas.org), a participatory project which maps protests and mobilizations against life threatening extractive activities around the world. To date we have documented 2400 such ecological conflicts. Environmental justice includes the right not to be polluted, to have a safe environment to live, work, and play. It also includes justice for the greater web of life, acknowledging the inseparability between justice for nature and justice for humans.

This work has brought me to some of the most polluted and to some of the most pristine places on the planet, to the barricades with communities blocking pipelines, Indigenous groups defending sacred mountains against mining, pastoralists opposing land-grabbing, and recyclers fighting incinerators that would burn the waste they depend on. While some dismiss these communities on the frontlines as anti-development, they are stepping in and resisting because they feel their leaders are not taking the necessary actions. They often can’t be bought off, but are putting forward a vision for a radical transformation of our societies and economic system while engaging in experiments in diverse ways of living and new forms of collective organization.

Their call for systemic and structural change is not addressed in the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, which fall short in arresting the driving forces that cause poverty, such as wealth concentration, corporate control and impunity, and ongoing racism and colonialism.

We know that the current economic paradigm constrains our ability to tackle these forces. Economic growth, resource efficiency, and the green economy cannot address the poverty caused by environmental damage and the commodification of life. Ecological economics, which is an economics grounded in biophysical reality that respects the laws of thermo-dynamics, rejects the possibility of limitless economic growth on a finite planet. We must acknowledge that the economy is embedded in nature and its expansion will always require fresh resources and new sinks for wastes. Thus the need to continually colonize new areas for extraction and waste disposal, leading to conflicts, environmental degradation and increased inequality. We must abandon growth because pursuing it mindlessly instead of focusing on equality, distribution and justice is a driving cause of poverty, not a corrective to it.

The good news is that a new paradigm is already emerging and citizen movements, North and South, as well as governments are already thinking beyond growth.

The good news is that a new paradigm is already emerging and citizen movements, North and South, as well as governments are already thinking beyond growth. There is a growing international movement for de-growth which argues that those countries who are occupying more than their fair share of environmental space must downscale production and consumption but that they can still increase human flourishing while devoting more time to nature, culture, and community.

Above you can see the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice. Each dot represents one case where the community has risen up to say we refuse to be polluted, we don’t want that mine, that highway, that nuclear power plant in our community. I invite the reader to go to the atlas and to see what is happening in your countries. The data is not complete, but it gives us a broad picture of who suffers the impacts stemming from the underside of economic growth. And it is primarily women, Indigenous communities, peasants, fishers and other marginalized people who are being polluted and dispossessed. While sometimes referred to as minorities, they represent the majority of the world’s and your countries’ populations. They do not all want to follow a single path to development. Together they constitute a global environmental justice movement.

The atlas also shows that it is possible to stop these life-threatening activities. That it is possible to find billions of barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there. There is the case of the Te Urewa Park in New Zealand. El Salvador, in consultation with the rock and water nations, has put in place a ban on metal mining under the world’s first such moratorium. Costa Rica, in defense of the plant and animal nations in that mega-biodiverse country, has decided that fossil fuel extraction is too great risk for their collective health and put in place a moratorium. France, Quebec, and Tunisia and some other territories have banned fracking.

What if instead of economically recoverable reserves of minerals we talked about ethically recoverable reserves? To reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change most fossil fuels reserves have to be kept underground. These unburnable fuels include 80% of coal, 50% of gas and 30% of oil. An Earth jurisprudence economy would include policies and laws to halt extraction of these reserves for both local and global well-being. An Earth jurisprudence economy would accept that there are places on Earth that should not be ripped open by mines or bulldozed for highways no matter the potential profits.

One path to restructuring our economy in harmony with nature is to shift the emphasis from production of things to the reproduction of life. A central element of this transformation is recognition of what has previously been considered free of charge and available for exploitation—the reproductive and care labour undertaken primarily by women, and nature’s gifts including air, water and soil fertility.

Reproductive labour includes work in the home, child-care but also the work of peasants, fishers and Indigenous peoples who work directly with nature to meet the everyday needs for the majority of people on Earth. This work, done mostly by women, is integral to the functioning of our economies and yet it is primarily unpaid and unrecognized. A new report estimates the value of unpaid childcare to Australia’s economy at $345 billion making it the single biggest sector. As the mother of a 5-month old newborn I can assure you that breastfeeding is a full time job on its own.

An Earth jurisprudence economy, instead of producing more consumer goods, would invest more resources in teachers, nurses, mothers and other care-workers.

An Earth jurisprudence economy, instead of producing more consumer goods, would invest more resources in teachers, nurses, mothers and other care-workers. Farmers would not be pushed off their lands to make way for industrial plantations. They would be supported to continue working alongside the Plant nations, Insect nations and the Soil microbe nations to feed 70% of the global human population while increasing seed and agro-biodiversity, and cooling the planet.

Yet it’s true, in an economy with less extraction and less consumption, there would be less jobs in some sectors. This is a concern. Yet instead of more consumption to remedy this, what if we began rethinking work? This would include diverse initiatives. Pilot studies such as one in Iran show that when guaranteed an unconditional basic income, workers don’t work less, instead they explore work that they want to do and is in line with their values and goals. They seek work which allows them to be creative, to improve their communities, to problem solve collectively. These are the jobs of an Earth jurisprudence economy.

I began this essay asking us to acknowledge the presence of the Animal, Plant and Rock nations with us in this room. My hope would be that henceforth politicians continue to include these nations in their thoughts and deliberations. But let’s remember that since these nations cannot speak, we must listen to the human voices who speak on their behalf. In closing I would therefore like to acknowledge those who dare to speak out for our more-than-human nations. Above you will see some of their faces. These are all environmental defenders killed in the last year murdered for their defense of the planet. According to Global Witness, four environmental defenders were killed per week in 2017.

I would like to applaud the recent regional Latin American and Caribbean Escazu accord which guarantees the right of environmental human rights defenders to carry out their activities without fear, restrictions or danger.  This agreement will be open for signatures here at UN headquarters in September. I would urge world leaders to put forward such an initiative for all members and to ensure compliance. We are here to talk about living in Harmony with Nature but the reality is that we are murdering those who aim to defend life.

The journey towards an Earth jurisprudence economy, rather than being seen as an insurmountable challenge, can serve as a uniting force in our defense of the global commons. It can reawaken an ethic of care, reinforce livelihoods and create meaningful work. In these times of great divisions, the protection of our shared home can serve as a convergence issue where we can jointly challenge multiple forms of oppression, including racism, sexism, speciesism and violence and where new solidarities and new worlds can be born.

 

Leah Temper is a trans-disciplinary scholar-activist based at the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (ICTA) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is the founder and co-director of the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (www.ejatlas.org) and is currently the principal investigator of ACKnowl-EJ (Activist-academic Co-production of Knowledge for Environmental Justice, www.acknowlej.org) a project looking at how transformative alternatives are born from resistance against extractivism.

Endless life

Photo: Kalle Gustafssonalt

by Corinna Burkhart

Hello there,

I’m writing to you from a future. I’m doing this, because I don’t know any other way. I need to speak to someone who might understand.

You see, my grandfather wants to die. You might think “Oh no, that’s sad, but maybe he is old and tired, has lived enough and is ready to die.” Well you are not wrong about that. It is sad, and yes, he is old and tired and he has had a long life and he is ready to die. But being old and tired and dying don’t go together like that anymore. And that’s the problem.

In 2017 some researchers found a protein called TIMP-2 that stimulates body cells to rebuild and keep healthy.

The quest for endless life is an old one. In 2017 some researchers found a protein called TIMP-2 that stimulates body cells to rebuild and keep healthy. A protein which all humans have in their blood when they are young. Babies have a lot of it, but as we age, the production decreases. Having less and less of this protein allows us to age, but if you keep this protein at a consistently high-level, you stay young. In 2017, some newspapers reported this research for the first time, but it didn’t really cause much of a stir. By now, those results have changed humanity “for the better” – at least this is the conclusion that pours out of the mainstream.

Back to my grandfather: he is 130-years old now and thinks he has seen enough. He remembers how it was when old people just died. He told me a lot about it. Sounds quite nice, I have to say. Granddad started the protein treatment when he was already 60. I started when I was 21, which is the normal starting age now. It is considered the best physical age to stay in: one is fertile, has high-brain capacity, yet is physically fully grown and strong. It is considered the best age to stay in for work and reproduction. We call it “starting”. You are born and then, 21 years later, you “start”, almost like you hadn’t even lived before. As if you were maturing and then, when you are ripe, you get your preservatives. There are also early starters, some choose to do that as well. Looking like a teenager had been a trend some years ago. And there are all those who started later in their life, when the whole thing went mainstream. That was about 60 years ago.

Granddad was among the first to try the treatment. He had this panic, he says, that life would be over too soon and that there were so many things left undone. He wanted to travel and still be fit when he retired so he could go hiking and fishing with his grandchildren. At the time, he and grandma had well paid jobs and could afford trying this new, promising forever-young therapy that some companies had started to offer.

Things have gone wild since those days.

Back then, most people just went to a private hospital once a month for a transfusion. You remember, the TIMP-2 concentration in the blood is higher the younger you are, so people initially got blood transfusions from newborn, healthy babies. This blood was voluntarily donated in doses that would not harm the baby, or so it was said. But you can imagine the treatment being available only for a limited amount of people and at a high cost.

Granddad and grandma were real adventurous in those days, ready to try something radical. People around them thought it was a bit crazy, but many secretly wished they could afford it themselves. As time went on, it became more and more prominent and more affordable. It was especially popular among affluent people in their late fifties. The idea of “starting again” once the children had grown-up and moved-out sounded wonderful. Having more time to do all the things left undone. Having time to find yourself again. That was the mood back then, or so my granddad says.

It turned out that poor families in Latin America were being tricked to believe that their babies had died shortly after birth, when in reality, those babies had been farmed for blood.

Then the first scandals happened. It turned out that poor families in Latin America were being tricked to believe that their babies had died shortly after birth, when in reality, those babies had been farmed for blood. That was, of course, a huge controversy. The run for the treatment declined for a while. But the wish to live forever was too strong and such stories are easy to forget if forgetting is convenient. Similar crimes happened again and again, but nobody really wanted to know about it. They are very likely still there, the baby farms that is, just more well-hidden.

In Europe the whole thing took off much later. It was illegal for a long time. Some rich people traveled to the US or Asia for treatment, but in Europe it went mainstream only when laboratories could generate the protein. No babies involved. But even if available cruelty-free, the treatment remains expensive.

For granddad and grandma, it got expensive anyway. You can imagine the treatment like an addictive drug: it is not something you do once and pay for once, but you need to keep doing it again and again. It is easy to afford when you have a well-paid job, but it requires that you maintain your income in order to maintain your standard of living. So in the end, my grandparents needed to keep working in order to afford the treatment. The idea of a long retirement soon dissolved. Of course, having time had been the original promise. Live long enough to live all your dreams, or so the advertisements said. Reality is more of a nightmare. Work longer and harder and dream forever of those days spent traveling, playing with your grandchildren, having time for an endless bucket list. I actually grew up with my grandparents being fit and healthy, spending wonderful Sundays hiking. But during the week, they worked just like my parents.

One way to stop the cycle is to die. But that is not that easy either.

Many people take out loans nowadays to afford the treatment. Like my parents, they also took out a loan for me. It’s like investing in education: by keeping young, healthy and fit, you hope that you’ll earn enough to pay back the loans. Breaking out of that cycle should be possible, shouldn’t it? It’s actually very difficult. One way to stop the cycle is to die. But that is not that easy either. You will not just die after taking that stuff for ages, at least not of natural causes. Suicide is becoming an option, but doing that before you are debt-free is a huge taboo. I mean, you wouldn’t need to mind people talking once you’re dead, but you don’t want to leave your family with all that grief or all that debt.

For those who just can’t or don’t want to commit suicide, having a mortal accident is really the only other option for dying early. My grandmother died in a car accident on her way back from work, she was 118. Granddad retired the same day and stopped taking the medicine a couple of years later. It was a wakeup call. A bad one. He did some traveling without really enjoying it. But for the past 10 years he has wanted to die. He is fed up. It didn’t turn out like he had wanted. Killing himself is not an option for him though. And the strategy of taking high risks, doing things like rock-climbing without safety measures or driving into hurricanes and tornadoes, more often than not leaves people paralyzed or otherwise injured but not dead.

You might still be wondering what the fuss is about. Life is longer, you get more time to do stuff. Even if you have a longer working life, you still get more holidays more weekends and life’s rush-hour is stretched out over a longer period of time. All this is possibly true, but what if long life only equals longer drudgery, longer suffering? We live long, but for what?

Life is very, very stressful. You have endless to-do lists. Grandpa said back in the days you could always say “No I won’t do this now, I only got 24 hours every day, I can’t do everything”. That doesn’t work anymore. The day still has only 24 hours, but there are so very many 24 hours.  People feel rushed, all the time, pressured to do all they can imagine doing. This is not how I wanted to live when I started the treatment at 21.

Competition is also very high. There are a lot of people who need to and are able to work. There is high unemployment and many homeless people as well as a panic not to end up in such a situation. Without a job, you can forget about the treatment, which means you’ll age, which means you are less likely to get a job. It’s a downward spiral. And consequently people do anything to keep their jobs, like working crazy hours for bad pay with almost no holiday. And the debt for the treatment is not the only financial burden many take on: people also take loans for education, houses, and cars. If you want a loan to buy a house, the bank will make you sign a document that you’ll take the treatment until you’ve paid off the loan.

Just imagine your life, but longer. A very long struggle of not getting worse.

Nowadays, life has become a struggle against things getting worse. How does that sound? Familiar? Just imagine your life, but longer. A very long struggle of not getting worse. I imagine, that when you know you’ll age, you might get to a point where you manage to change something. I imagine there might be a point when you realize that this is not how you want to spend the rest of your limited days. That must be so empowering. But now, there is always another day to start changing your life. And changing is uncomfortable, so most never change.

All that I have described so far concerns only the most affluent. A common belief is that those poorer countries need to develop and grow their national GDP so that more people can access health care and the endless-life treatment, which will further grow the economy. The same old song, just with another verse added. There is a company that got rich with an endless-life businesses that has since started a foundation that runs programmes in Africa to help people to afford the treatment. They call it charity and development aid. You could also call it a cruel investment.

Despite all of this madness, there are some who don’t take the treatment anymore or who never took it at all. They are called “oldies” and are treated like outcasts. Most of them live together in villages in the countryside. The oldies don’t make an effort to isolate themselves, but they end up quite isolated simply by the way they choose to live. I’ve thought about it myself, but it would require leaving my friends and family behind. And somehow, for some reason, I want to stay connected with what is going on, even if I don’t like it.

Back then you were fighting for a life within ecological and social limits. Now we are fighting to get limits to life itself.

I am part of a movement that calls itself STOP. We criticize the idea that life is all about longer and more, drawing ideas and inspiration from sources on post-development, degrowth, and social justice, which is what brought me to your blog. After all, the Internet doesn’t forget. Back then you were fighting for a life within ecological and social limits. Now we are fighting to get limits to life itself.

I have recently stopped the treatment myself. It is very new for me. I’m 54 now, but still have around seventy years to live, seventy years to dedicate myself to a world in which we can learn to die once again.

Yours,
Maya

Corinna Burkhart is a PhD candidate at the Department of Human Geography in Lund, Sweden. She is active around degrowth since 2012 and tries to think outside the box, sometimes through writing fiction.

This piece is part of Not afraid of the ruins, our series of science fiction and utopian imaginings.

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March readings

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory.

We’ll try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

It always feels like things are happening all at once: just as the global economy is transforming radically and we face an environmental crisis of global proportions, new social movements are rising up giving us new ways to think about the future. Weirdly, just at this moment, some are latching on to an idealized vision of modernity and the Enlightenment to defend the status quo. This month, we read articles that complicated the idea of modernity and offered ways to think about society and nature that incorporate, but go beyond, the Enlightenment tradition.

We also highlighted international environmental justice movements, showing that not everything is rosy—but people are fighting and thinking in creative ways, imagining different kinds of modernity and new kinds of internationalism. And lest we forget, March is women’s history month, and what better way to celebrate it than to highlight the—often undervalued—role that women play in global environmental justice movements?

Uneven Earth updates

How to navigate the disorientation of a seismic world | Link | Taking inspiration from past revolutions to build a new framework for the future

Krishna never looks up | Link | “Several tentacle-antennae coiled around his extended arm like Medusa’s hair.”

The migration crisis and the imperial mode of living | Link | Notes toward a degrowth internationalism

Dreaming spaces | Link | “Everywhere is filled with the dream of what could grow, slowly coming true”

Climate change mitigation and adaptation of the poor | Link | A call for decolonial responses to climate change

URGENT REPORT Protomunculus spp | Link | “If an infected robionic is discovered at any stage, universal mandate requires its immediate incineration”

Avatar revisited | Link | Gesturing at decolonization of the great epistemological divides

You might’ve missed…

Climate science’s official text is outdated. Here’s what it’s missing.

The Paris accord is built on speculative ‘tech fantasies’. It can not save us from climate catastrophe.

UN moves towards recognising human right to a healthy environment

Latin American countries sign legally binding pact to protect land defenders

Their forefathers were enslaved. Now, 400 years later, their children will be landowners. A rare victory for the Brazilian poor, as record Amazon land tract is handed over to descendants of escaped enslaved people.

German newspaper publishes names of 33,000 refugees who died trying to reach Europe

Indonesia’s forests caught between exploitation and failed aid programs

‘We are the forgotten people’: It’s been almost six months since Hurricane Maria, and Puerto Ricans are still dying. A multi-media feature.

The battle for paradise: Puerto Ricans and ultrarich “Puertopians” are locked in a pitched struggle over how to remake the island. Naomi Klein reports on the uneven legacy of the hurricane.

A reign of terror: Extra-judicial killings in Duterte’s Philippines. Dorothy Guerrero from Global Justice Now on the killings and opportunities for a Left response.

UK’s Labour sets out to overhaul neo-colonial development policy

Double trouble? How big cities are gentrifying their neighbours

Afrin in Kurdish Syria has been occupied by an invading Turkish army. Here are some articles providing some further context.

Don’t look away: The fight for Afrin is a struggle for radical democracy. Under fire from the forces of reaction, Afrin is the frontline in the fight for democracy. And by the same authors, a longer piece: Why #DefendAfrin? Confronting authoritarian populism with radical democracy. “At stake, not least, and deserving of our attention and solidarity is a radical alternative to both violent authoritarian nationalism and broader systemic violence associated with the contradictory nexus of blind elite cosmopolitanism, neo-imperialism and intensifying militarization that drives uneven globalization.”

The young feminist who died for my people. “Despite scarcity, we do not want bullets, we do not want food, and we do not want money. All we are asking for is action that will stop Turkey from flying its warplanes over the heads of our children.”

Love in a hopeless place. A first-hand account from a German internationalist YPG fighter from the now nearly forgotten battle of Raqqa.

The Kurds need Canada: What level of atrocity won’t we ignore?

Dear Hêlîn, or Anna—because I know you liked your both names. A letter to a British national who died in Afrin.

Turkish troops pour concrete on world’s oldest temple

New politics

Counter-mapping: cartography that lets the powerless speak. How a subversive form of mapmaking charts the stories and customs of those who would otherwise be ignored.

Some millennials aren’t saving for retirement because they don’t think capitalism will exist by then. They’re forming intentional communities and solidarity networks to support and protect each other.

How Cooperation Richmond is empowering marginalized communities to build an equitable economy

The wind of change: Renewables and self-determination. Katie Laing explores the fight for the right to community renewables on the island of Lewis. On one hand is a system that brings direct community control and builds a local economy, on the other one that extracts profit, control and resource from the islands.

An interview with David Bollier on the meaning of the commons for social transformation.

The Barcelona city government is trying to remunicipalize its water system from a private company. The rising tide for the democratic control of water in Barcelona.

An interview with Laura Pérez on the recent massive women’s strike in Spain, and what it means for the “feminization of politics” in Barcelona.

Realising an emancipatory rural politics in the face of authoritarian populism

Ostrom in the city: design principles for the urban commons

Carving out the commons. By now, you could be forgiven for assuming that “the commons” refers to another cocktail bar or coffee shop in yet another neighborhood people used to be able to afford. But Amanda Huron’s new book grounds the romantic notion of urban commons in the everyday struggles of working people.

Where we’re at: analysis

Soak the rich:  An exchange on capital, debt, and the future with David Graeber and Thomas Piketty

Why are water wars back on the agenda? And why we think it’s a bad idea!

Citizens unite in Cape Town’s water crisis

Why Amartya Sen remains the century’s great critic of capitalism. In Sen’s work, the two critiques of capitalism – moral and material – cooperate. He disentangles moral and material issues without favouring one or the other, keeping both in focus.

Surveillance capitalism. Deleting our Facebook accounts following the recent privacy scandal is not enough: we need to challenge the structural problem of surveillance capitalism. On the digital and social networks supporting authoritarian populism, and what can be done to resist them. For those who are active on Facebook, an instruction on how to use it while giving it the minimum amount of personal data.

Loneliness and poor mental health still reign around the world. Since Japanese seniors increasingly find themselves living alone and with no one to talk to, a generation in Japan faces a lonely death, and committing petty theft has become a way for elderly women in particular to escape solitude and isolation; nearly 20% of women inmates in Japan’s prisons are seniors.

How American masculinity, by sending the message that needing others is a sign of weakness and that being vulnerable is unmanly, creates lonely men.

It’s easy to forget that activists fighting to eliminate injustice struggle with mental and physical health, too. A story on those who push, protest, and privately suffer as a result; and the personal account of an environmental professor whose battle with cancer helped her cope emotionally with the reality of climate change.

The necessary transience of happiness. “By selling a myth about the nature of happiness, capitalism creates atomistically-ambitious but socially-obedient individuals who can be distracted from collective values and aspirations.”

Why Americans should give socialism a try. Against the commodification of life and relationships: “Capitalism is an ideology that is far more encompassing than it admits, and one that turns every relationship into a calculable exchange. Bodies, time, energy, creativity, love — all become commodities to be priced and sold. Alienation reigns. There is no room for sustained contemplation and little interest in public morality; everything collapses down to the level of the atomized individual.”

Just think about it…

United States as energy exporter: Is it “fake news”?

It wasn’t just Greece: Archaeologists find early democratic societies in the Americas

Economics has an Africa problem. From 2015, but still relevant.

Why race matters when we talk about the environment

Is the way we think about overpopulation racist?

Corporations do damage to poor women with their global philanthropy. Companies like to focus their corporate social responsibility work on girls because supporting women is, in theory, noncontroversial. But such charitable efforts actually harm girls and women in the Global South by depoliticizing their problems, which are inherently political.

Climate change and the astrobiology of the Anthropocene. “We will either make it across to the other side with the maturity to ‘think like a planet’ or the planet will just move on without us. That, I believe, is the real meaning of what’s happening to us now. It’s a perspective we can’t afford to miss.”

“They are our salvation”: the Sicilian town revived by refugees. With an ageing, fast-shrinking population, Sutera saw Italy’s migrant influx as an opportunity.

Human rights are not enough. We must also embrace the fight against economic inequality.

How six Americans changed their minds about global warming

The tragedy of the commons. Common, a new housing startup, creates cities without qualities—but it will order your toilet paper.

Women and environmental justice

With the 8th of March being International Women’s Day, and Women’s History Month running through March in the US, UK and beyond, this month is a good time to turn the spotlight on women’s struggles and (often overlooked and undervalued) contributions to environmental justice.

Stories of women’s resistance. Women are on the frontlines of climate change around the world: they make up 80% of people displaced by it, are more vulnerable in the aftermath of disasters, and disproportionately face other risks described in this overview from the BBC. But they are also active agents in fighting back against the climate crisis and other forms of environmental injustice.

Finland’s reindeer-herding Sámi women, faced with a combination of weather changes and increased tree cutting that threatens their centuries-old tradition, fight climate change. Meet the “Polish Mothers at the Felling”: a grassroots group of mothers protesting intensified logging practices across Poland. In Nepal, women are running for office to protect traditional forests that belong to indigenous peoples and local communities, and they’re winning. The DRC mining industry is a prime example of how corporate power threatens women’s rights: this is why feminist activists are mobilising behind a proposed international treaty to regulate the impacts of transnational corporations. Indigenous activists of the Chaco movement – the most vital branch of which may be young, Native American women – try to quell a rising tide of oil and gas exploration in Chaco Canyon. In India, women resist plantations that uproot them from their customary forests. On International Women’s Day, a petition initiated by women in West and Central African countries demanded that oil palm companies give back community land and end violence against women living in and around large-scale oil palm plantations; a struggle that women in Guatemala and Colombia and Indonesia face as well.

Here is a women’s strike reader with socialist feminist highlights from the archives of Dissent Magazine, and a list of women activists from around the world taking up the fight for social justice.

Zafer Ülger discusses environmental issues in Turkey, and points to the need for movements that unite ecological struggles with other social struggles, including women’s liberation: “The crises experienced by labor, women or oppressed peoples are not separate from the crisis of nature and ecosystems; it is just the other side of the same coin.”

Female writers and naturalists. A list of nine women who are rewriting the environment from a female perspective; a beautifully intimate portrait of Rachel Carson and her life and work on the sea; and an exploration of Nan Shepherd’s work on the mountains, and what we can learn from it. “Shepherd does for the mountain what Rachel Carson did for the ocean — both women explore entire worlds previously mapped only by men and mostly through the lens of conquest rather than contemplation; both bring to their subject a naturalist’s rigor and a poet’s reverence, gleaming from the splendor of facts a larger meditation on meaning.”

Ecological thought

What does it mean to think ecologically?

Culture shift: redirecting humanity’s path to a flourishing future. It’s time to build a new worldview with connectedness at its center.

When nature and society are seen through the lens of dialectics and systems thinking: “Capitalism casts nature as a resource which is to be exploited, squeezed and discarded. This is in part because of a linear, reductive understanding of the world. But there is an alternative. Dialectical, systems thinking views nature and society through the lens of complexity, contradiction and phase transitions.”

Thinking ecologically: a dialectical approach. In this essay Murray Bookchin warns against overly spiritual, reductive, and mechanistic approaches in ecological thought, injecting a political analysis into the discussion of what it means to think ecologically. In particular, he directs his ire against various strains of new age environmentalism as well as systems thinking.

Mentalities of greening, governing, and getting rich

Utilitarianism made for ‘Hard Times’ in Dickens’ England

Kim Stanley Robinson, the author of sci-fi classics like Red Mars and the more recent New York 2140, wrote an op-ed in The Guardian arguing for a variation of E. O. Wilson’s ‘half earth’ proposal. The idea is that humans should be kicked out of half the planet and inhabit the rest in super-dense and ecological cities. Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher, two political ecologists, wrote an essay at the time critiquing Wilson’s book: “Addressing biodiversity loss and other environmental problems must proceed by confronting the world’s obscene inequality, not by blaming the poor and trusting the ‘free market’ to save them.”

10 years ago, the first international degrowth conference was held in Paris. To celebrate, Federico Demaria writes about the rise – and future – of the degrowth movement.

From 2017, a history of the Limits to Growth thesis and the World3 model, which was ridiculed in the 80s but turned out to be correct.

Eric Pineault’s exploration of “how the spectre of Degrowth haunts left ecomodernism as something unimaginable; how it works to foreclose certain avenues of radical thought and practice.”

Another worthy read on the ENTITLE Blog by Emmanuele Leonardi, where he puts the degrowth vs. accelerationism debate in context of the question of value.

Beyond growth or beyond capitalism? A critique of Herman Daly’s steady-state economics, which cannot imagine a world beyond capitalism.

Introduction to an ecosocialist approach to production and consumption

Better technology isn’t the solution to ecological collapse. We need to ditch our addiction to GDP growth.

Modernity and the web of life

With the publishing of Steven Pinker’s new book, Enlightenment Now!, there’s been a lot of talk about modernity and the Enlightenment, with accusations flying around of anyone who disagrees with the present state of things being accused of anti-modern and anti-Enlightenment. Here are a few rebuttals:

The limitations of Steven Pinker’s optimism

Steven Pinker’s optimism on climate change is misplaced

Waiting for Steven Pinker’s enlightenment

You can deny environmental calamity – until you check the facts

There never was a West (or, democracy emerges from the spaces in between)

In 2015, Anthony Galluzzo wrote a series of articles analyzing the literature of Promethean modernism—worth giving them a read. A tale of two Prometheuses in many parts: Part 1, 2, and 3.

Meanwhile, there’s been a slew of stories about the impacts of modernity on rural areas, our cities, and nature.

Agriculture wars. A tale of the industrialization of rural America and country music as resistance.

Our dying soils: the invisible crisis under our feet

Urban development in India: chasing the global at a cost to the local?

Empty promises: how 600 million young people in India have been missold the future

Mexico: the dangers of industrial corn and its processed edible products  

The 100 million city: is 21st century urbanisation out of control?

The risks are rising for cities in Anthropocene era

Downtown is for people. It’s always worth revisiting Jane Jacob’s classic 1958 essay. “If the downtown of tomorrow looks like most of the redevelopment projects being planned for it today, it will end up a monumental bore. But downtown could be made lively and exciting — and it’s not too hard to find out how.”

Sci-fi and the near future

How J.G. Ballard’s science fiction tells the future of our privatized cities

Introduction: the rising tide of climate change fiction

A nuclear warning designed to last 10,000 years. “Consider a wanderer 10,000 years in the future discovering a strange construction of granite thorns in the New Mexico desert, their points weathered by centuries, their shadows stretching at sinister angles. The wailing figure from Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream,” itself long ago turned to dust, appears on sporadic signs near these totems. It’s unclear for what this site was intended, or who created its menacing forms.”

Apocalypse soon. The science fiction of this century is one in which great existential threats are known: they are real, and terrible.


Resources

An atlas of real utopias. Introducing the Atlas of Utopias, which highlights 32 stories of radical transformation that prove that another world is not only possible in the future, but already exists.

Sufficiency: Moving beyond the gospel of eco-efficiency, a report by Friends of the Earth Europe.

Platform cooperativism: challenging the corporate sharing economy

Decolonising science: a reading list

Whose land is it anyway? A manual for decolonization

The Decolonize issue of YES! Magazine

Capitalism Nature Socialism issue on power, peace and protest: ecofeminist vision, action and alternatives

The Myths of Conquest series, debunking the myths of European colonization of the New World.

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The migration crisis and the imperial mode of living

Tourists on a cruise ship docked at Valletta, Malta. Source: Flickr.

by Miriam Lang

We are currently facing the most severe migration crisis in history. In Europe, the debate on how to tackle the root causes of migration, including forced migration, happens mainly amongst established political actors such as political parties, state institutions, and large international NGOs. This debate focuses on wars, catastrophes, arms trade, and terror, which are all framed as a state of emergency.

For these actors, it is difficult to find practical, immediate solutions to the problem, because this would require addressing the root causes of those wars, going against the immediate interests of European states and international organizations. In consequence, these actors propose “development aid“ as the panacea to address root causes of migration.This aid is then tied to bilateral agreements with Arabic or African countries to prevent migration from occurring in the first place, or which make the deportation  of migrants from Europe to their country of origin easier. Left-leaning critical migration researchers rightly critique this approach for misusing development co-operation as a tool for migration management.

One common response on the left is to, on the one hand, highlight the hypocrisy of trying to solve the crisis through development aid while continuing to drive these crises through arms deals and Western involvement in regional wars, and, on the other hand, framing the migrant crisis in terms of the right to free movement and the human rights of migrants.

Addressing the refugee crisis requires questioning the dominant notions of what it means to live a good life, to think global when it comes to social welfare

But this responds to only one dimension of a broader civilizational crisis. Anti-racist and migrant justice movements should not focus solely on issues of human mobility rights, the failure or even adverse effects of development aid, or Western military involvements. They also need to question the colonial division of nature and labor and what has been called the ‘imperial mode of living.’ Doing so would involve building  new paths of solidarity with societies in the geopolitical Global South. In this sense, addressing the refugee crisis requires questioning the dominant notions of what it means to live a good life, to think global when it comes to social welfare and to link up with movements such as eco-feminism or degrowth. This  could open up new possibilities to address social relegation due to immigration, as they exist in the Global North.

 

It is urgent to fight the accelerated destruction of livelihoods in the Global South

The left  focus on critiquing the mainstream discourse easily leads to an equally politically problematic counter-position, an attitude that principally welcomes migration as something positive without questioning its root causes or the deterioration of living conditions in the Global South. However, can migration be something principally unproblematic that is to be welcomed and even increased? Does the defense of the right to migrate necessarily have to lead us to ignore the manifold coercions that force people to migrate? Must we not, on the contrary, acknowledge the real-life scenarios in the geopolitical Global South and our historical, economic and political contribution to these?

Today, a counter-hegemonic project must necessarily result from a collective construction process between the global North and South, which understands their interdependencies. Of course we have to object when governmental institutions differentiate between “good“ or “legal” refugees on the one hand, and “bad“ or “illegal” refugees on the other hand. However, this should not lead us to ignore global power relations or to paint a naive and euphemistic picture of migration as a natural phenomenon with  positive connotations of  personal choice  and self-determination.

It is just as urgent to fight the accelerated destruction of livelihoods in the Global South, as it is to fight for open borders and dignified living conditions for those who have already fled.

By relying only on a “right to move” framework, we fail to address  what makes this current wave of immigration unique. The decision of a German who prefers to live in the USA is radically different from that of a Nigerian who faces the dangers associated with fleeing and entering the EU undocumented. At the end of 2015, over 65 million persons were displaced globally—a historical record. In light of this situation, it is just as urgent to fight the accelerated destruction of livelihoods in the Global South, as it is to fight for open borders and dignified living conditions for those who have already fled.

As already mentioned, this process is rooted in the international division of labor, and, more specifically, the exploitation of nature (‘resources’) and cheap labor in the Global South to ensure unlimited consumption options in the North. Because of this, the geopolitical South is increasingly faced with  “accumulation by dispossession” as the Marxist geographer David Harvey put it, to satisfy the demand for commodities of the North and new middle and upper classes in some southern countries. This greed for raw materials has led to a massive expansion and acceleration of extractivism: the export of oil, minerals or cash crops is often the only possibility for Southern economies to integrate themselves into the existing world market. As the reports of several human rights organizations show, these processes destroy the material conditions necessary for the lives of increasing numbers of people. The destruction is not only environmental, but often includes the very social fabric of the concerned regions.  People are forced to migrate, and are dispossessed of their social bonds and cultural contexts and knowledges. The so-called ‘green economy’, often mentioned as a ‘clean’ solution to combine ecological concerns with economic growth – for example wind or solar energy production or electric cars – also requires resources such as rare minerals, cobalt, lithium or copper, whose exploitation leads to destructive  social-ecological conflicts elsewhere.

At the same time, the globalized world market ensures that production chains and power relations, and effects like environmental destruction and exploitation which are inscribed in all consumer goods, remain abstract or are systematically obscured. However, those global value chains and power relations constitute a causal link between the imperial mode of living in the geopolitical North and the root causes for flight and migration in the South. In most cases, migration is not a freely-chosen emancipated decision, but a reaction to a specific concurrence of constraints, for example capitalist, gender-specific, ecological and/or (neo)colonial ones. Many of those people who play cat and mouse with the European border-regime today would rather have stayed in their own cultural and socio-economic contexts, if this had been a viable option.

The container port at Fos-Sur-Mer, France.

 

Who has the right to the imperial mode of living?

The imperial mode of living divides the North from the South, because the prosperity of the former is historically rooted in the exploitation of the living environments and (often unpaid) workforce of the latter

The term ‘imperial mode of living’, coined by Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen, does not seek to describe a certain lifestyle practiced by specific social milieus. Rather, it  refers to the hegemonic patterns of production, distribution, and consumption in combination with related cultural imaginaries and subjectivities. These are deeply embedded in the day-to-day practices of the majorities in the global North and increasingly find their ways into the upper and middle classes of countries in the global South.

This mode of living is imperial insofar as it assumes unlimited access to all resources – the space, nature, cheap labor, and sinks of the entire planet – only for a small and privileged minority of the global population. This mode of living is only possible while such unlimited access is secured either by political and judicial means, or by military means and violence. The imperial mode of living connects the geopolitical North and South insofar as it represents their shared hegemonic ideal of a successful and good life under current capitalist conditions, an ideal closely related to the promise of ‘catch-up development’. But at the same time, it divides the North from the South, because the prosperity of the former is historically rooted in the exploitation of the living environments and (often unpaid) workforce of the latter.

Without doubt, open borders and global mobility have to be fought for, especially against nationalist or right-wing environmentalism. But new questions arise around these claims if we consider the global division of labor and nature and the imperial mode of living. Does the claim to open borders and the right to move translate into the right for every human to participate in this mode of living, including those from the global South, if necessary, via migration? This is impossible for two reasons: firstly, while the multidimensional ecological crisis is already threatening the material conditions for the reproduction of life on our planet, the ecological destruction necessary to sustain this mode of living would be intensified. Secondly, because the imperial mode of living always requires an ‘elsewhere’, a foreign space to where exploitation and destruction can be externalized. But when applied to everybody, such an ’elsewhere’ would no longer exist. Without a doubt, many migrants indeed come to Europe hoping to participate in the imperial mode of living, which in most cases reveals to be an illusion, due to the manifold mechanisms of a “selective inclusion“ in place. However, the real question should be: do they, do we, or does anybody at all have the right to a mode of living that exploits and destroys the livelihoods of other people?

New perceptions of the good life

A critical left perspective on refugees and migration that is in solidarity with the global South requires a comprehensive paradigm-shift. The hegemonic discourse of what is considered a good and successful life is based on a number of problematic assumptions: that life as it is today in the Western World represents the highest stage of development of human civilization, and that modifying it would necessarily constitute a loss; that happiness inevitably relies on mass consumption and the accumulation of material goods; that the path of history is one and linear and that other modes of living that are less permeated by capitalist logics and based on different world views are necessarily inferior, backward and underdeveloped on this path; that the advancement of technology is only possible via multinational corporations; that it is the state which has to provide social welfare in a centralized manner; and that – as the idea of socialism in the 20th century suggested – one single, universally applicable master plan is needed before we can initiate change.

Modes of living which require less material consumption do not necessarily mean a loss, but can give rise to genuine enrichment.

In my opinion, the key way to challenge this narrative  lies in the connection between anti-racist struggles for the right to migrate and struggles for a different, less alienated, less accelerated, and individualized life. Such struggles do exist in Europe and the geopolitical North and have gained strength over recent years. The degrowth movement and ecofeminism undermine the basis of chauvinist feelings of ‘entitlement’ to prosperity and of widespread fears of being socially deprived by the presence of migrants or refugees, insofar as these struggles fundamentally  question the narrative that the western, European way of life equals prosperity or a good life. As Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen puts it, “we inhabitants of the northern hemisphere are materially well-supplied or even over-supplied, but nevertheless we experience needs. The big problems of our times are individualistic isolation, loneliness and existential fears, as well as the recourse to racist, nationalist patterns of conviviality as we lack of emancipatory concepts.”

Movements such as degrowth and ecofeminism tackle consumption patterns of the imperial mode of living in their everyday dimension, thus opening up possibilities of active transformation for people in the geopolitical global North. These movements make it possible to collectively learn  that modes of living which require less material consumption do not necessarily mean a loss, but can give rise to genuine enrichment.

Of course, our social reproduction and the fulfillment of our needs do have a material dimension. But this material dimension a) does not necessarily have to be governed exclusively by money – see for example the debate and practice around commons and commonism – and b) is not the only dimension there is to poverty and wealth. Notions of abundance, value, and wealth related to quality of relationships, self-determination, self-reliance, the ability to redistribute, the experience of finding meaning in life, and the effective power to act are systematically made invisible by the poverty indicators which dominate the development discourse: quality of life is reduced to money, consumption and, at best, access to public services.

In the last decade, the alternative paradigm of Buen Vivir(living well) – emerged from some Latin American countries as a counter-narrative to capitalist wellbeing. It considers humans as part of Nature, thus promotes harmonic relations with all other beings, and puts emphasis on communitarian construction from below in a territorial sense, leaving plenty of room for diversity. Other important principles are equilibrium, reciprocity and complementarity instead of accumulation, progress, growth and competition. Buen vivir, if it is developed from the bottom up and, above all, in democratic ways – will inevitably have different shapes in different contexts. This is why emancipatory debates in Latin America increasingly speak of los buenos vivires in plural.

Movements such as degrowth or the commons can connect with struggles around Buen Vivir, post-extractivism and post-development in the global South, opening up a perspective through which people in the geopolitical North and South can work together to overcome the hegemony of the imperial mode of living. These approaches also take on responsibility for challenging imperial day-to-day practices and can directly and simultaneously address the root causes of forced migration, often caused by compensatory mass-consumption elsewhere, and the roots of the global ecological crisis.

Considering social welfare globally

Finally, what about the alleged threat that migration poses to the welfare state? If we are consequently striving for social equity, we can only consider welfare or social security in a truly global manner. Although this might sound threatening at first, in my opinion nobody has a birth right to certain social benefits. Some of the feminist debates around care and commons are path-breaking here. If it is impossible to globally extend the social welfare state, as it has existed only in a small part of the world, and only for a few decades – on the basis of cheap energy and centuries of previous value transfer from the global South – then we need to replace the utopia of the social welfare state with alternative concepts. The commoning of care might be a possible pathway, while at the same time reducing the hours dedicated to paid labor – without abstaining from the state altogether, which would still need to provide the ideal conditions for this kind of commoning.

If it is impossible to globally extend the social welfare state then we need to replace the utopia of the social welfare state with alternative concepts.

Consequently, anti-racist movements and critical migration research cannot be content with fighting the European border regime by advocating open borders.. As an offensive strategy against racist prosperity-chauvinism, their critiques should just as much focus on the imperial mode of living and the associated uneven North-South relationships, as well as hegemonic perceptions of a good life. An up-to-date perspective on inter-peoples-relations should clearly tackle the root causes of forced migration by effectively reducing the energy and matter consumed in the global North, and, at the same time, develop new approaches for a global social welfare that do not consider welfare as a privilege related to one’s dwelling place or birth right.

The cruise ship Royal Princess at port in Gibraltar. Photo: Tony Evans.

A version of this article first appeared on Degrowth.de.

Miriam Lang is professor for Social and Global Studies at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in Quito, Ecuador. She studied Latin American Studies at Free University of Berlin and holds a PhD in Sociology. In the 1990s she was active in the anti-racist movement in Berlin. She has lived in Latin America since 2003, and for the last 12 years in Ecuador.

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February readings

Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory.

We’ll try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.

February is the shortest month, but holy crap we do have a lot of cool links for you. This month, we cover some new research about the limits of the good life, the impact of companies like AirBnB and Amazon on our cities, the changing Latin American politics, and the importance of Indigenous ways of seeing the world. The work of Steven Pinker and Jordan Peterson has also triggered a new series of discussions on the importance of science and its links to colonialism and racism. In the sci-fi department, we’ve got a whole new slew of fiction for you, analysis from writers like China Miéville and Kim Stanley Robinson, and a feature on black science-fiction writers.

Uneven Earth updates

La Barceloneta’s Struggle Against (Environmental) Gentrification | Link

“A city-wide urban struggle that evolved in defense of the needs and rights of residents over capital and profit.”

The Transition: towards a psycho-social history | Link

“The facts revealed in the historical record are clear: most people were terrified of their neighbours.”

Encyclopedia of the mad gardener | Link

“They feel the smells seep into their nasal channels, dioxins boiled under the pink moon.”

The collector | Link

“When you upload the dream, I cease to be a dreamer…”

Waterways | Link

“After the Division, Avon split from Greater Thames and declared a matriarchy”

You might’ve missed…

Turns out that carbon capture is a pipe dream. Not many know that the fine print of the Paris Treaty relied on a dirty little secret: the advent of carbon capture technology. But it turns out that this is a pipe dream. The unavoidable fact is, we just have to make less stuff, burn less oil, and grow more trees. Read the stories from Wired, The Guardian, and the original report from EASAC.

You may have heard of Route 66, “the main street of America”,  but Highway BR-163 in Brazil may be just as epic. This beautiful photo essay about this single highway tells the story of the complex political ecology of rainforest deforestation.

The Samarco dam collapse in 2015 was Brazil’s worst environmental disaster. What’s happened since, and who’s to blame? This investigative piece gives us the update.

Is it possible for everyone to live well? This study mapped indicators of well-being along with every country’s environmental impact. Turns out most don’t make the cut, and Vietnam comes closest to balancing the good life and environmental impacts. Though these numbers just tell part of the story, the study has had international impact, starting a much-needed discussion on what it means to live well today.

It’s behind the scenes, as always, but new rounds of trade negotiations are happening and they will affect the world for generations to come. Here’s an article dishing it out about the CEPA trade deal (EU-Indonesia), a perspective from Kenya by Justus Lavi Mwololo, a representative of small farmers, and an explainer about how the new NAFTA negotiations affect Mexican workers.

We’re over one month into Turkey’s invasion of the Kurdish canton Afrin in Syria, and since then, there’s been an international outcry. This piece in Jacobin lays out the stakes behind the attack, here’s an op-ed by the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy in the Wall Street Journal, another opinion piece by Rahila Gupta on CNN’s website, and a piece by David Graeber asking why world leaders are backing Turkey’s invasion. And here’s a piece on the ecological initiatives happening right now in Rojava.

Here’s a letter from Evin Jiyan Kisanak, the daughter of Gultan Kisanak, telling the story of the Kurdish political movement in Turkey and their oppression: “My mom, who still has traces on her body from the torture she suffered, always sees light in the face of profound despair. Today she is in prison again, but her belief in peace and equality is unrelenting. Her will is unyielding.”

In the face of our climate crisis, a group of five activists known as the Valve Turners decided not to wait for the law to catch up and took matters into their own hands. This is a story on their direct action.

A striking piece in New York Magazine linking loneliness and the opioid epidemic: “This nation pioneered modern life. Now epic numbers of Americans are killing themselves with opioids to escape it.”

Another photo essay, this time an intricate story about industrial farming in California, the migrant workers who toil the fields and processing plants, and how it intersects with climate change.

New politics

Introducing vTaiwan: Citizens are pioneering new public participation methods through online civic involvement. They’ve become so successful that the government has been forced to listen.

What happened in Catalonia? This article explores how the roots of the independence movement was in based in the fight for neighborhood, not nationhood—and this is what most outside observers don’t seem to get.

Socialist organizing was never just about striking in the workplace. This article explores the vibrant dance halls, social clubs, Sunday schools, and film screenings of socialist movements, and why they declined starting in the 1950s. Today, as young people are once again becoming interested in socialism, they can stand to learn a lot from the block-by-block initiatives of the past.

Environmentalists are often caricatured as hippy-dippy young people, removed from common people’s interests. In this beautiful photo essay, we’re guided through the diversity of people resisting fracking in one village in North England.

Indigenous activism is seeing a resurgence, and, finally, growing interest amongst non-Indigenous and settler communities. What can the white left learn from Indigenous movements, and how can it build better alliances? This article explores what decolonization would mean in today’s context.

What’s wrong with the financial system? If you ask a banker or a politician, their ignorance of how money works, and how debt powers the whole system, will become immediately apparent. The organization Positive Money has been putting a lot of work into battling misconceptions and putting forward alternatives. They recently came out with a report on how we can escape the growth dependency that our money system forces us into. Here’s a summary of the report in The Independent.

The local initiatives happening around the world can be a bit overwhelming. How can we think of them all together, understand them as part of one big movement? In this report, titled Libertarian Municipalism, Networked Cities as Resilient Platforms for Post-Capitalist Transition, Kevin Carson highlights the diverse movements in cities globally and the theories that can help us understand them.

Have you heard of Cooperation Jackson? It’s a worker-owned cooperative in Jackson, Mississippi, but so much more. Through their efforts, they’ve successfully kick-started a movement led by black folks that eventually took over city hall. This video explains what’s going on and why it’s so important.

South Africa’s shack dwellers see politics very differently than the average Westerner.

The new housing rights movements in the US have the real estate industry running scared. The Nation reports.

Have you heard of the Preston model? It’s helping to start a new conversation about the role of local government in locally-driven economic revitalization and transforming ownership towards democratic alternatives.

A new series was launched in the Guardian, ‘The alternatives’, in which Aditya Chakrabortty looks at ways to make the economy work for everyone.

Jason Hickel on why, by removing the walls that separate the causes and consequences of climate change, we can encourage constructive action.

“This is real politics. It’s personal. It’s a lived experience that you are a part of and implicated in, whether you had asked to be or not.” The staff strikes at Cambridge inspired Alice Hawkins to reflect on political engagement.

Where we’re at: analysis

Different perspectives on human history, the Anthropocene, and climate change

David Graeber and David Wengrow rethink world history as we know it: contrary to the popular narrative which conflates the origin of social inequality with the agricultural revolution, egalitarian cities and regional confederacies are historically quite commonplace, and inequalities first emerged within families and households (it’s worth mentioning that feminist scholars and other marginal voices have worked on stories of micro-scale inequalities for a long time). In an interview from 2016, Nancy Fraser discusses how the work involved in social reproduction is severely undervalued and taken for granted as ‘gifts’ in capitalist societies. This article highlights the need for thought on the Anthropocene to include African perspectives and scholarship, and a recent World Bank report provides new evidence of the massive ongoing extraction of the continent’s wealth by the rest of the word.

The fact that young people are opting out of having children because of climate change is an urgent call for action, and so is the alarming research on how it is worsening public health problems. During these times of crisis we’re facing, art can help us process what’s going on, intellectually and emotionally.

An analysis of Latin American politics. Against the backdrop of state and gang violence, some of Latin America’s most affected communities have taken radical measures to defend themselves and build new social counter-powers from below. Arturo Escobar discusses post-development and the fight for justice and pluralism in Latin America. “As inequality and environmental degradation worsen, the search is on not only for alternative development models but also for alternatives to development itself.” Elsewhere, Pablo Solón discusses the cosmovisions emerging from Latin America’s Indigenous movements, and Miriam Lang and Edgardo Lander talk about the slow demise of Latin America’s “pink tide”.

Just think about it…

“This exploitation by powerful men of women and girls in the most abject of circumstances has been misleadingly framed broadly in terms of “sex work” and “sex parties” in dominant narratives in the Western press.” Some good points and context on the Oxfam scandal and its aftermath.

A thought-provoking read from 2015 on the complex history and effects of humanitarian appeals.

A history of gun manufacturing and colonization, and the resulting underdevelopment it led to.

Restaurants are the new factories

Protecting the climate means strengthening Indigenous rights

The case against sidewalks

The logic of consumerism has come to infect what we mean by gentrification. “The poor are still gentrification’s victims, but in this new meaning, the harm is not rent increases and displacement — it’s something psychic, a theft of pride.” When ‘Gentrification’ isn’t about housing.

Technology and the new economy

The capitalist work ethic and the fear of leisure

The conversation about how human work is impacted by new forms of industrial technology continues. Here is a podcast from the Guardian which introduces different ideas about alternatives to work as we know it.

As Silicon Valley entrepreneurs turn “the end of work” and basic income into their new hobbyhorses, one article instead suggests a new public sector to guarantee both jobs and leisure time. Another article says “the end of work” is a sham—since new technologies in industrial production are driven by controlling labour and not liberating it. Others focus on a critique of work: on the capitalist work ethic which makes people too busy to think and (conveniently for capital) to be engaged in politics; on working less as a solution to everything and the long history of elites fearing the leisure time of the poor; and on how Ju/’hoansi hunter-gatherers can help industrial societies rethink work.

For a historical perspective on the discussion and on different ways of looking at new technologies, Thomas Pynchon’s 1984 essay on Luddism is a must-read.

This past month, David Wachsmuth and his team at McGill University have come out with a hard-hitting new study on the impact of AirBnB on rents, and the way that it drives disruption in our cities. Here’s the report itself, here’s a feature in New York Magazine, and another at The Atlantic.

What Amazon does to poor cities: The debate over Amazon’s new headquarters obscures the company’s rapid expansion of warehouses in low-income areas.

The rise of digital poorhouses

Is energy efficiency a good thing? Not especially. This feature in The Tyee takes us through some of the thinkers and researchers like Jacques Ellul, Stanley Jevons, and Elizabeth Shove on the problems with efficiency in an economy that just keeps growing.

Blockchain won’t save the world

Amazon and the socialist future

The movement for the right to repair. And a wonderful video on how some farmers are hacking their tractors.

Driverless cars could see humankind sprawl ever further into the countryside

On science and its problems

What are “Western values”, really? Peter Harrison argues that the potential of a Western tradition lies “in the preservation of a rich and varied past that can continue to serve as on ongoing challenge to the priorities and “values” of the present.”

Part of the Zapatistas’ project of resisting indigenous genocide, capitalism, and political repression is their struggle to decolonize knowledge. This is an article on the discussions between Zapatistas and leading left-wing scientists during the second iteration of the ConCiencias conference in December 2017.

Indigenous knowledge is finally being recognized as a valuable source of information by Western archaeologists, ecologists, biologists, climatologists and others.

Even so, the relationship between traditional ecological knowledge and Western science remains problematic.

Massimo Pigliucci tackles scientism: “when scientistic thinkers pretend that any human activity that has to do with reasoning about facts is “science” they are attempting a bold move of naked cultural colonization, defining everything else either out of existence or into irrelevance.”

“Current environmental policy textbooks are all stuck in a liberal narrative of environmental progress through political consent.” Melanie DuPuis elaborates on the concepts that are missing from this narrative.

Race science—that we can prove the superiority of one race over another through science—is rearing its ugly head again, with Jordan Peterson and Steven Pinker playing some unwelcome roles. But as Gavin Evans shows in this Guardian article, it’s still as bogus as ever.

Sci-fi and the near future

China Mieville on the limits of utopia

“The utopia of togetherness is a lie. Environmental justice means acknowledging that there is no whole earth, no ‘we’, without a ‘them’. That we are not all in this together… There is hope. But for it to be real, and barbed, and tempered into a weapon, we cannot just default to it. We have to test it, subject it to the strain of appropriate near-despair. We need utopia, but to try to think utopia, in this world, without rage, without fury, is an indulgence we can’t afford.”

Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation has been turned into eco-thriller movie, and people are pretty stoked. For Laura Perry, it “offers a roadmap to understanding and living with aliens and other unsettling forms of life”. And there’s a feature in Macleans on Jeff VanderMeer and his “new weird”.

The future is now? Five science fiction writers speculate on what science fiction can do when the present seems more and more like a science fiction story. On the genre as social critique, an ethics of science, and a place to consider questions of meaning and value.

An interview with climate fiction and utopian science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson on the roles of science, fiction, and science fiction today, the limits of tech-only solutions to environmental problems, and sci-fi as the realism of our time.

And, speaking of reality merging with science fiction: Silicon Valley’s vision of a future of oligarchical “smart cities” could be a dystopian story by Aldous Huxley.

A farewell-note to Ursula LeGuin, the interplanetary anthropologist

Five black sci-fi writers you may not (but should) know

Books

In The progress of this storm, Andreas Malm both criticizes the increasingly popular environmentalist idea of the “death of nature” and imagines political change through an ecologically class-conscious popular movement. This interview covers the latter point and this review covers both.

A review of Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism by Melinda Cooper at Jacobin.

“Most resistance does not speak its name”: James C. Scott, author of Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, talks about his work.

“How will we have enough resources to support those people sustainably and equitably? Should we develop new technologies to respond to those challenges? Or should we focus instead on trying to limit growth and develop more of a harmony with the nature around us?” Charles C. Mann’s The Wizard and the Prophet is a testimonial to the art of the possible.

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Not afraid of the ruins

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Utopian dreamers, other-worldly explorers and psychonautic adventurers, scholars, activists, students, and critics: we are officially inviting submissions for a new collaborative writing project that combines critical perspectives and creative possibilities. Drawing inspiration from Uneven Earth, an online magazine for political ecology established in 2015, we are excited to announce the launch of a new section, called Not afraid of the ruins, dedicated to science-fiction and utopian imaginings. The goal of this new section will be to regularly showcase new, original, creative and critical reflections to foster intimate and productive conversations across the intellectual and creative arts.

The fertile ground between science fiction and social/environmental justice has long been an arena for speculation and exploration by academics, activists, and creative writers. From the academy to the field and beyond, the works of science fiction writers such as Octavia E. Butler, Ursula Le Guin and Margaret Atwood (among many, many others) have presented unique corollaries to the diverse worlds and experiences we encounter in political ecology and social/environmental justice research and activism. Our goal with this project is to create a space explicitly open to exploring such convergences, a space that is neither formally academic nor wholly creative fiction, but instead, in the true spirit of Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, seeks to tap the potential that exists in the liminal space between these otherwise isolated worlds of thought. We hope that such an endeavor will produce seeds for imagining that will go forward and populate unexpected places both far and near.

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Submission Criteria

There are no strict guidelines for submission in regards to content, format or length although we will maintain editorial oversight of submissions. While shorter pieces up to 2,500 words may be most suitable, we are happy to consider longer pieces, especially as they explore the creative possibilities of such a genre-melding forum. We are particularly interested in pieces that engage with the themes of:

  • Climate, social and environmental justice
  • Feminist and queer theory
  • Critical race studies
  • De-colonialism
  • Anti-capitalist politics (socialist, anarchist, etc.)
  • Post-capitalist ecologies

 

Examples of pieces that we would ideally consider include, but are not limited to:

  • Utopian dreams and/or dystopian nightmares: explorations of queer, feminist, decolonial, afro-futurist, anarchist, luxury communist, degrowth, and post-capitalist ecologies.
  • Conversations between science fiction and political ecology, social, environmental and climatic justice.
  • Critical analysis of academic and science fiction literature, either old or new.
  • Thought pieces blending science fiction and contemporary social, economic, and political struggles.
  • Fictional renderings of field experiences and/or relevant research topics.

 

While the short term aim of this project is to develop a space for cross-cutting collaboration and conversation, we are also hoping to create the possibility for publication opportunities beyond the blog. We regret that we cannot currently offer financial remuneration for submissions to this section, however, Uneven Earth does offer a writing grant for non-fiction pieces.

In order to submit a piece, please send us an email to ruins[at]unevenearth.org which includes:

  • A short paragraph about your idea/topics
  • A short paragraph about yourself and your motivation to publish with the blog

Deadline: Friday, September 22 (Autumn Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere)

Deadline: Friday, September 29

In an age of unprecedented climatic, social and political change, we believe that such a project is as important and urgent as ever. We feel compelled, as academics and activists and human beings, to not only critically reflect upon our shared human and ecological condition, but to dare to dream otherwise, to imagine things not only as they are, but to reimagine them as they could be. It is our hope that this blog will provide both space and motivation for doing just that.

 

Please feel free to contact us with any questions, thoughts, or ideas.

 

Much love and happy world building!

Claire, Aaron, Hannah, Dylan, Elliot, and Mario

Download the poster here.

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Planting the seeds of degrowth in times of crisis

Photo: Marula Tsagkari
Photo: Marula Tsagkari

by Marula Tsagkari

We must look for man wherever we can find him. When on his way to Thebes Oedipus encountered the Sphinx, his answer to its riddle was: ‘Man’. That simple word destroyed the monster. We have many monsters to destroy. Let us think of the answer of Oedipus.

These words are from the Greek Poet Giorgos Seferis’ speech at the Nobel Banquet. Today they are more relevant than ever, as humanity fights against a ‘contemporary Sphinx’: the utopian ideal of an infinite growth defined by economic indicators and theories. This promethean way of living has sustained the idea that increased wealth was the ‘one pill to cure them all.’

However, in the past years, it has become more and more obvious that resources are finite and that the planet cannot sustain continued growth. And just like that, the utopian ideal started falling apart. The latest economic crisis showed the cruelest face of the unsustainable capitalistic system. It has become clear now, more than ever, that we live in an absurd world, that despite increased wealth, unemployment and poverty are increasing, conflicts are continuing, and inequality keeps rising. In this context, the idea of degrowth points to an alternative route, and establishes a vocabulary to describe a new world based on solidarity and cooperation.

While the idea of degrowth is rather old (seeds can be found in the 1970s), the movement has only started to gain ground in recent years, especially in the echoes of the recent economic crisis. The Conferences in Leipzig in 2014 and in Budapest in 2016 brought together thousands of scientists and citizens with different backgrounds and ideologies including sufficiency-orientated critics of civilization, reformists, pacifist idealists, and libertarian leftists. However, they all seem to share the common belief that the current economic model is unsustainable, as well as a vision of a different way of living.

Perhaps because the movement found its voice through people’s dissatisfaction following economic crisis, many confuse degrowth with the idea of ‘unsustainable degrowth’, which is often synonymous with economic recession and social instability. On the contrary, the core of ‘sustainable degrowth’ is the concept of ‘progress’, but a progress not related to an increase of the GDP, large-scale production, or over-consumption. As Tim Jackson puts it, ‘Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth’. And exactly this is the myth that the degrowth movement seeks to demystify.

At the same time that the degrowth movement was gaining ground in the public discourse, my country, Greece, was living the most severe economic recession since the Second World War.

At the same time that the degrowth movement was gaining ground in the public discourse, my country, Greece, was living the most severe economic recession since the Second World War. Greece entered the Eurozone in 2001 and since then joined the privileges of being a member of the EU monetary union, which led to a rapid increase in GDP between 2002 and 2008. However, Greece was unable to recover from the global economic crisis and, in 2009, Greek debt peaked at €310.4 billion.

Since then, the country has been trapped in a vicious cycle of bailout programs and austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), under the watchful eye of the German government. These measures came with many costs. The austerity plans included strict public cuts (in health and education), measures in the private sector (massive dismissals), increased taxes, and reduced pensions. These decisions increased political instability and had a severe social cost. Unemployment was last reported to be at 23%, and 45.7% among young people (January 2017); while there are more than 20,000 homeless people (February 2016). Thus, the initial economic crisis has been transformed into a multifaceted social, political, and environmental crisis—what Geels calls a ‘triple crisis’, each of which is connected to the other.

In Greece, these interactions are now becoming clear. There was an increase in the number of smog events due to the increased price of oil, while it a rapid increase in illegal hunting and logging related to sharp budget cuts in conservation was also observed.

In the Chinese language the word crisis is represented by two symbols. The first means danger and, the second, opportunity.

In the Chinese language the word crisis is represented by two symbols. The first means danger and, the second, opportunity. It is true that economic crises are complex phenomena, and a form of exogenous shock in the society. On the other hand, they are also an opportunity to challenge the current way of thinking and they can open a door to a profound change.

As some supporters of degrowth have claimed, this new era will be born from the ashes of the present unsustainable system, or more specifically, active social movements can gradually pave the way for a bigger change. The work of Giorgos Kallis, Francois Schneider, and Joan Martinez-Alier offers a useful starting point. They claim that a crisis can be seen as an opportunity for alternative discourses and the seeds can be found in community-based initiatives that can form the pieces that, in the future, will fit into a bigger puzzle.

This idea triggered my interest, and I decided to focus my research on the question of a sustainable degrowth transition in Greece, and to what extent it could result from this increased civic engagement. And taking this as a starting point, the idea I want to put forward is that in Greece, despite the crisis (οr because of the crisis) one can find the seeds that can support the idea of degrowth.

The early seeds of a degrowth economy in Greece

Civic engagement was rather underdeveloped in Greece before the economic crisis. For instance, in 2005, the Civicus Survey pointed out that Greek civil society is anemic, as it was dominated by political parties and the family. However, in the wake of the economic crisis, civic activism appeared as a spontaneous response to increased social inequality and poverty. Aside from the increased number of NGOs, new, informal groups based on solidarity erupted and formed grassroots movements and networks. In times of crisis an ‘alternative, parallel’ economy was born.

But it would be a mistake to assume that this new economy came out of nowhere. Greece is a country with a strong sense of community and a culture of self-organization. The pharmacist, the butcher, and the fisherman of the neighborhood are integral figures of Greek culture. Everybody knows them and their stores are often a gathering point. Unfortunately, these small businesses are also the most harmed by the economic crisis and the austerity measures. Between 2008 and 2015, more than 20.000 small local businesses closed in Greece, according to the European Commission. As a response to the absence of local gathering points, and the loss of jobs, a number of social movements and cooperations emerged during the times of crisis.

The pharmacist, the butcher, and the fisherman of the neighborhood are integral figures of Greek culture. Everybody knows them and their stores are often a gathering point.

What’s more, the idea of cooperation has always been an important element of Greek tradition. In fact, Greek cooperative traditions may be the oldest in Europe. The idea of self-organization can be found in ancient Greek times in the form of trade unions. Cooperatives were also present, in a more advanced form, in the Byzantine Empire. These consisted of unions of land or livestock owners into common production and management systems. In this period they were recognized by the legislation of Leo VI the Wise and achieved increased autonomy—becoming a vital part of the economy.

Cooperatives were also present during the Ottoman rule (1453- 1821) and had an important role during the national liberation war of 1821. During this period new cooperatives popped up in small villages, where small groups of producers known as ‘syntrofies’ (companies or friendships) decided to cooperate to avoid competition. In some cases they were even able to export their products to other European countries.17 After Greece became an independent country the cooperations remained active, working for the establishment of a democratic regime.

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Photo: Marula Tsagkari

 

The revitalization of Greece’s cooperative movement

Coming back to the present, the Greek cooperative movement is still a vibrant part of the economy. The numbers speak for themselves, as there are currently more than 3000 agriculture cooperatives, 14 co-operative banks and 48 womens’ co-operatives. In addition, one can find 23 electrician, 33 plumber and 41 pharmacist co-operatives all around the country.

Lately, the idea of cooperatives has once again increased in popularity. People prefer products they can trust and remind them of their ‘grandmother in the village’. They also want to support local communities. Ιn this context, cooperatives offer products whose raw materials come directly from the land of the members of the cooperative or the village, they are often based on traditional recipes from the women in the villages, and in most cases they pack and promote their products by themselves.

On the island of Lesvos, more and more women who lost their job during the crisis joined the women’s cooperative. This increase in the number of memberships gave them the opportunity to augment their production and expand their network. They take advantage of the oranges produced in the area, which remained unused the previous years, to make desserts and jams. They also use ‘neratzath’, a type of rose water made from the leaves of the orange tree, to make cosmetics and perfumes. Nowadays, their products (sweets, jams, pasta, and cheese) can be found all around the country.

Even in big cities a number of cooperatives have sprung up. In Athens one can find the cooperative coffee shops Mantalaki, Pagkaki, Syggrouomeno; the Syn Allois shop, an importer of fair-trade products; the publisher Ekdoseis ton Sinaderfon; the computer repair shop Stin Priza; and the grocery store Lacandona, among others. Many of these stores operate under the umbrella of a bigger network, Kolektivas.

The ‘do you want milk’ cooperative started in 2011, and, despite the crisis, now counts more than 60 sell points, 50 farms, and, on a daily basis, they produce 10% of the domestic production.

One initiative is the ‘do you want milk’ (thes gala) cooperative. The cooperative is made up of milk producers from central Greece and supplies with fresh milk a number of ‘milk ATMs’ in Larissa, Athens, and Greece. Consumers can fill their bottles with fresh milk, produced less than 24 hours ago, with a cheaper price than can be found in the supermarket. The cooperative started in 2011, and, despite the crisis, now counts more than 60 sell points, 50 farms, and, on a daily basis, they produce 10% of the domestic production.

 

New consumption habits

Overall, consumption in Greece had been significantly reduced as a result of diminished wages and pensions. As documented by the Hellenic Statistical Authority in 2014, average household consumption expenditure went down by almost 32% since 2009.

As a response to this decrease in consumption and available funds, more and more second hand stores have popped up in the big cities

As a response to this decrease in consumption and available funds, more and more second hand stores have popped up in the big cities. One of the most famous is located in the neighborhood of Eksarcheia; a neighborhood known for its anti-establishment and anarchist character. In this store, one can trade old clothes for new ones. ‘Our store is a response to the overconsumption, which is one of the reasons that brought us into the present crisis,’ said one of the women who worked there:

Nowadays, more and more people prefer to buy second hand clothes, especially if they can exchange them with some of the clothes they don’t need anymore. Of course some of our clients are people who can’t afford buying new clothes but the past year we see more and more people who choose not to buy new clothes as a way of living.

In the same spirit one can find similar initiatives of book exchange, furniture exchange, and even exchange of mobile phones.

Another important element of the Greek tradition is the ‘100 km rule’ (before it became famous internationally as the ‘100 mile diet’). According to this principle, people should aim to consume products that are produced within 100km from the residence. Τhis concept was a pillar of the Greek diet between the 50s and 80s, however, due to increased urbanization and working hours, and the large variety of products available on supermarkets, it was replaced by the concepts of ‘easy’ and ‘quick food’. Recently, the idea of the ‘local farmers market’ aims to bring back this idea. Producers from all around the country gather in a different neighborhood every Sunday and sell their products without Intermediaries.

In one of my visits in a local farmers’ market in my neighborhood, I had the chance to speak with M.X., a cheese producer from northern Greece. ‘Because of the crisis people want to make sure they buy local products,’ she told me. ‘More and more people tell me that they avoid buying from big supermarkets, not only because the products are more expensive, but because they know that, in this way, international brands take advantage of the Greek producers and buyers,’ she added. ‘I talk with people and give them all the information they need about my products. I am even willing to negotiate the price when someone can’t afford it!’

Social solidarity groups are also rapidly growing these past years. The work of organizations like ‘Doctors without Borders’, ‘Doctors of the World’, which were active before the crisis, are now supported by new health care organizations like the ‘social infirmaries’ (koinonika iatreia). Acting at a municipal level, these groups consist of doctors and nurses who treat patients for free. Similar initiatives are organized by pharmacists, teachers, and even coffee shops, which offer a free cup of coffee to people who cannot afford it.

Last but not least, a number of more politically-oriented social movements emerged during the times of crisis as a response to the austerity measures and the dysfunctional democracy. The big protests of 2008, the movement in Sundagma square and the ‘I won’t pay movement’ (Kínima den Pliróno) are some examples. Squares and occupied public and private buildings were transformed into sites of political contestation and mobilization.

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Photo: Marula Tsagkari

From ‘a way of living’ to a way to ‘make a living’

The above examples illustrate an increased tendency around niches of social movements that can form an alternative model of growth, based on solidarity, cooperation, and mutual respect. Many of these initiatives form part of the tradition that is rooted in the Greek culture that did not fade completely in modern life. This can offer a comparative advantage towards a potential transition to a degrowth model, as many of the ideas this model embodies are neither new nor strange to the Greek society. Of course these former traditional societies had a number of limitations (e.g. racism, xenophobia) that are not in line with the ideas the degrowth movement puts forward. Thus it is essential to learn from the past and keep the positive elements that can pave the way for a new way of living.

These ideas are becoming popular mainly as an alternative to the economic crisis; however they need to form ‘a way of living’ instead of a way to ‘make a living’.

These ideas are becoming popular mainly as an alternative to the economic crisis; however they need to form ‘a way of living’ instead of a way to ‘make a living’. Nowadays, many of the people who choose to buy from second hand stores or to visit the farmers market are driven by need. On the contrary, this attitude should grow into a fundamental mentality. Most of the people I had the chance to interview pointed out that, in the past years, they observed a change in people’s attitude, mainly because of the ongoing crisis that made many question the success of the present system. But is this enough?

The answer is no. This is only a first step in a long path. These initiatives will not have a significant impact if they are not supported by adequate education and publicity. Such instruments can strengthen these alternatives by raising awareness—triggering the interest of more people and encouraging the formation of new projects.

State intervention is another factor that can shape social movements. In the case of Greece, the government seems to ignore the importance of these movements, and often threatens their existence through increased taxation and stricter legislation. In the present political situation, it is nearly impossible to picture a major movement that does not involve the state. At first glance, this seems to be a contradiction as it’s a common belief that the state is a unitary actor, and that social movements are a separate unity and often in opposition to the state. In this context one should realize that these initiatives, through their increased influence, can have the power to form a different political regime that, in turn, will also transform them. To use the words of Saturnino Borras, ‘societal actors attempt to influence and transform state actors, but in the process are themselves transformed—and vice versa.’ Thus, realizing the potential of these initiatives, especially at a municipal level, could be a crucial first step.

One should realize that these initiatives, through their increased influence, can have the power to form a different political regime that, in turn, will also transform them.

Today, we are participants in a complex and severe crisis, and a radical crisis requires radical solutions. Through a number of examples it became obvious that in Greece there is groundwork for a transition to sustainable degrowth. There are seeds in the numerous social movements, voluntary actions, and solidarity networks. What remains to be seen is if the seeds will flower. We should not forget that, as Rebecca Solnit says, ‘Change is rarely straightforward… Sometimes it’s as complex as chaos theory and as slow as evolution. Even things that seem to happen suddenly arise from deep roots in the past or from long-dormant seeds.’

Many thanks to all the interviewees and to Brayton Noll for his useful comments.

Marula Tsagkari is a researcher, and environmental professional from Athens, Greece. She holds a BSc in Biology and she is currently enrolled in the Erasmus Mundus Master of Environmental, Science, Policy and Management. She lives in Athens, Greece and her research focuses on the areas of Environmental Politics, Policy and Justice especially in the European South.

 

Accelerationism… and degrowth?

Source: Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927).
Source: Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)

by Aaron Vansintjan

For the past little while I’ve been involved with a group in Barcelona, which studies and advocates ‘degrowth’: the idea that we must downscale production and consumption to have a more equitable society, and that we therefore must dismantle the ideology of ‘economic growth at all costs’. As you can imagine, they spend much of their time trying to clear up misconceptions: “No, we’re not against trees growing. Yes, we also would like children to grow. Yes, we also like nice things like healthcare.”

But this last year I was living in London. There, activist ideology seemed to be permeated by the ‘accelerationists’—who argue that capitalism and its technologies should be pushed beyond their own limits, to create a new post-capitalist future. Accelerationism is almost like, having tried hard to evade a black hole, a ship’s crew decides that the best course of action would be to turn around and let themselves be sucked in: “Hey, there could be something cool on the other side!”

After a year of experiences in some of London’s activist circles, I now understand better where this is coming from. Decades of government cutbacks, squashing of unions, total financialization of the city, and lack of access to resources for community organizing has meant that London activists are systematically in crisis mode—exhausted, isolated, and always on the defensive.

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Source: Institute for Social Ecology

These worlds of thought are best encapsulated in two recent books. In Degrowth: A vocabulary for a new era, edited by Giacomo d’Alisa, Federico Demaria, and Giorgos Kallis, its authors explain concepts such as care, environmental justice, basic income, commons—all of which are seen as part of degrowth’s “interpretive frame”. For them, degrowth is an umbrella term that houses a variety of movements, ideologies, and ideas for a more sustainable, and less capitalist, world.

In Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work—an extension of their viral #Accelerate Manifesto—authors Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek discuss the promise of basic income, increase in automation technologies and utopian thinking for creating a kind of “fully automated luxury communism”.

Surprisingly, both books have a lot in common. You have the utopian imaginaries, a renewed focus on alternative economics, the willingness to think beyond both neoliberalism and Keynesianism, and the ability to grapple with contemporary technology’s effects on society and the environment.

But they are also quite different. These differences were made real to me on a dreary Saturday afternoon last winter at an event in London called “Future Society Forum”. After a short introduction by Nick Snricek, activists from around London were invited to brainstorm what a leftist utopia could look like.

The room was divided into different ‘themes’: work, health, environment and resources, education, etc. We were first asked to place post-its with ideas for “futures” particular to each theme. (Comically, someone had put ‘basic income’ on every single theme before the event had even started—an attempt at subliminal messaging?) Then, we were asked to split into groups to discuss each theme.

Given my background, I decided I could contribute most to the ‘environment’ theme—though I was certainly interested in joining the others. After a 15-minute discussion, the time came for each group to feed back to the larger collective. Unsurprisingly, the environment group envisioned a decentralized society where resources were managed by bio-region—a participatory, low-tech, low-consumption economy, where everyone has to do some farming and some cleaning up, and where the city is perfectly integrated with the country. I’m pretty sure I heard sniggers as our utopia was read out loud.

The ‘work’ group, on the other hand, envisioned a future with machines that would do everything for us—requiring big factories, where all labor (if there was any) was rewarded equally, where no one had to do anything they didn’t like, in which high-tech computer systems controlled the economy. Basically the “fully-automated luxury communist” dream.

Talk about selection bias.

Part of me had expected more than a snigger, though. But the direct challenge never came. The accelerationists begrudged the enviros their grub-eating utopia while they ruminated on their own techno-fetishes. Was it just an armistice to prepare for a bigger battle down the road, or was there really less animosity than I imagined?

Part of me had expected more than a snigger, though. But the direct challenge never came. The accelerationists begrudged the enviros their grub-eating utopia while they ruminated on their own techno-fetishes.

Of course such differences are not totally new on the left—similar opposing strands played their part in social movements of the past: should we smash the machines or take them into our own hands? Should we grab the reigns of the state or disown it outright? Friedrich Engels may have totally dismissed peasants as possible revolutionaries, but the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakhunin insisted that peasants could, and would, be crucial in creating a world beyond capitalism—and that the left could learn from peasant communes for an idea of what another world would look like.

These same tensions are competing in the accelerationist and degrowth ideologies. Accelerationists like Srnicek and Williams emphasize automation, the role of unions, and reduction in the working week as the primary variables in shifting the gears beyond capitalism. Their focus is on the big stuff (labor, global trade) and they argue a focus on small interventions by the left is part of the problem, not a solution to it. Degrowth scholars look toward small “nowtopias” and make alliances with those struggling against extractivism—often peasants, forest-dwellers, and indigenous peoples.

When I was done reading Srnicek and Williams’ book, I realized that degrowth and accelerationism (although I’ve since learned that Williams and Srnicek now distance themselves from the term, so as not to be confused with more right-wing strains of the movement) actually have more in common than I initially thought—both in practical terms (policies and strategy), and in their general ideological positions. And they have a lot to learn from each other.

What follows is a bit of a report: a conversation between the two proposals. There will be some critique, but also some cross-pollination. My discussion revolves around a couple of themes: the importance of utopian thinking, technology, economy, and political strategy.

If there is commonality there is also difference. How is it possible that, considering so many agreements, they have such an oppositional framing of the problem at hand? By way of a conclusion, I suggest that the notion of ‘speed’—and their divergent views of it—is fundamental to each position.

 

Source: Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
Source: Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)

Utopian Thinking

As David Graeber put it in yet another tasty essay, social movements today are experiencing a kind of “despair fatigue”: no longer content with merely commiserating about cuts to social services, there has been a rebirth in futuristic, positive thinking.

Indeed, it seems that a key uniting principle between accelerationism and degrowth is their promotion of utopian ideas. This might come as a surprise with those unfamiliar with the degrowth literature—recently, a whole book was dedicated to attacking the degrowth hypothesis as anti-modern and a form of “austerity ecology”.

However, the fact is that degrowth thinkers have put a lot of thought into how to go beyond primitivist flight from the modern and envision a future that is low-carbon, democratic, and just. Despite the negative connotations that may come with a word like ‘degrowth’, there have been many positive, forward-looking proposals within the movement. Key concepts here include “desire”—that is, the emphasis that a just transition should not be forced but should come from people’s own political will; “commoning”—in which wealth is managed collectively rather than privatized; the support of innovative policies such as basic and maximum income as well as ecological tax reform; the resuscitation of Paul Lafargue’s demand for ‘the right to be lazy’ (also picked up by the accelerationists); the embracement of ‘imaginaries’ inspired by ‘nowtopias’—actually existing livelihood experiments that point to different possible futures.

The same is true for the accelerationists. Indeed, the launching point of Srnicek and Williams’ book is that much of leftist activism in the past decades has forsaken the imaginative, creative utopias which characterized left struggles of the past. Progressive activism, to them, has largely been limited to what they call “folk politics”—an activist ideology that is small in its ambit, focuses on immediate, temporary actions rather than long-term organizing, focuses on trying to create prefigurative perfect ‘micro-worlds’ rather than achieving wide-ranging system change. This, they argue, is symptomatic of the wider political moment, in which a neoliberal consensus has foreclosed any ability to think up alternative policies and worlds. And so they propose a vision of the future that is both modern and conscious of current economic trends. Like the degrowth movement, they propose that the dominant pro-work ideology must be dismantled, but unlike degrowth, they take this in another direction: proposing a world where people don’t have to submit to drudgery but can instead pursue their own interests by letting machines do all the work —in other words “fully automated luxury communism.”

What unites the two is a counter-hegemonic strategy that sets up alternative imaginaries and ethics, that challenges the neoliberal moment by insisting that other worlds are possible and, indeed, desirable. For degrowth scholars like Demaria et al., degrowth is not a stand-alone concept but an interpretive “frame” which brings together a constellation of terms and movements. For accelerationists, part of the strategy is to promote a new set of “universal” demands that allow new political challenges to take place. In addition, they call for an “ecology of organizations”—think tanks, NGOs, collectives, lobby groups, unions, that can weave together a new hegemony. For both, there is a need to undermine existing ideologies by, on the one hand, providing strong refutations to them, and, on the other, through setting up new ones (e.g. post-work, conviviality). The result is two strong proposals for alternative futures that are not afraid of dreaming big.

metro_4
Source: Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)

Economic Pluralism, Political Monism?

Forty years after neo-conservative godfather Irving Kristol indicted the New Left for “refusing to think economically” in his well-known speech at the Mont Pelerin Society, it is interesting that these two emerging frameworks are once again centering economics in their analysis. Indeed, both frameworks propose startlingly similar economic policies. They share demands such as universal basic income, reduction in work hours, and the democratization of technology. However, they differ in other demands: Williams and Srnicek stress the potential of automation to address inequality and focus on the role of technological advances in either further driving precarity or liberating society. As part of this, they talk at length about the importance of state-led innovation and subsidies for research and development, and how this needs to be reclaimed by the left.

In contrast, Degrowth scholars such as Giorgos Kallis and Samuel Alexander have proposed a more diverse platform of policies, ranging from minimum and maximum income, working hour reduction and time-sharing, banking and finance reform, participatory planning and budgeting, ecological tax reform, financial and legal support for the solidarity economy, reducing advertising, and abolishing the use of GDP as an indicator of progress. These are only a few of the many policies proposed by Degrowth advocates—the point is, however, that Degrowthers tend to support a broad policy platform rather than a set of strategic, system-changing “easy wins”.

At multiple points in their book, Srnicek and Williams urge the left to engage with economic theory once again. They argue that, while mainstream economics does need to be challenged, tools such as modeling, econometrics, and statistics will be crucial in developing a revived, positive vision of the future.

Indeed, near the end of the book, they make a bid for “pluralist” economics. In the wake of the 2008 crisis, the left responded with a “makeshift Keynesianism”—because the focus had largely been on a critique of capitalism there was a severe lack of alternative economic theories available to draw from. They urge thinking through contemporary issues that are not easily addressed by Keynesian or Marxist economic theory: secular stagnation, “the shift to an informational, post-scarcity economy”, alternative approaches to quantitative easing, and the possibilities of full automation and a universal basic income, amongst others. They argue that there is a need for the left to “think through an alternative economic system” which draws from innovative trends spanning “modern monetary theory to complexity economics, from ecological to participatory economics.”

However, I was a disappointed by what they considered “plural” forms of economics. There was little discussion of the content of alternative economics such as institutional economics, post-Keynesian economics, commons theory, environmental economics, ecological economics, and post-development theory. It is these fields that have offered some of the strongest challenges to neoclassical economics, and present some strong challenges to their own political ideology as well. They would do well to engage with them more.

This gap is not minor. Rather, it reflects deeper issues within the whole accelerationist framework. For a book that mentions climate change as one of the foremost problems we face—also mentioned in the first sentence of their #Accelerate Manifesto—there is surprisingly little engagement with environmental issues. And yet it is these unmentioned heterodox economic fields that have provided some of the most useful responses to the current environmental crisis—even going so far as providing robust models and econometric analyses to test their own claims.

The same gap is not found in the Degrowth literature. Indeed, the movement has been inspired to a great extent by rebel economists such as Eleanor Ostrom, Nicholas Georgescu-Røegen, K. William Kapp, Karl Polanyi, Cornelius Castoriadis, Herman Daly, and J.K. Gibson-Graham. Degrowth sessions are now the norm at many heterodox economics conferences—just as degrowth conferences are largely dominated by discussions of the economy.

Taking the lessons from institutional economics in stride, degrowth thinkers have stressed that there are no panaceas: no single policy will do the trick, a diverse and complimentary policy platform is necessary to offset feedback loops that may arise from the interplay between several policies.

From this perspective, the strategic policies proposed by accelerationists—basic income, automation, reduction in working hours—start to look rather simplistic. Focusing on three core policies makes for elegant reading and simple placards, but also comes at a price: when these policies are implemented and result in unforeseen negative effects, there will be little political will to keep experimenting with them. I would rather place my bets on a solid, multi-policy platform, resilient enough to deal with negative feedback loops and not too dogmatic about which one should be implemented first.

From this perspective, the strategic policies proposed by accelerationists—basic income, automation, reduction in working hours—start to look rather simplistic.

A strong point of the accelerationists is their emphasis that economic policies are political—and thus must be won through political organizing. In doing so, they make the crucial step beyond economism—the term Antonio Gramsci used to refer to leftists who put counter-hegemonic activism on hold until “economic conditions” favor it. The same cannot always be said of the environmentalist left: scarcity, environmental limits—these are often imposed as apolitical spectres that override all other concerns.

And yet, for all their calls for a united, utopian vision, I remain apprehensive about the kind of utopia they proposed—and therefore the kind of politics they see as necessary. While ‘folk politics’ is in part a promising definition of activism that fails to scale up, it also easily becomes a way to dismiss anything that doesn’t fit their idea of what politics really is.

Take, for example, their take-down of the Argentinean popular response to the financial crisis. Under their gaze, the “large-scale national turn towards horizontalism” involving neighborhood assemblies after the 1998 recession  “remained a localized response to the crisis” and “never approached the point of replacing the state”. Worker-run factories failed to scale up and “remained necessarily embedded within capitalist social relations”. In conclusion, they claim that Argentina’s ‘moment’ was “simply a salve for the problems of capitalism, not an alternative to it.” They maintain that it was simply an emergency response, not a competitor.

But this is a very problematic view of what constitutes ‘the political.’ Drawing on decades of reporting on Latin America’s popular struggles and involvement in them, Raùl Zibechi argues that, following neoliberal abandonment by the state, peasants, Indigenous peoples, and slum-dwellers are creating new worlds and resources that operate differently from the logic of the state and capital. These new societies make no demands from political parties and they do not develop agendas for electoral reform. Instead, they organize “con/contra” (with/against) existing institutions by ‘reterritorializing’ their livelihoods, building diverse and horizontal economies, and rising up in revolt at critical junctures.

Under Zibechi’s gaze, the very same Argentinean popular reaction is described as a moment when “the unfeasible becomes visible”. What was simmering under the surface is revealed “like lightning illuminating the night the sky”.  Rather than being “emergency responses”, the Argentinean response was practiced and strategic—not quite as spontaneous and disorganized as Srnicek and Williams depict.

Likewise with gender politics; even as Williams and Srnicek acknowledge feminist economic theories around care and reproductive labor, what qualifies as ‘real’ politics falls into very hegemonic realms: lobbying, the formation of think-tanks, policy platforms, unions, and economic modeling. But what about other types of resistance, such as the ones Zibechi highlights: childcare collectives, squatted and autonomously organized settlements, community-organized schools and clinics, collective kitchens, and street blockades? How do such practices, now being referred to as ‘commoning,’ fit in their ‘ecology of organizations?’

I worry that accelerationists, like Friedrich Engels’ dismissal of peasants as revolutionary agents, implicitly reject the possibility that Indigenous and anti-extractivist struggles are important potential allies. If political success is measured solely by statist goals, then non-statist victories will remain invisible.

In contrast, degrowth thinkers have collaborated with post-development scholars like Ashish Kothari and Alberto Acosta, and have helped to create a worldwide environmental justice network—forming alliances with the very groups that would be the most affected by an increase in automation and the least likely to benefit from accelerationist policies like basic income.

What Srnicek and Williams call ‘folk politics’ ends up justifying their specific vision of the political—one that is quite strikingly a vision from the North

Unfortunately, what Srnicek and Williams call ‘folk politics’ ends up justifying their specific vision of the political—one that is quite strikingly a vision from the North, unable to break away from hegemonic ideas of the ‘right’ political actors. By this logic, the Argentinean movement ‘failed’ because it could not replicate or replace the state. To this end, they might find it useful to engage with subaltern theorists, decolonialization studies, post-development scholars—all of whom have in different ways challenged Western conceptions of what resistance, alternatives, and progress looks like. Further, they might engage with commons theorists who demonstrate how commoning practices open up very real alternatives to neoliberalism. Beyond theoretical alliances, this might help them not to dismiss “failed” movements simply because they do not seek to copy the state.

 

Source: Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
Source: Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)

Technology, Efficiency, and Metabolism

For many on the left, technology is secondary to redistributive policies (welfare, health care, employment equity) and innovation is the realm of private companies, not the government.

In contrast, accelerationists recognize that technology is a key driver of social and economic change. For Srnicek and Williams, an important strategic goal within the left would be to politicize technology, to transform capitalist machines for socialist goals. We must take the reigns of technology, democratize it, if we are to deal with the multiple issues facing humanity today. This ‘modern’ gesture, which avoids primitivism and the wish to return to a ‘simpler’ past, is certainly appreciated.

Srnicek and Williams spend much of the book discussing how automation is transforming social and economic relations worldwide. Not only is the roboticization of the workplace rendering so many workers in the Global North useless, automation is starting to have its effects in rapidly developing countries like China. They go so far as to link the informalization of huge swathes of humanity—slum-dwellers, rural-urban migrants—as an indication that capitalism no longer even needs its “reserve army of labor”. The onset of automation means that we may once again enter a world of mass unemployment, where labor becomes cheap and all the power will be in the hands of the employer.

Their response to this is quite brave: rather than fleeing this modern ‘reality’, they suggest pushing for ever more automation—eventually ending the need for rote labor and bringing about “fully automated luxury communism”—their vision of a desirable future. As part of this, they argue that public investment in innovation will be key in achieving this goal.

As they try to show, automation is already helping to deindustrialize many countries (developed and developing), meaning that regardless of whether full automation happens or not, there is a critical need for social movements to fight for political advances to guarantee social safety nets. As a response to this, they argue that unions should actually be fighting for less working hours, not more, and that basic income will help address the mass unemployment that automation seems to be causing.

I agree that such political responses will be necessary in the years to come, and that automation certainly presents a predicament, but, for several reasons that I’ll list below, I’m not sure if it’s really the central predicament—as they seem to assert. First of all, is automation really occurring at such a rapid and destructive pace? It’s true that the rate of growth of employment worldwide is decreasing, but this could be explained by a number of factors, many of which are more and more being highlighted by mainstream economists: the onset of a ‘secular stagnation’ in Euro-America, the decline in conventional oil extraction, and the exhaustion of ‘easy’ growth that was already being felt in the 1970s. Indeed, once I dug into their citations, I didn’t find much research showing how automation’s role in current economic transformations compared to these other factors. However, not being a labor economist, I’m not well-versed enough in the numbers to discuss further. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Second, and more problematically, I follow George Caffentzis in his skepticism of the claim that soon Capital will not need workers in the future, and will therefore bring about its own demise:

Capital cannot will itself into oblivion, but neither can it be tricked or cursed out of existence… The “end of work” literature… creates a failed politics because it ultimately tries to convince both friend and foe that, behind everyone’s back, capitalism has ended.

This was a critique of Jeremy Rifkin and Antonio Negri in the 90s, but it might as well apply to the works of Paul Mason, Snricek, and Williams today. There’s something magical about letting automation do the anti-capitalist work for you. Unfortunately, there is no trick that will end capitalism. Even if they claim at multiple points that automation is not a technical but a political goal, they’re in many ways letting automation drive the cart of politics. I’ve already mentioned the dangers of economism. Today, something new seems to be emerging, which seems to very prevalent amongst “ecomodernist” progressives: technologism. The belief that a low-carbon future is only possible through ramping up innovation and technological advances, rather than a full-scale transformation of our social and political relations. Snricek and Williams try to skirt technologism, but their over-fascination with automation brings them dangerously close.

There’s something magical about letting automation do the anti-capitalist work for you. Unfortunately, there is no trick that will end capitalism.

Third, even if automation were on the rise, I’m skeptical as to how it could possibly limit capitalism’s outward expansion. As Peter Linebaugh has argued, the Luddites opposed automation not just because it was costing them their jobs, but because they knew the automation of textile manufacturing meant the enslavement, and drawing in to the capitalist system, of millions of slaves and indigenous people in the colonies.

Automation, from this viewpoint, is a local “problem” borne from a myopically Northern perspective: it will not do away with ever-expanding forest-clearing, enclosures, destruction of subsistence livelihoods, and the creation of itinerant classes forced into the extractivist economy. Regardless of whether automation is capitalist or communist, without being regulated, it stands to increase environmental conflicts globally. But rising rates of resource extraction are not mentioned as a problem in the book, nor do they propose a strategic alliance with those affected by the extractive industry.

This leads to what is perhaps the most frustrating gap in the whole book: their very weak environmental proposals.

Surprisingly, there are only two instances where they present ways to address the ‘environment problem’: when discussing why automation could actually be a good thing, they also mention that greater efficiency would decrease energy use. Elsewhere, they suggest that shifting to a four-day workweek would also limit energy use from commuting.

But efficiency doesn’t work that way. If you would take away one lesson from ecological economics, it is this golden rule, to be repeated to every techno-optimist you come across: without limiting in some way the use of resources and energy (e.g. by taxing it), any advance in efficiency will likely lead to progressively more resource use, not less. This is called the rebound effect, or Jevons’ Paradox.

It follows that there is no guarantee that truncating the workweek will be more environmentally friendly. Efficiency and more free time can just as easily lead to more ecological damage, not less. In any political regime where there are insufficient limits or regulations on total energy and material use in society (capitalist or communist), and the profits of investment are invested in more production, advances in efficiency will cause energy and material throughput to increase exponentially.

When discussing this issue with people in the degrowth community, Viviana Asara pointed out that this is not just a problem of environmental justice—who stands to loose by the increase in production—but also one of energetic limits.

The concept of EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested) illustrates that, unlike fossil fuels, renewable energy has a very low return on investment. For the sake of the argument, let’s assume that a fully automated luxury economy has about the same total energy consumption as today’s economy—more efficient but producing more stuff. But because of renewable energy’s extremely low EROEI, such an economy might just require the total transformation of the Earth’s surface into solar panels—not just a hellish vision of the future, but also impossible.

We can argue at length about whether it is indeed possible to produce the same amount of energy using renewables alone, but the point is that Srnicek and Williams neglect to even hold that argument—something you might think necessary if you propose to scale up global industrial activity in times of climate change. As Asara put it to me in an email, “their ‘supposedly sustainable’ utopia of automation misses any sense of biophysical reality.”

This is where accelerationist and degrowth analyses differ the most. Degrowth takes as a key question the ‘metabolism’ of the economy—that is, how much energy and material it uses. As innovation enables the speeding up of this metabolism, and because an increase in metabolism has disastrous social and ecological impacts—too often offloaded on people who do not benefit from the technology—there needs to be collective decision-making on technology’s limits.

In this way, simply reappropriating technology, or making it more efficient, is not enough. In fact, without totally transforming how capitalism reinvests its surplus—requiring a fundamental transformation of financial systems—automation will unfortunately help expand capitalism, rather than allow us to overcome it.

If capitalism always seeks to collectivize impacts and privatize profits, then communism should not be about collectivizing profits and externalizing impacts to people far away or future generations.

If capitalism always seeks to collectivize impacts and privatize profits, then communism should not be about collectivizing profits and externalizing impacts to people far away or future generations. This is the danger of ‘fully automated luxury communism’. These dangers are not discussed by accelerationist texts—but they should be.

Perhaps this is the key ideological difference: accelerationists make such an extreme modernist gesture that they refuse the need to limit their utopia—there are only possibilities. In contrast, degrowth is predicated on politicizing limits that, until now, have been left to the private sphere. This might involve saying, in the words of one Wall Street employee, “I would prefer not to” to some technologies.

 

What is Speed?

It says something about the times when two important segments of the radical left have gravitated to the terms ‘degrowth’ and ‘accelerationism’—about as opposite as it could get.

In my opinion, there is something rather new here, which brings the discussion beyond peasants vs. workers, localism vs. taking over the state: the introduction of the question of speed into leftist thought.

They do so in very different ways.  For degrowth, ‘growth’ is the acceleration of the energetic and material flows of the economic system at exponential rates, as well as the ideology that justifies it. Let’s call this socio-metabolic speed. Their political project then comes down to challenging that ideology head-on, as well as re-thinking economic theory to allow societies to ensure well-being but also transform how energy and material is used—necessary for a more just economic system.

Accelerationists, on the other hand, think of speed much more figuratively: they are referring to the Marxist concept of the material conditions of human relations—for them, acceleration means moving beyond the limits of capitalism, which requires a totally modern stance. This is socio-political speed: the shifting gears of social relations, as a result of changing technological systems.

Both, I think, have put their finger on a crucial question of our times, but from slightly different directions: can what gives us modernity—a colossal global infrastructural web of extraction, transportation, and fabrication—be democratized?

Both, I think, have put their finger on a crucial question of our times, but from slightly different directions: can what gives us modernity—a colossal global infrastructural web of extraction, transportation, and fabrication—be democratized? For accelerationists, this would require making that web more efficient and modifying political systems to make it easier to live with—shifting the gears of social relations beyond capitalism. For degrowthers, it would require slowing that system down and developing alternative systems outside of it. I don’t think these two aims are mutually exclusive. But it would require going beyond simplistic formulas for system change on one side, and anti-modern stances on the other.

But it’s also worth going one step further and asking whether that infrastructural system would really take kindly to these shifts in gears, or if it will it simply buck the passenger.

To navigate this question, it’s useful to briefly turn to the foremost “philosopher of speed”: Paul Virilio. In Speed and Politics, Virilio traces how changes in social relations were brought about through the increased velocity of people, machines, and weapons. Through Virilio’s eyes, the history of Europe’s long emergence out of feudalism into 20th century modernity was one of increasing metabolism of bodies and technologies. Each successive regime meant a recalibration of this speed, accelerating it, managing it. For Virilio, political systems—be they totalitarian, communist, capitalist, or republican—emerged both as a response to changes to this shift in speed and as a way to manage human-technologic co-existence.

What’s important for this discussion is that Virilio does not separate the two types of speed: changing social relations also meant changing metabolic rates—they are the same, and must be theorized simultaneously.

Doing so could be useful for both degrowth and accelerationism. While degrowth does not have a succinct analysis of how to respond to today’s shifting socio-technical regimes—accelerationism’s strong point—at the same time accelerationism under-theorizes the increased material and energetic flows resulting from this shifting of gears. Put another way, efficiency alone can limit its disastrous effects. As degrowth theorists have underlined, environmental limits must be politicized; control over technology must therefore be democratized; metabolic rates must be decelerated if Earth is to remain livable.

To conclude, accelerationism comes across as a metaphor stretched far too thin. A napkin sketch after an exciting dinner-party, the finer details colored in years afterwards—but the napkin feels a bit worn out.

Big questions need to be asked, questions unanswered by the simplistic exhortation to “shift the gears of capitalism.” When the gears are shifted, the problem of metabolic limits won’t be solved simply through “efficiency”—it must acknowledge that increased efficiency and automation has, and likely would still, lead to increased extractivism and the ramping up of environmental injustices globally. Or another: what does accelerationism mean in the context of a war machine that has historically thrived on speed, logistics, and the conquest of distance? Is non-violent acceleration possible, and what would class struggle look like in that scenario?

To be fair, degrowth doesn’t answer all the big questions either. There has been little discussion on how mass deceleration would be possible when, as Virilio shows, mass change has historically occurred through acceleration. Can hegemony decelerate?

If degrowth lacks a robust theory of how to bring about regime shift, then Williams and Snricek’s brand of accelerationism doesn’t allow for a pluralist vocabulary that looks beyond its narrow idea of what constitutes system change. And yet, the proponents of each ideology will likely be found in the same room in the decades to come. Despite their opposite ‘branding’, they should probably talk. They have a lot to learn from each other.

metropolis-metropolis-1927-15539888-2560-1804
Source: Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)

A version of this article originally appeared on the Institute for Social Ecology Blog.

Aaron Vansintjan is currently completing a PhD on food politics and gentrification at Birkbeck, University of London. He is co-editor at Uneven Earth. 

Denmark’s political alternative

Source: DR
Source: DR

by Rune Wingaard

The Danish political party the Alternative (Alternativet) was officially established in November 2013 and was elected into Parliament in 2015 with 9 seats and 4,9 percent of the total votes. The party’s main goals are to achieve a ’serious sustainable transition’, a new political culture and better conditions for entrepreneurship. The Alternative is critical towards pursuit of economic growth as a primary goal for policy makers and aspire to a new understanding of progress.

The Alternative is aware of the existence of a number of relevant indicators for sustainable progress, yet we have not found one that is considered politically applicable. For example, the ‘five headline indicators for progress’ by the New Economics Foundation is compelling but we find the five headlines to be too complex to communicate to the public in the hyped speed of contemporary media.

Many Danes respond positively when we talk about economic, social, and ecological sustainability, and we wanted our indicator for progress to include these concepts. Accordingly, we decided to have one headline indicator for each type of sustainability in order to make it easily understandable.

We are still in a developing phase of our indicator, but it seems we will decide on the following: Economic sustainability is improving when the rate of employment on collective agreement terms and self-employed increases. The rate of employment has a significant impact on the public budget, so it is a key indicator to the health of the economy. Additionally, we want quality jobs and strong labour unions, hence we decided to only include jobs on collective agreement terms. Social sustainability is measured by improvements in economic inequality in terms of the income difference between the top 20 and the bottom 20 percent of the population. Research has found equal societies to have fewer social and health problems, so equality is a very important indicator of the well-being of citizens. Ecological sustainability is measured by the degree to which the Danish CO2-emissions are declining at a tempo where Denmark makes a fair contribution to securing the internationally agreed goal of avoiding more than 2 percent increases in global temperatures and aim at a 1,5 increase up till 2100. Climactic changes are likely the gravest danger to modern society and CO2 emissions are therefore a relevant indicator for ecological sustainability.

Our general idea is that the main indicators for economic, social, and ecological sustainability have to be positive if we are to propose a policy in Parliament. If we are to vote for a policy proposal from another political party, at least two indicators must be positive, and optimally all three. We will be able to communicate this very clearly to the public and be accountable with regards to these indicators of sustainability.

We are aware of the fact that many other indicators are needed for serious sustainable development. Therefore, each of these indicators will be supplemented with second-level indicators relevant to their area. Economic supplementary indicators could be job employment measured by gender and other ethnic background, job stability, job satisfaction, balance of payments and ratio of private investments to private savings. Social supplementary indicators could be happiness, children’s wellbeing, mental wellbeing, social trust, quality of health care, health inequality, inequality in wealth and income inequalities between gender and for ethnic minorities. Ecological supplementary indicators could be biodiversity, air quality, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, resource consumption and so forth. The supplementary indicators are considered important, and if a significant number of them are deteriorating or improving, this can affect our attitude towards a specific proposal.

We will decide on the main indicators shortly, and we will ask ecological sustainability experts to help us decide which supplementary indicators are relevant to their field. We will also host what we call political laboratories where we will invite citizens, experts and our own members to discuss the details of our new indicator for progress. This is in accordance with our vision on a new political culture with more democratic bottom-up processes.

We have discussed whether we should follow the headline indicator for New Economic Foundation’s indicator on ‘good jobs’. This includes the amount of the population with a secure job above the ‘living wage’. We are currently in favour of using the more simplistic percentage of the population with a job on collective agreement terms (and self-employed), since we wanted the indicator to be as simple and easy to communicate as possible.

If we vote for our own or a proposal by another political party in Parliament and the proposal passes, we can go to the media and evaluate whether the policy is improving the three main indicators for sustainability. If so, we can argue that it increases triple bottom line sustainability. When we participate in longer discussions we can discuss to which degree the policy improves or deteriorates relevant supplementary indicators.

Whether or not GDP increases is less relevant, the central goal is to ensure economic, social, and ecological sustainability.

We find this to be an accountable and transparent way of communicating with the public and participating in the political process. It matters to citizens whether new jobs are created and inequality and CO2-emissions are reduced. Also, we hope this approach can raise awareness of a triple bottom line understanding of sustainability in the public.

So is degrowth needed to ensure climate justice?

It is highly likely, but to us this is not the key question of our time. Whether or not GDP increases is less relevant, the central goal is to ensure economic, social, and ecological sustainability. Our indicator does not include GDP as we want to measure what really matters in relation to the wellbeing of mankind and nature. The public policy must be centered on achieving these goals and can only be successful via an intelligent cooperation with the private sector, civil society, and international actors.

Mother Teresa once said: “I was once asked why I don’t participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I’ll be there.”

The Alternative wants to communicate as clearly as possible that we are for a sustainable development rather than against growth, as we find this inspires and resonates deeper with the public.

Naturally, the main institutions of the current economic model will have to be reformed in order to ensure a serious sustainable development. Therefore, the Alternative proposes reforms of the financial sector, lower working hours, an ecological tax reform, increased investments in green research and infrastructure, more redistribution, increased financial transfers from the developed to the developing world partly focused on climate change mitigation and adaption, and a slowdown of the massive subsidies for conventional agriculture and the fossil fuel industry.

Rune Wingaard has a Masters degree in social science and international development studies from Roskilde University, where he also works and teaches economics, politics and quantitative methods. He is part of the Economic Council of the Danish political party the Alternative and is very engaged in co-creating a transition towards a much more sustainable, just and thriving society.

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What will spark a degrowth movement in the USA?

Source: Alan Huett

by Sam Bliss

Things are big in the United States of America. Returning home after a year away reacquaints me with big detached single-family homes, big single-occupant vehicles, and big single-species grass lawns. I find wider roads, longer distances, larger supermarkets, and more stuff everywhere.

As a student of ecological economics, it makes me a little anxious. Such individualistic extravagance isn’t ecological or economical. I remind myself: it is precisely why I came back.

I spent most of the past year in Barcelona, studying with a group of researchers who are interested in degrowth – the idea that humans and other species might live better if the former had a smaller economy. Degrowth is not recession. It is a purposeful, equitable slowing of the rate at which we transform nature into stuff.

Our politicians pledge economic growth like priests promising eternal paradise in heaven, as if producing and consuming 3 percent more smartphones, assault rifles, and bacon-flavored beverages this year than we did last year is our best bet to achieve the good life. According to a 2015 study, the United States’ yearly material footprint – the materials taken from farms, forests, mines, and other extraction sites to make the products Americans consume – measures about 27 metric tons per capita. In other words, 163 pounds of nature is extracted every day to feed, house, clothe, entertain, and satisfy the average U.S. resident. While the gadgets and garbage have piled up, the number of wild animals has halved over the last four decades. People, rich people in particular, have conquered the planet in the quest for more.

Degrowth means downscaling the human enterprise to share the world nicely with other species and our grandchildren. Degrowth means distributing wealth equitably and prioritizing needs over wants.

But why the word “degrowth” anyway? A lively, complex debate rages over whether the term is useful or harmful. I only want to make a few points that relate to the U.S. context.

Renouncing growth today has the potential of flipping every politician’s favorite narrative: that only growth can save the poor.


In the wake of elections that gave all three branches of government to the Republican party, the reeling American left must rethink, regroup, and rekindle the smoldering embers of the Bernie campaign. But Bernie Sanders, just like the politicians and financiers he rightly criticizes, is firmly pro-growth.

I cannot understand why. Growth over the last four decades has not brought substantial wage increases or a functioning healthcare system to the 99 percent, but it has made the U.S. economy unsustainably big in terms of resource use and carbon emissions. We must demand that leaders address inequality and other issues head-on instead of promising that a growing economy will make things better. Degrowth should be our rallying cry.

But degrowth has not yet caught on among academics or activists in the oversized United States. Don’t get me wrong, many initiatives here exhibit the values of the degrowth movement – simplicity, democracy, sharing, the rejection of economic growth as the goal for society. There’s a network of organizations fighting to create an economy based on justice and ecology, a campaign to work less, a scholarly groupfocused on downsizing consumption, and countless community-scale projects from urban food forests to bike cooperatives to tool-lending libraries. And there are the water protectors at Standing Rock, standing peacefully in the way of the growth economy’s ever-extending tentacles. Yet these projects lack a defiant unifying frame for their collective crusade to construct a socially and environmentally sustainable country.

Mostly, people suppose that degrowth is too negative a term for the American culture of optimism. Per social norms, people in the U.S. are not typically any less than “fine” when asked, “How are you?”

Why hasn’t degrowth spread in the United States? At September’s international degrowth conference in Budapest, I spoke with some other degrowthers living in the U.S. about why the word has not been adopted and how we might spark a movement.

Mostly, people suppose that degrowth is too negative a term for the American culture of optimism. Per social norms, people in the U.S. are not typically any less than “fine” when asked, “How are you?” A downward-oriented word like degrowth produces reflexive repulsion.

In response to Trump’s victory and the calls by many to “give him a chance,” Jelani Cobb, a professor in journalism at Columbia University, tweeted that he “had not fully appreciated until now how much the relentless American drive for optimism resembles abject denial.” Denying that a finite planet cannot sustain infinite growth is just another aspect of that abject denial.

Yet in other ways degrowth is too positive for the United States. Bear with me. Barbara Muraca, an Italian environmental philosopher who arrived at Oregon State University two years ago, says that ecological intellectuals in the U.S. urge rapidly transforming society to avoid imminent civilizational collapse, whereas the European school of degrowth tends to promote a slow revolution toward living well together with less. The deep-green environmentalists of this country foresee hardship accompanying the end of growth. Degrowth tends to look at the bright side of freeing ourselves from our current unsustainable, unjust economy.

As Muraca sees it, U.S. enviros do not fear the end of the world, but the end of the American Dream. The science on global environmental limits shows that all humans cannot drive gas-guzzling trucks and eat sausage every morning – which means it is unfair if some folks do get to live that way. The news is frightening, for its recipients and for the messenger.

To my friend Deric Gruen, who manages the Rethinking Prosperity project, it is simpler: Americans love growth! Emotional growth, sales growth, spiritual growth, crop growth, earnings growth, growth spurts, growth of my social network. People from the U.S. hear about degrowth and reply, “So you are kind of like redefining growth, right?”

So mainstream green groups refuse to renounce growth. Prominent voices from Silicon Valley to the Bible Belt reject the existence of any constraints on human activity. Muraca’s catastrophist colleagues counter this denial of limits with pleas to prepare for the post-fossil fuel world by consuming less.

Most folks do not want to hear these pessimistic-sounding appeals. So the earnest ecologists shout louder, which turns off everyone not already convinced. Who are we to tell our fellow citizens to restrain themselves, and be happier while doing so? Many residents of the highly unequal U.S. cannot comfortably afford to fill their trucks with gas to guzzle. Meanwhile, the plutocrats in charge of the nation jetset to important gatherings around the world where they discuss what to do about climate change and income inequality.

America doesn’t just need a wake-up call. We need new narratives about what the good life is and how to achieve it. Coming to the University of Vermont to take part in the Economics for the Anthropocene research initiative is a chance to bring degrowth home, as both a scholarly concept and an activist slogan. Perhaps one day it can be a social and political movement, too. Instead of boasting about the new wave of cancerous growth their policies will trigger, we need candidates that lay out plans to ensure everyone economic security and opportunities to flourish regardless what happens with GDP.

Last year I cycled across North America, talking about degrowth to anyone who would listen and listening to whomever had something to say about it. Now, in Vermont, I discuss degrowth with other graduate students, undergrads, faculty, and also with the woman who helps me fix my bicycle and the guy kneeling next to me as we dig carrots from the soil. Just mentioning it leads to dynamic and interesting conversations, especially among people previously unfamiliar with the concept.

In the end, it is not about the word, it is about sparking socio-ecological change toward a fairer, smaller, and simpler economy. Degrowth explicitly or by other names.

Sam Bliss suffers from an acute strain of the imposter syndrome that affects most first-year PhD students. He makes okay improvised salads from whatever he finds in dumpsters, though, and is hopeful about surviving his first Vermont winter.

The growthocene

Degrowth demonstration, Leipzig, 2014. Source: Wikimedia.

 

by Ekaterina Chertkovskaya and Alexander Paulsson

Lately there has been a rising interest in degrowth – an umbrella term that critiques the centrality of economic growth in our societies and embraces various alternatives for ecological sustainability and social justice (see Kallis et al., 2015). This interest is shared not only by the proponents of degrowth, but also its critics, who often support many of the ideas behind degrowth, but have reservations about using the term.

It seems to us that these reservations at least to some extent arise from economic growth itself being an ambiguous and contested concept. For example, Kate Raworth suggests that it is not clear whether degrowth refers to the decrease of the economy’s biophysical throughput or its monetary value, measured in GDP, and argues that the difference matters. Or, John Bellamy Foster proposes that it is important to argue not “for degrowth in the abstract, but more concretely for deaccumulation – a transition away from a system geared to the accumulation of capital without end.”

These reservations about degrowth point to the need to clarify what growth traps to avoid when making a transition to sustainable degrowth. In what follows, we articulate three ways of understanding growth that should be challenged by degrowth: first, reliance on biophysical throughput; second, capital accumulation and productivism more generally; and third, the perpetual strive for quantitative expansion of national economies (measured in GDP). We also propose that growthocene can be a suitable way to characterise the epoch we live in, broadening the notion of capitalocene while opposing the now mainstream notion of anthropocene.

 

Biophysical throughput

Economies across the world rely on growth of biophysical throughput, which has led to severe ecological consequences for Earth and its ecosystems. In contrast, degrowth would involve descaling biophysical throughput. This critique of growth has been partially integrated into the mainstream discourse, as captured by the notion of anthropocene. However, this concept is deeply problematic as it suggests that all human beings are responsible for the ecological crisis. Differences related to class, gender, race, geopolitics or economic systems themselves are glossed over or totally disregarded.

While renewables are of course an important way forward, the transition to them does not automatically lead to sustainability or justice.

Green economy has become a buzzword that is often suggested as a solution to the world’s ecological problems, whether by the left or right. Such an economy, however, is neither sustainable nor just because it focuses on incorporating (supposedly) green solutions into the economy with all its flaws and divisions rather than changing the economy itself. For example, the economic valuation of nature is green only on paper, in reality, it enables continuous ecological destruction and the appropriation of local governance (see Kill, 2015).

And while renewables are of course an important way forward, the transition to them does not automatically lead to sustainability or justice. For instance, in Brazil, the way the shift to renewable energy is implemented—on top of challenging the biodiversity of the Amazon—often threatens the very way of being of indigenous communities and the livelihoods sustained and inhabited by them (e.g. as the case of Munduruku Indians demonstrates).

So in striving for sustainability and justice, degrowth goes beyond the question of biophysical throughput and the physical limits of our planet. It would need to involve challenging the problematic and potentially harmful solutions positioned as ‘green’, such as the carbon and biodiversity markets or nuclear energy. This also would also require problematising how these proposals have been promoted under appealing banners like ‘inclusivity’, ‘poverty reduction’ and ‘development’. Therefore, it is crucial to ask questions like: ‘what is at risk?’; ‘who benefits and who loses from the proposed solutions?’. Pushing this line of thinking further, we must also ask what societal divisions, injustices and inequalities are maintained, reproduced or enforced by such policy proposals.

 

Capital accumulation and productivism

This brings us to challenging growth understood as capital accumulation. Not only are the conditions under which capital accumulation occurs demarcated by class, gender, race, and other divisions, but when surpluses are reinvested in the economy, these divisions become amplified. As has been powerfully observed by a broad spectrum of critical theories, such as anarchism, feminism, Marxism, and postcolonial thought, the strive for surplus accumulation relies on maintaining injustices and inequalities. Some of this critique has been captured by the notion of capitalocene, which suggests that capitalism, and not all humanity, is responsible for the ecological and also social problems we are facing (see Haraway, 2015; Malm, 2015; Moore, 2014).

The popular slogan ‘system change not climate change’, then, should imply not only a systemic change in the way we deal with climate or ecology, but in the very way our societies are organised. Degrowth also problematises these forms of accumulation, including, commodified consumption with a ‘sustainable’ or community-oriented appearance. For example, the notion of the sharing economy often commodifies social and communal spaces and depends on  precarious labour conditions (see also Schor, 2014).

While capitalocene is a powerful idea to understand ecological and social problems without decoupling them, it does not capture the whole picture. For example, it struggles with how to grapple with the environmental history of the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, whose economic systems, too, had devastating ecological and social consequences. Industrial production was the key driving logic for organising these economies, if not in shaping their entire societies.

It is important to challenge not only capital accumulation, but more broadly productivism, that is, the growth of production as desirable in itself.

Therefore, it is important to challenge not only capital accumulation, but more broadly productivism, that is, the growth of production as desirable in itself. Apart from industrial production, this includes many other forms of production found in contemporary economies, such as production of information, knowledge, technology, and services.

However, it is also crucial to note that challenging productivism does not suggest descaling of all production as there are different types, ways, consequences and understandings of it. For example, it would be desirable to see more permaculture as a sustainable production practice in agriculture. Or the expansion of initiatives like platform cooperativism—as opposed to the ‘sharing economy’—would also be appealing to many.

In line with the argument that has been presented so far, we suggest using the notion of growthocene – i.e. the strive for perpetual growth—consisting of reliance on growth of biophysical throughput, continuous capital accumulation and productivism more generally—to describe the epoch we live in and the ecological and social problems we are facing. Degrowth, then, captures both the conditions and the consequences of the growthocene.

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Kto-kogo ? Dognat’ i peregnat’ [Translation: Who will (beat) whom? To catch up and overtake]. Soviet Poster, 1919-1930. Source: National Library of Scotland.

Quantitative expansion of national economies as measured in GDP

The perpetual striving for quantitative expansion of national economies is in line with prioritising production as desirable in itself, which is part of the growthocene. The assumption underlying this ideology is that quantitative expansion automatically leads to an increase in prosperity. Based on this assumption, GDP is being used as the dominant measure of the monetary value of national economies. It was introduced as a tool for the US government to deal with the Great Depression and then to plan production during the Second World War, but eventually became the central measure of almost every nation’s progress.

While degrowth is not aimed at shrinking GDP or the monetary value of the economy, we would also like to stress that degrowth should not be evaluated in light of GDP and similar measures as these are essentially flawed indicators of prosperity.

GDP and other similar measures, on top of being inadequate indicators of prosperity, have had problematic consequences. First, they produced a norm, which allowed countries with lower national incomes to be ‘analysed and framed in a way that suited their assumed future compliance with the industrialized model’ (Speich, 2011: 19). Second, gearing crucial public institutions—such as education and healthcare—towards increasing GDP has made them more exclusive and subordinated their core functions to economic demands.

So while degrowth is not aimed at shrinking GDP or the monetary value of the economy, we would also like to stress that degrowth should not be evaluated in light of GDP and similar measures as these are essentially flawed indicators of prosperity. GDP has been convincingly criticised by many scholars already (e.g. Fioramonti, 2013), but, due to its hegemonic status, this remains part of the task of degrowth as well.

Toward the notion of growthocene

To sum up, striving for growth – or the growthocene – is manifested in reliance on growth of biophysical throughput, continuous capital accumulation, and productivism more generally. Hence degrowth can be understood as descaling of biophysical throughput, deaccumulation and anti-productivism, and aimed at bringing together the alternatives that fit these principles.

Such an understanding does not decouple ecological and social problems. It acknowledges that capitalism bears a large share of the responsibility, but is not the only system that has led to the problems we face today. It also highlights that productivism itself is part of the problem and hence cautions against proposing solutions rooted in its logic.

A version of this article has been published in the blog of ENTITLE, a network of European Political Ecologists.

Ekaterina Chertkovskaya is part of the degrowth theme at the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies and the Sustainability, Ecology and Economy research group at the School of Economics and Management, both at Lund University. She is also a member of the editorial collective of ephemera journal.

Alexander Paulsson is part of the degrowth theme at the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies and the Sustainability, Ecology and Economy research group at the School of Economics and Management, both at Lund University. He is also a postdoctoral researcher at the Swedish Knowledge Centre For Public Transport.

Let’s define Degrowth before we dismiss it

Diverse commentators such as Samuel Farber, Paul Krugman, and Leigh Phillips are arguing that economic growth is necessary to protect existing, and future well-being.
Diverse leftist commentators such as Samuel Farber, Paul Krugman, and Leigh Phillips are arguing that economic growth is necessary to protect existing and future well-being. But rarely do they define what they mean by economic growth.

by Aaron Vansintjan

Recently there’s been a wave of arguments defending economic growth from a leftist perspective. People are increasingly reacting to the rise of ‘degrowth’: a diverse movement calling for, among other things, scaling back the total material and energy use of the global economy.

One particularly vigorous example is the work of Leigh Phillips, where he accuses degrowthers—who he claims have become “hegemonic” (file under: things I wish were true but aren’t)—of undermining classic leftist pursuits such as progress, well-being, and strengthening of social services. Similar arguments could be seen in a recent article that appeared in Jacobin Magazine, in which growth was posited as necessary for progress. And Keynesian economists like Paul Krugman have come out against degrowth, claiming that economic growth is actually necessary to address climate change, and lumping degrowthers together with the Koch Brothers, as they both seem to seek to dismantle the state.

When two sides of an argument have a totally different definition of the concept that’s being debated, and if one side even refuses to define it, constructive discussions tend to turn into uncompromising squabbles.

Many of their points have been valid and necessary—serving to complicate the simplistic ‘are-you-for-capitalism-or-a-Luddite?’ narrative. Preaching the benefits of technology and criticizing the current economic system are not mutually exclusive. But there are some recurring problems with these arguments that I want to highlight.

In this article, I argue that definitions of growth are either unclear or constantly shifting depending on the argument. The result is that authors often misunderstand and do not engage adequately with critiques of growth. When two sides of an argument have a totally different definition of the concept that’s being debated, and if one side even refuses to define it, constructive discussions tend to turn into uncompromising squabbles. In an effort to clear up some misunderstandings, I briefly explain what I see as some of the values of the degrowth position. 

Growth is everything and nothing: long live growth!

Perhaps the most emblematic—and unfortunate—leftist (or leftish) challenge to degrowth came from Paul Krugman, all the way back in October 2014.

This was a significant occasion. For the most part, mainstream economics ignores ecological economicsa “rogue” field that harbors many of the growth dissenters. But with this article, Krugman brought the challenge out into the open. In his words, the criticism of growth is “a marginal position even on the left, but it’s widespread enough to call out nonetheless.”

Weirdly, Krugman spent most of the article explaining how shipping companies reduced their energy expenditure in 2008 by slowing down their ships. Using this example, his defense of ‘economic growth’ waffled between two very different arguments: that an increase in efficiency can lead to less energy being consumed, and that, theoretically, it is possible to increase the total economic transactions while decreasing total energy use.

With respect to efficiency, Krugman waded into a discussion in which he seems to be out of his depth—other ships have sailed these waters for a long time now. From 19th-century English economists concerned with the decline of available coal to scientists investigating the impact of washing machines, people have long wrestled with problems like the one he raised: how an improvement in efficiency might nevertheless lead to a total increase in energy use. So from the perspective of ecological economics—which has sought to understand how the human economy is embedded within the physical environment—it’s not that hard to sink Krugman’s flimsy argument that an increase in efficiency necessarily increases economic growth while decreasing total energy consumption.

Krugman waded into a discussion in which he seems to be out of his depth—other ships have sailed these waters for a long time now.

What’s curious though about his article is that he not once defined economic growth. This definition remained latent—one can only assume that, whenever he used the term economic growth, he meant the increase in the annual monetary value of economic transactions over time, calculated using the GDP. The article could’ve been a chance for him to show exactly why economic growth is desirable. Instead, he spent most of the article fumbling to find some example that shows that economic growth can theoretically be decoupled from oil consumption.

Granted, if that was the only goal of his article, it would’ve been a good point: a rise in GDP is not the same as a rise in energy use, economic transactions could still take place in a low-carbon economy. The problem is that his argument claimed to go beyond this—seeking to contradict the degrowth claim that, until now, economic growth has been strongly coupled with increasing material and energy use. But his evidence remained purely theoretical, and therefore failed to settle the debate.

This tendency isn’t unique to neoclassical Keynesians—I’ve seen Marxists who’ve suffered from the same inability to explain what, exactly, they mean by economic growth, thereby misunderstanding the call for degrowth.

In Jacobin Magazine, Samuel Farber argues that notions of progress are actually essential for any leftist project. Improvements in technology, infrastructure, and material well-being are crucial for addressing inequality and injustice globally. Fair enough. But then he also explicitly criticizes the degrowth stance:

Many progressive activists today are skeptical of material growth, for ecological reasons and a concern with consumerism. But this often confuses consumption for its own sake and as a status symbol with the legitimate popular desire to live a better material life, and wasteful and ecologically damaging economic growth with economic growth as such.

So here, like Krugman, Farber argues that economic growth is not the same as what he calls ‘material growth.’ And like Krugman, he argues that economic growth is not, in itself, environmentally destructive. But what, then, is economic growth to him? He notes in the following paragraph:

Environmental policies that would make a real difference would require large-scale investments, and thus selective economic growth. This would be the case, for example, with the reorganization of the individualized and wasteful system of surface and air transportation into a collective and rational plan…

It seems that for Farber, defending economic growth is necessary to fight for progressive changes to well-being. What is not clear is exactly why this should be called economic growth. From his examples, there is no quantitative growth—unless you start counting the growth of things like trams and hospitals.

Interestingly, like Farber, many degrowthers might also argue for “more of the Good Things”—for example, increasing health care services, supporting care labor, creating infrastructure for public transportation, and incentivizing renewable energy—but they wouldn’t call them economic growth. Instead, they might prefer to use terms like ‘flourishing’ or ‘sufficiency’ or just ‘more of that good stuff’. They wouldn’t assume that it is total economic growth that allows the good stuff to come into being. Instead, more of the good stuff requires redirecting economic activity to better suit the needs of society—for which the primary ingredient is democratic deliberation, not increased production (social metabolism), larger money supply, or an increase in the transactions taking place in the market economy (GDP growth).

It seems that for Farber, defending economic growth is necessary to fight for progressive changes to well-being. What is not clear is exactly why this should be called economic growth. From his examples, there is no quantitative growth—unless you start counting the growth of things like trams and hospitals.

So there are two problems: the misidentification of what degrowthers are calling for, and a poor definition of economic growth as such. Farber seems to think that degrowthers are claiming that preventing (or reversing) environmental destruction necessitates “less Good Things”. As a result, his argument against degrowth, and for growth, amounts to a bait-and-switch between two definitions of growth: growth of Good Stuff and growth of total economic activity. This failure to define his terms then allows him to mischaracterize the claims of the degrowth movement.

This tactic is heightened to an extreme degree in Leigh Phillips’ recent anti-degrowth polemic, Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-porn Addicts: A defence of growth, progress, industry and stuff. While reading his book I not once got an exact definition of what he meant by economic growth. Growth seemed to include a whole host of things, such as: growth = progress, growth = innovation, growth = increase in well-being, growth = increase in money supply, growth = increase in resource use. He tended to use these interchangeably.

In one instance, Phillips acknowledges this directly:

Of course, one might argue that I’m being far too loose with the terms growth, progress, and invention, which begin to blur here. But then, as well they should, as perhaps what it means to be human is to invent, to progress to grow. To constantly strive for an improvement in our condition. To overcome all barriers in our way.

As far as I could figure out, the logical reasoning here goes as follows:

Degrowthers argue that infinitely and exponentially increasing economic growth is bad for humans and the planet. But economic growth leads to Good Things as well. Therefore, degrowthers are against Good Things.

Phillips denies degrowthers the ability to realize the most basic fact: more good = good, more bad = bad. And if growth is simply Everything That Is Good In The World, it becomes a hard thing to argue against: we’ve reached a conversational impasse.

The problems with muddling the definition of growth come to the fore when Phillips tries to argue, in contrast to Naomi Klein’s recent book, that degrowth and anti-austerity are incompatible: “Austerity and ‘degrowth’ are mathematically and socially identical. They are the same thing.” To show this, he uses the example of the economic decline following a time of rapid growth immediately after the Second World War—which involved “high productivity, high wages, full employment, expanding social benefits…”. In contrast, he argues that after the 1970s, according to “whichever metrics we use”, there was a decline in prosperity for all Americans.

 Phillips denies degrowthers the ability to realize the most basic fact: more good = good, more bad = bad. And if growth is simply Everything That Is Good In The World, it becomes a hard thing to argue against: we’ve reached a conversational impasse. 

The implication is that economic growth is directly related to material and social well-being, and “degrowing” would limit that kind of progress. Actually, during this time, well-being decreased just as consumption and economic growth sky-rocketed—a fact which he conveniently doesn’t mention. To avoid this fact, he usefully switches from defining economic growth as increase in productivity and material use, to defining economic growth as decrease in inequality. But different kinds of things can grow or degrow at different rates—a decrease in consumption is not the same as a decrease in well-being. In fact, since the 1970s, the US has only increased its per capita material use, not decreased it. Austerity does not inherently lead to a decrease in total consumption, nor does a decrease in well-being inherently require a decrease in material consumption.

His argument reminds me of a recent New York Times article about degrowth. As fellow degrowth scholar Francois Schneider pointed out in an email, in this article, degrowth was defined simply as a reduction of income. Not only does this misinterpret what, exactly, needs to degrow (hint: not well-being), it also feeds into the tendency—symptomatic of the neoliberal era—to reduce all kinds of well-being to monetary indicators.

Phillips continuously makes the same error: conflating income with wealth, material production with material well-being. While this is standard practice in development circles—used to justify land-grabbing, exploitative industry, and privatizations—you would expect different discursive tactics from a staunch anti-capitalist austerity-basher. Part of the degrowth framework has been specifically to argue that well-being and income have been conflated for far too long, with very negative consequences (such as the wholesale destruction of indigenous livelihoods for the sake of development).

Finally, when trying to counter the degrowth position, you’re also going to have to deal with the now well-known catchphrase that “infinite growth is impossible on a finite planet”. To do this, Phillips calls upon a pretty quirky theoretical model:

Think of a single rubber ball. Like the Earth, it is bounded in the sense that very clearly there is an edge to the ball and there is only so much of it. It doesn’t go on forever. It is not boundless. And there is only one of them. But it is infinitely divisible in the sense that you can cut it in half, then cut that half in half again, then cut that quarter in half, then that eight in half, and so on. In principle, with this imaginary ball, you can keep cutting it up for as long as you like, infinitely extracting from this finite object.

Phillips counters the necessity to degrow with a variation of Zeno’s paradox, hoping to show that, theoretically, infinite growth is possible on a finite planet, as long as it decreases at a negative exponential rate. Basically, in a finite world, you can keep on growing infinitely as long as you grow less and less, all the way to infinity. But this also involves acknowledging that positive exponential growth (e.g. a 3-5% growth rate) is physically impossible. Funnily enough, in trying to prove the possibility of infinite growth on a finite planet, he trapped himself in an argument that looks very similar to that of the degrowthers.

Phillips argues that, since it’s possible to conceive of a socialist system where economic growth leads to a low-carbon economy, economic growth is inherently a Good Thing. It’s reminiscent of another classic sophist argument: since it’s possible to conceive of God, He therefore must exist. 

Similarly, later in the book, he concedes that we do need to move toward a low-carbon economy and that, within capitalism, this is impossible. But, rather than conceding that economic growth within capitalism is undesirable, he argues that, since it’s possible to conceive of a socialist system where economic growth leads to a low-carbon economy, economic growth (largely defined in capitalist terms, even as he rejects GDP elsewhere) is inherently a Good Thing. It’s reminiscent of another classic sophist argument: since it’s possible to conceive of God, He therefore must exist. 

So what needs to degrow?

Let’s be clear, even if defenders of economic growth rarely are. Historically, economic growth (defined as total increase in measured economic transactions, or GDP) has risen along with social metabolism: the total consumption of materials and energy of an economy. Increased material-energy throughput is what makes climate change and environmental destruction happen, and engenders environmental conflicts around the world. Therefore we have to downscale our total material-energy throughput to address environmental and social injustice. Most available evidence points to the fact that decreasing total economic activity is the best way to do this, while still being able to provide adequate social safety nets.

Critics of degrowth spend most of their time trying to convince readers that decoupling economic growth from “the Bad Things” is theoretically possible, even as they rarely define what they mean by economic growth.

Degrowth, then, is about challenging the idea that infinite and positive exponential growth in monetary transactions (GDP) is the main tool for achieving well-being, today and for future generations. Further, degrowth is about acknowledging that exponential GDP growth has been, and will likely be for the foreseeable future, linked with rising material and energy throughput, and that this increase in total consumption has disastrous effects on the earth and its people. This comes along with a critique of GDP: many argue that it is a terrible indicator for well-being in the first place. It also comes along with criticizing the neoliberal demand to increase economic growth at all costs, even if this means subjugating an entire population to decades of debt (more on this in another piece).

There are many definitions of degrowth out there, but a commonly cited one is “an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions”. Under most definitions, degrowth is about maximizing well-being while minimizing energy and resource consumption (particularly in the rich nations) which may be mutually beneficial, and can address climate change to boot.

So degrowth is not about decreasing the Good Things. Nor is its main thrust that decrease in total consumption is the only thing that must be done. And all degrowthers I know would happily concede Phillips’ point that a change in the mode of production—involving a critique of capitalism, better use of technology, and better democratic planning—is necessary to avoid environmental and social Bad Things.

But they would disagree that the prerequisite for more Good Things is increasing total economic activity. In fact, the ideology of economic growth actually waylaid struggles for better welfare, helping to shut down the political action necessary to provide more Good Things.

Now, it is theoretically possible to decouple exponential economic growth (be it positive or negative) from exponentially increasing metabolic rates, even if no such thing has, as far as is known, been successfully implemented. Arguments for decoupling, including those in Phillips’ book, fail to take into account the embedded material and energy consumption of economies that have, so far, ‘dematerialized’ while GDP has gone up.

Krugman’s proposal for how to decouple remains in the neoclassical camp: toggling consumer preferences—demand, and regulating undesirable economic activity—supply, while continuing to increase economic activity on the whole. Farber and Phillips’ approaches are in the Marxist camp: radically shift the mode of production to rationally plan an economy, limiting the Bads and upping the Goods, while (presumably) continuing to increase economic activity on the whole.

To make their case, these authors have conjured up magical scenarios involving a slow ship economy and a post-capitalist socialist world order. Neither economies exist today. To really support their points, they would need to point to extensive research and probably some robust models, rather than possible worlds.

Take the case of Austerity Ecology: Phillips argues that socialist economic growth has the potential to save us, even as he does not draw on any examples of situations where this has occurred. It’s a cheap argumentative trick to defend economic growth today just on the basis that it could theoretically work under socialism.

So if they really wanted to defend economic growth as it exists today, this would be where the conversation would need to go: determining whether, and how, economic growth could keep going without exponentially increasing material and energy use. Bonus points: showing exactly why economic growth—defined as the exponential increase in monetary transactions at 3-5% per year—is desirable in itself.

But it is exactly at these points that the defenders of growth remain obscure. Rarely do they explicitly concede that, in fact, current rates of economic growth have been historically tied to increasing environmental degradation. Rather, they spend most of their time trying to convince readers that decoupling economic growth from “the Bad Things” is theoretically possible, even as they don’t define what they mean by economic growth.

And yet this approach actually suggests that they are already on the defensive: they are trying to save economic growth from the accusation that it inevitably leads to more “bad stuff”. Without proper evidence, and by shifting the definition of growth constantly to suit the needs of their arguments, the positions of growth-defenders start looking more like denial than reasoned debate.

In contrast, degrowth starts from the reality of the current economy. In this economic system, decoupling is very difficult, if not impossible. Therefore, because climate change is now and a global socialist economic order is not yet in sight, a realistic short-term strategy is to limit exponential growth in metabolic rates, most easily achieved by limiting exponential economic growth. This should be paired by a long-term shift to a more equitable, democratic economic system. Then, theoretically, a new economic system could be constructed where equitable economic growth does not lead to more fossil fuel consumption.

Whether we should focus on creating a global socialist system instead of shifting to a low-impact economy is debatable, but perhaps, just to be on the safe side, we could give both a try.

Thanks to Sam Bliss, Ky Brooks, Adrian Turcato, and Giorgos Kallis for their comments and feedback.

Aaron Vansintjan studies ecological economics, food politics, and urban development. He is an editor at Uneven Earth and enjoys journalism, wild fermentations, decolonization, degrowth, and long bicycle rides.

An ethics of surplus and the right to waste?

Sign at the UConn Public Surplus Store.

by Max Liboiron

At the most recent Association of American Geographers (AAG) meeting in Chicago last month, Josh Lepawsky and I coordinated a pair of panels on discards, diverse economies, and degrowth. As a concept, degrowth has taken off since the last global recession. At its most basic level, degrowth is about production without economic or material growth, and it encompasses a great diversity of types of economies that might achieve this: steady-states, gift economies,community economies, solidarity economies, and so on. As such, degrowth is also a way to organize social life, including ethics, values, and norms, as well as the systems of worth and circulation at the core of economics. In Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, authors write that: “‘Simplicity’, ‘conviviality’, ‘autonomy’, ‘care’, ‘commons’ and ‘dépense’ are some of the words that express what a degrowth society might look like.”

Lepawsky and I are interested in degrowth because of what it means for waste. Accounting for and with waste will ground-truth new economic imaginaries: how do they deal with left overs, excess, externalities, and by-products? How do they manage toxicity that is already permanently on the planet, and how do they avoid creating new toxicants? At the same time, discussions of new systems of value and circulation can vitalize discussions already underway in discard studies around surplus, valuation, reuse, scale, and the social side of technical systems.

In this post, I want to focus on surplus and dépense in particular. Growth and surplus are two different things: sometimes it is a good idea to have a surplus of food or other materials such as in preparation for winter or drought. Growth is the idea that surplus, whether in the form of profit or production of goods (or both), is the goal of economies, rather than one of many ways of organizing goods in a variety of economies. There can be surplus without accumulation being the main driver of production.

This brings us to dépense. Let’s say you’ve saved up some food for the winter, and the winter was shorter and warmer than expected, leaving you with extra stored food at the end of the season. What do you do with it? Proponents of degrowth might say: “waste it!”

Historic Doukhobor 1895 Arms burning sketch by William Perehudoff, artist from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Historic Doukhobor 1895 Arms burning sketch by William Perehudoff, artist from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Source: Discard Studies

Originally signifying the expenditure of excess energy in the writings of George Bataille, under degrowth the term dépense has come to highlight how some forms of wasting can be celebratory, ethical, and at the very least thought about in terms of what positive social values wasting might engender. Authors of Degrowth mention the practice of potlatch by Indigenous peoples of the Northeast coast, a mix of consuming, gifting, and destroying goods in a celebratory feast. We could also consider the Freedomite Doukhobor‘s practice of burning all possessions, including houses and clothing, every few years as a protest against materialism. In Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Erathe point of thinking about dépense is that “The different patterns of excess energy use [or wasting] characterize and distinguish different types of societies across space and time. Excess can be spent on sacrifice or festival, in war or in peace. … How should we go about the removal of the problem of energy and excess?” (87). How should we waste?

What would happen if we paired an ethics of surplus, where accumulation was always temporary and not the goal of economic production, with processes of wasting that enacted social values? In this situation, we might have a right to waste. If human rights are moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of behaviour, and degrowth has ushered in a new ethics of surplus, then celebratory, ritualistic, generous, thoughtful wasting may very well become a social norm that would gain the status of a right.

Of course, this assumes that wasting doesn’t cause harm to health or environment. It also doesn’t address what to do with the already existing surplus of legacy wastes we have to manage from nuclear waste to plastics. Yet this is precisely the power of the concept of degrowth: it is an economic imaginary, a politics of possibility, that can allow us to look at old questions with new frameworks.

Max Liboiron is an activist, artist, and Assistant Professor at the Memorial University of Newfoundland researching plastic pollution.

This piece was originally published on the Discard Studies website.

Is Europe staring at a second Renaissance?

by Ashish Kothari

A day after I reached Barcelona in Catalonia (Spain) in the last week of May, its first woman mayor was elected, much to the delight of large sections of its civil society. Ada Colau, a 41-year-old activist who has fought with social movements against forced evictions, is with Barcelona En Comú (formerly Guanyem Barcelona).

This is one of many new political outfits in Spain that are rising from peoples’ movements of various hues, including those seeking fundamental changes away from an economic system that has left 50 percent of the country’s youth unemployed, created a massive unpayable public debt, and caused ecological devastation.

Over the next few days I met with a number of researchers and activists and practitioners in Barcelona who are in one way or the other seeking alternative futures. There seems to be an explosion of experiments towards sustainable farming and producer-consumer cooperatives,eco-housing and communes, solidarity networks, complementary or alternative currencies, occupation of empty buildings (squatting) by the homeless or for social activities, cycling and car-free spaces, reclaiming the commons in cities, and much else.

Bank squatted for social purposes, Barcelona. Photo: Ashish Kothari

Though still marginal in a society that is overwhelmingly consumerist and wasteful as also facing enormous social problems (including a resurgent right-wing in many areas), these initiatives are growing and provide hope for a different future.

This would especially be the case if the grassroots mobilisation in such initiatives can be combined with progressive new elements in the state, such as the ones that have taken power in Barcelona … and if the rapidly rising political formation Podemos takes over Spain in the coming national elections.

 

Promises for another way of living

I will illustrate this with a few examples that I got to know of during my visit. One is theCooperativa Integral Catalana (CIC), a network of activists working on various aspects of collaborative, ecologically sensitive living.

Its aim is to be “a tool to create a grassroots counter-power, departing  from self-management, self-organization and direct democracy, and one that would help overcome the actual state of dependency on the structures of the system, towards a scenario of liberty, full awareness, free of authority, and in which everyone could flourish under equal conditions and opportunities.

As CIC activist Ale Fernandez told me, sitting on the roof of one of their working spaces in the midst of an urban herbal garden, the initiative has a very interesting origin. In 2006-08, activist Enric Duran Giralt carried out an act of financial rebellion, borrowing 492,000 Euros from various banks, distributing this to a number of initiatives described as alternatives to capitalism, and refusing to return the money, arguing that banks had been stealing from ordinary people for decades (earning the nickname ‘Robin Bank’!).

When arrested (and later released on bail), Duran pointed out the irony that chief executives of banks who had ruined the lives of millions of people by their irresponsible acts leading to the 2008 financial crisis, were being let off scot-free.

The CIC was started by him and others as a model of how people could live perfectly well without capitalist institutions such as banks, through solidarity and collective actions.The CIC has also evolved into the proposal for a global cooperative called Fair Coop with its own currency (faircoin), similar to Bitcoin but with justice and sustainability principle.

Joel Morist I Botines, CIC, Barcelona. Photo: Ashish Kothari

CIC worker Joel Morist I Botines took me out for coffee, and with his eyes shining brightly and a big unruly beard flying in the wind, gave me a run-down on all that the collaborative does: The use of unused buildings or other available properties for collective, social housing; community-led, free and alternative education that is integrated with community living; sharing knowledge platforms; producer-consumer exchange especially of organic, ecofriendly products (food, soap, laundry items, toothpastes, etc); technological innovation and collective repair spaces; social or ‘free’ community currencies in which exchanges can take place without using euros and movie-making through crowdfunding.

CIC is involved in these and much else. It has one permanent assembly for decision-making, but many individual processes or projects linked to CIC have their own assemblies, in an attempt towards decentralised or direct democracy. There are about 5000 user members in the producer-consumer exchange.

The full-time paid employees of CIC, interestingly, can even have their salaries reduced as they are encouraged to obtain more and more of their living needs through sharing, alternative currencies, and other ways that reduce the need for money!

The second initiative I saw is fascinating because it is not something we are used to in India. Can Masdeu is an old hospital building that had been abandoned for a few decades and was occupied by an international group of activists who converted it into a housing and social centre in 2001.

They achieved fame in early 2002, when some 100 police came to evict them. Using passive resistance and tactics that would have meant the police possibly injuring themselves and the occupants if forcible eviction was attempted, and eventually winning both significant public support and a local court’s favorable judgement, the activists managed to stay on. Since then, repeated attempts by the Barcelona administration to evict them failed. (Incidentally, the new Barcelona mayor was involved in protesting against these attempts).

The 24 people who now occupy Can Masdeu have converted it into an example of collective living, permaculture and organic farming, simpler lifestyles, baking and cycle repairs and other survival or livelihood activities, and through all this less need for money.

The 24 people who now occupy Can Masdeu have converted it into an example of collective living, permaculture and organic farming, simpler lifestyles, baking and cycle repairs and other survival or livelihood activities, and through all this less need for money.

Can Masdeu’s building and surrounding fields and forests have also become a space for residents of Barcelona (and elsewhere) to come and volunteer for practical work, do joint activities on Sundays, tend to little garden plots assigned to them, bring schoolkids to get exposed to a different life and more.

Claudio Cattaneo, one of Can Masdeu’s veterans, father of a two-year-old child, and also a researcher who has studied the ecological economics of squatting in Barcelona, was quite frank that this was still an evolving experiment. There are many weaknesses to be addressed still (for example, energy use remains relatively high, and it is not yet clear how elderly people would fit in), but even in his statement of gaps one could see that there is already a lot that the place has achieved.

Can Masdeu’s occupation is still technically illegal. I asked Ale Fernandez, one of the early residents, whether he would prefer it to be legalized; he said he was in two minds, it would be ok if there was a good law covering it, but it was also scary to be “part of the machine,” referring to the system that could gobble up such initiatives in a minute.

This is a dilemma many alternative, radical initiatives face in many countries: whether to remain ‘outside’ the system and face continued harassment and possible closure, or to get legitimised by it, which entails the risk of getting institutionalised, less ‘edgy’ and less radical.

Can Masdeu – the fields and the house, Barcelona. Photo: Ashish Kothari

 

It’s not all about money!

Another widespread trend in Europe encompasses a similar paradox. People in several towns are trying out social currencies of various kinds. In this experiment, the unit of exchange between producer or service provider and consumer is a locally generated ‘money’ or equivalent unit. For that particular exchange, therefore, the relationship is outside the dominant monetary system.

In so far as many of these are ‘complementary’ currencies – working in limited circles, supplementing rather than replacing the dominant currency – they do not really threaten or seriously challenge this system. But some, if they become big like the Bristol pound, can indeed be subversive.

In Barcelona, I met Susana Martín Belmonte, who has helped write a chapter on social currencies for the Barcelona En Comú party that has just come to power in the city. I did not fully understand it, but Susana stressed that this model moved away from bank-related interest, and money as debt and speculation, that was at the centre of the economic crisis. Instead, it focused on positive value creation and trust-based economic exchanges, an early version of which is to be tested in Barcelona.

This initiative is part of a wider European Union funded process of piloting social currencies.

There are however challenges to making this widespread enough to challenge the currently dominant money system. Researcher Kristofer Dittmer, whom I met at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, recently conducted an interesting review of local currencies of various kinds. He concluded that there was not significant evidence of them leading to ‘community-building, advancement of alternative values in economic exchange, facilitation of alternative livelihoods, and eco-localization’, all of which are criteria that the Degrowth movement in Europe espouses.

But there are indeed a number of local benefits, and he said he had not looked at the Bristol pound, which may be one of the few to achieve larger social and economic impact.

Dittmer’s own inclination is for reforms towards a “more democratically controlled monetary system, which is a prerequisite for public spending and taxation that favor communities, egalitarian values, ecologically rational supply-chains, and other principles that degrowth advocates cherish.”

Belmonte, however, feels that if the kind of social currency she is promoting spreads widely, it has the potential to undermine dominant economic powers. This ongoing experimentation and debate in Europe should be of major interest to us in India, as increasingly our movements will also want to look at fundamental changes in economic and monetary systems.

 

Other initiatives

The above initiatives are part of a growing search in Spain and the rest of Europe for alternatives: different ways of being, living, working, and relating that in various degrees question or rebel against the currently dominant economic and political order.

I learnt about these and others over several sessions and treks and meals with a wonderful team of people associated with the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, including the ecological economics guru Joan Martinez-Alier, and his younger colleagues Federico Demaria, Daniela del Bene, Aili Pyhala.

It is through my interactions with them that I came to know of Som Energia, for instance, which is a cooperative buying renewable energy and putting it on the grid, making it more accessible to households. Eticom is a cooperative offering mobile services as an alternative to the big private corporations while ECOS is common working space where many of these cooperatives and projects have their office, with shared cleaning, transport, insurances, finances, design and printing.I also heard more about the movement towards ‘degrowth’, which espouses a considerable scaling down of Europe’s energy and materials use, and encompasses philosophical, ethical, economic, political and socio-cultural elements in its advocacy.

With the above team at ICTA and other local researchers and activists, we discussed the similarities and differences between degrowth and other alternative approaches from elsewhere in the world, including Buen Vivir and Sumak Kawsay in Latin America, swaraj or radical ecological democracy (RED) in India and ubuntu from southern Africa.

A couple of presentations I made on RED/swaraj were well-attended and generated very interesting discussion on a host of complex issues. People were very interested in the various examples of alternative initiatives that I mentioned, and asked many critical questions about them. It was clear that the presence of such initiatives in both Europe and India offers us a great opportunity, to exchange experiences, mutually learn, evolve common futures where globalization is about freer movement of ideas and cultures and people rather than of finance, and build solidarity networks that can also be a political force.

These initiatives in Europe are of course still marginal in a continent that has made its ‘progress’ based on colonial and neo-colonial exploitation of the south, and where a highly materialist lifestyle is as ‘natural’ as breathing air.

These initiatives in Europe are of course still marginal in a continent that has made its ‘progress’ based on colonial and neo-colonial exploitation of the south, and where a highly materialist lifestyle is as ‘natural’ as breathing air.

Increasingly, however, as the economies of Europe themselves face crises and it becomes clear that tinkering around within the same system is not helping to resolve them, as knowledge of the ill-effects of these lifestyles for the rest of the world and for themselves spreads, and as ecological and social movements gain ground, the ‘ordinary’ person will be faced with choices for the future that are clearly either irresponsible or responsible.

Hopefully, the thousands of initiatives that are springing up will then also provide available pathways to choices of a more responsible life, forging a future in which the colonial past of Europe is replaced with a truly collaborative role vis-à-vis the rest of the world.

Thanks to Federico and Daniela for comments.

This article originally appeared in India Together.

We’ve been here before, haven’t we?

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by Salvador Pueyo

We are often told that we need economic growth to address social problems such as unemployment and poverty and to improve everybody’s welfare. However, if one of your sleeves is tight on you, this does not necessarily mean that you need a bigger shirt: perhaps what you need is to reshape your shirt. Indeed, this will be your sole option if you have little thread left.

Economic growth is not a realistic answer to social problems in a world with vanishing natural resources, ecological degradation and climate change. The sensible answer is a deep transformation of the economy to make it more egalitarian and better suited to people’s aspiration to satisfy their basic needs and to live a meaningful and fulfilling life, while we get rid of many economic activities that we do not really need, and contract the economy to sustainable levels, carefully and in a truly democratic way. Currently, this idea is best known with the name of degrowth (see this website or this one), and their supporters pursue it at all levels, including individual consumption choices, grassroots self-organization to experience alternative forms of collective functioning, and political action.

However, very few people in the degrowth movement are aware that we are essentially repeating a cycle of mobilization that had already taken place from the late 1970s to the early 1990s (Piulats 1984 is a good sample, in Spanish). In that period, the ideas and practices that we currently call degrowth were labelled just as green, without knowing that the environmental movement would later become dominated by other different shades of green. The movement was especially strong in West Germany, becoming a reference all over the world when its political arm, Die Grünen (the German Greens) irrupted into the Federal Parliament in 1983.

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Unfortunately, Die Grünen became split in two main factions. The fundamentalist or fundi, which we would currently call degrowther, would soon have to share the party with the self-called realists or realos, closer to what we currently call green capitalism. Fundis went under pressure after an electoral defeat in 1990 (when the Greens did not share the general enthusiasm for a quick reunification of Germany, warning of the many problems that this would cause to East Germans, and focused their campaign on the then virtually unknown issue of climate change; paraphrasing the German Railways’ slogan Everyone is talking about the weather. We don’t, their slogan was Everyone is talking about Germany; we’re talking about the weather!; e.g., Jungjohann 2013). In a party congress in 1991, the fundis were defeated and left the party (see different views of this congress here and here). The end of the German Greens of the 1980s was rounded off with the death in 1992 of its most emblematic member, the fundi Petra Kelly.

After these events, the ideas, experiences and illusions of the early Grünen were forgotten almost completely. However, their spirit has never ceased to manifest itself in lots of grassroots initiatives. And, behind this veil of amnesia, there is a hidden treasure: the political programmes of the German Greens of that times. As described in a paper that Jorge Riechmann published in Ecología Política in 1994 (if you understand Spanish, this review is a must read), there was a conscious process of programmatic elaboration. It was carried out by the assemblies and representatives of the party all over West Germany, the many social movements where they had their roots, and hundreds of experts hired with the funds obtained from the presence of the party in the institutions. They envisioned, with much detail, how Die Grünen could foster a transition toward a socially fair degrowth.

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Even though Die Grünen had already moderated some of their positions before the upheaval of the early 1990s (Blühdorn 2009), the rich programmatic document on international economic policy elaborated between 1988 and 1990 still declares that “For us it is no longer international politics in the national interest but national politics in the international interest” (p. 7) and that “we should not hide the fact that our foreign economic guidelines could bring about a noticeable reduction in our current standard of living” (p. 93). Few current radical parties would dare to go so far.

I was appalled by the amnesia surrounding the early Grünen, which I noticed in many different ways, not least by failing to find some key programmatic documents with search engines. Taking advantage of a trip to Berlin to give a talk, I visited the historical archive of Die Grünen (run by the Heinrich Böll Foundation) and I photocopied some of these documents. I put them together with some other documents in this small repository.

By studying the early programmes of Die Grünen, the degrowth movement can save much effort and leap forward in the detail and quality of its political proposals. Like the protagonist of Groundhog Day, we can also learn from that past to avoid a repetition of the same story.

This is just the beginning. I hope that this (or some other) repository will be enriched with more programmatic documents and with translations.

Salvador Pueyo is a scientist and an activist. He holds a PhD from the Dept. of Ecology of the University of Barcelona, and has worked at research institutions in several countries. He applies complexity science to macroecology, macroeconomics and global change. He is a member of Research & Degrowth.

The two images in this article were found in the document, “Gegen arbeitslosigkeit und Socialabbau: Sinnvoll arbeiten – solidarisch leben” by Die Grünen.

Degrowth in Detroit?

 

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by Seth Schindler

Speculative lending practices and the securitization of sub-prime mortgages were largely to blame for the 2008 financial crisis. The crisis was particularly severe in cities where the lack of liquidity in the financial system made it difficult for municipal governments to respond to the wave of foreclosures and resultant shrinking tax bases. With the worst of the crisis seemingly behind us it is time to reflect on its long-term impact on American cities.

Perhaps the most extreme example of a city in crisis is Detroit. The city’s beleaguered finances proved to be no match for the global economic meltdown and in 2013 Detroit filed for bankruptcy. This part of the story is well known, but much less attention has been paid to the vision of Detroit’s future development around which a consensus among local elites coalesced in the year-and-a-half since its declaration of bankruptcy.

While this plan retains some elements of out-of-the-box urban development programs, it dispenses with a growth-based strategy geared toward rejuvenating the city’s manufacturing base. Instead, it recognizes the likelihood of further economic decline and its emphasis is on improving the quality of life of Detroit residents, economic diversification and environmental sustainability.

In order to understand the willingness of policy makers in Detroit to relinquish the dream of returning to a golden era of Fordist manufacturing it is necessary to put the 2008 crisis in context. Like many American cities, Detroit is a casualty of the prolonged economic crisis that began in the 1970s. Auto manufacturers relocated production facilities to southern states and then overseas in an attempt to outflank organized labour and to counter a falling rate of return. The collapse of Detroit’s manufacturing base left the city’s finances in tatters, and policy makers responded by embracing market-oriented solutions that were in fashion in the 1980s.

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There was a broad shift in the United States during the 1980s, in which the primary function of municipal government went from managing day-to-day service delivery to fostering economic growth. To this end “growth coalitions” emerged in many cities. These coalitions practiced “growth machine politics” aimed to augment land value and attracted inward investment. Public bodies assumed risk for large-scale urban development projects while private firms reaped the financial rewards.

This led to a perception among investors that municipal bonds were safe investments that offered lucrative rewards, so when Detroit’s municipal government sought to make up for its shrinking tax base by issuing bonds there was no shortage of willing investors. By 2012 Detroit’s deficit stood at $326 million while its tax base and population continued to shrink.

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The textbook response to crisis in many cities has been to intensify neoliberal policies. Thus, when growth coalitions failed to attract investment or augment land value, the response has oftentimes been to offer even more favourable terms to investors while cutting back on services. This has led many scholars and activists to despair that while neoliberalism is the cause of the current crisis it is also perversely embraced as its solution.

Many municipalities have indeed imposed fiscal austerity since the onset of the financial crisis as a means of attracting investment. Some of these cities may have fundamentally sound finances, and policy makers may view fiscal austerity as a short-term detour aimed at calming skittish investors. According to this reasoning the pain caused by austerity will be offset in the near future once the growth coalition is able to resume a cycle of development and growth.

In the case of Detroit this optimism would have most certainly be misplaced because even the most aggressive version of fiscal austerity would not have reversed the city’s decades-long decline. This begs an obvious question: Why should a city endure the pain of austerity if further decline is inevitable from the outset?

Detroit’s elites decided that, while austerity was in the best interest of extra-local creditors, it also promised to make life even more difficult for residents, and they decided to repudiate the city’s debt and take the historic step of declaring bankruptcy. By freeing the city of its debt burden, bankruptcy has allowed Detroit’s future to be re-envisioned.

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A coalition among Detroit elites coalesced around this emergent vision, which is based on creative land-use, environmental sustainability and economic diversification. It is articulated in a 345-page document entitled Detroit Future City (DFC). It reads like a master plan and focuses on five “planning elements”: economic growth, land use, city systems, neighbourhoods, and land and buildings assets.

Unlike entrepreneurial urban policies whose time horizons are measured in quarters and election cycles, DFC aims to rejuvenate Detroit’s economy in the course of the next five decades. The first step is to make the city liveable in order to stem the tide of out-migration, and to this end the plan calls for investments in neighbourhoods. Residents in neighbourhoods characterized by high levels of abandonment are encouraged to relocate to neighbourhoods with high population densities. Fordist manufacturing is rejected in favour of economic diversity, the single-family detached home is rejected in favour of densely populated diverse neighbourhoods, and in a major shift for the Motor City the plan envisions an efficient public transportation network. Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the DFC is “the re-imagination and reuse of vacant land for productive uses or, where there is excess vacant land, returning it to an ecologically and environmentally sustainable state.” The emphasis on sustainable land use is a significant departure from growth machine politics aimed at augmenting land value.

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It is too early to tell whether the vision articulated in the DFC will be realized or if it will indeed guide policy for the next fifty years. Nevertheless, it is important to note that bankruptcy gave Detroit the opportunity to chart a new path. I refer to this as degrowth machine politics because it takes the further shrinking of Detroit’s economy for granted, and rather than placate creditors policy makers are focused on improving the quality of life for city residents.

The concept “degrowth” is not new but it has historically been used primarily by activists and scholars because politicians do not win elections by campaigning for shrinking the economy. This is changing since the onset of the financial crisis because there are many places in which degrowth simply seems to be a reality that cannot be reversed by fiscal austerity.

For example, elements of degrowth are beginning to enter mainstream policy discourse in southern Europe. Voters in Greece recently rejected fiscal austerity, and the concept has begun to enter mainstream discourse elsewhere in southern Europe. In the United Kingdom the Scottish National Party has chided mainstream political parties – and most notably the Labour Party – for not repudiating austerity.

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Thus, it is possible that we could see the emergence of other degrowth machine political coalitions, and this provides an answer for the pressing question: What comes after neoliberalism? The transition to degrowth is not a linear advancement to a new political system based on purportedly universal ideology. Instead it is a mixture of locally adapted policies whose coherence lies in their intended outcomes rather than ideological underpinnings. The objective is to simply do more with less and thereby improve the quality of life, and this will oftentimes (1) reduce the quantity of resources used and (2) put localities – and local elites who were hitherto part of multi-scaler growth coalitions with extra-local financiers – at odds with their creditors whose main priority is protecting their investment.

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Detroit may provide lessons for degrowth coalitions elsewhere. First and foremost, Detroit demonstrates that the intensification of fiscal austerity is not the only response available to policy makers faced with an economic crisis. In spite of declaring bankruptcy Detroit was not punished by creditors. On the contrary, the repudiation of debt transformed Detroit into an attractive destination for investors. For example, Goldman Sachs launched an initiative to invest $20 million in Detroit’s small businesses. Quite simply, an institution that is unburdened by debt seems like a better investment than one that cannot hope to repay its debt without the support of a guarantor (in this case the State of Michigan).

The reason why Detroit is able to attract investment is because its degrowth machine politics has clearly articulated an innovative plan for the city’s future. Thus, the rejection of austerity for austerity’s sake must be accompanied by a clear set of policies aimed at managing decline in a way that makes cities more liveable. In other words, the repudiation of debt should not be understood as a strategy to attract capital from different investors, but to rework with relationship with all investors so that any inward capital is leveraged toward the realization of a sustainable and equitable future.

 

Seth Schindler is a lecturer in human geography at the University of Sheffield.

Putting a pig on the tracks

A pig eating an old car, from the film Black Cat White Cat
A pig eating an old car, from the film Black Cat White Cat

La versión castellano está disponible aquí.

by Giorgos Kallis

Sustainable development and its more recent reincarnation, green growth, promise the impossible goal of perpetuating economic growth without harming the environment. Degrowthers argue that economic change is not about implementing better or greener development. It is about imagining and enacting alternative visions to modern growth-based development.

Degrowth unsettles the commonsensical gaze which sees growth as good. To quote Ursula Le Guin, the intention is to “put a pig on the tracks of a one-way future consisting only of growth.” Or, in other words, degrowth is a “missile concept” to open up a debate silenced by the “sustainable development” consensus.

Here I will respond to five common  critiques of Degrowth, which I hope can clarify and advance the case for the concept . For a detailed explanation of Degrowth, you can read our book here or a set of policy proposals derived from our book here.

1. Degrowth is subversive 

The first critique is that degrowth signifies a limited and negative viewpoint;  a nightmare, rather than a dream. This depends on the eyes of the beholder. For the 3,500 participants in the latest degrowth conference, growth is a living nightmare and degrowth, the dream. Growth has more social costs than benefits, as Herman Daly has documented. It brings us closer to climate disaster, as Kevin Anderson and Naomi Klein show. Then why do we still have to protect it as a positive vision?

For two reasons. The first is that degrowth scares many people who still think that growth is good. The second is that degrowth will be impossible to implement in a system that is against it. Well, if our role as scientists and educators were to please the public opinion and cater to the powers that be, then the earth would still be flat. Degrowth, as Serge Latouche puts it, is an atheist claim against the god of Growth. Growth has substituted for religion in modern societies, providing meaning to all collective endeavours. Degrowth is intentionally subversive; it inverts what is seen as good and what as bad. “Degrowth” initially may not sound nice in this or that language. The point is to make it sound nice. If I judge by a recent article in The Guardian, which argues that degrowth is a “cute word,” then we are succeeding.

Degrowth is not an ultimate objective. “Sharing,” “commons,” or “conviviality” are positive visions used by the degrowth community. Yet if these futures are to come, they will come with a dramatic reduction of material and energy throughput and a radically “simpler way” of living. The fixation with Growth is the main obstacle to a Great Transition. Overcoming the fear of degrowth, and turning the grief of living with less into joy, is a first step.

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2. Fewer of the bad things + more of the good ones = Degrowth

The second criticism is that it is not growth per se that is bad, but the current un-economic growth. Care, renewables, and organically-grown food will need to grow in a Great Transition; we need “fewer of the ‘bad’ things…and more of the ‘good’ things,” as one commentator has argued. Who would disagree? Problems start when what we think is good, others think is bad. Liberalism, embodied in consensual notions such as “sustainability,” professes an apolitical neutrality to competing interests. Degrowth, instead, is a partisan claim: these things that typically count as “Growth” (highways, bridges, armies, dams) are bad for “us” degrowthers. Things that are considered anachronisms in the arrow of progress—communal institutions, fresh local food, small cooperatives, or windmills—are good. Perhaps degrowth is an imperfect term for signaling this. Still, it is better than neutral terms like “sustainability,” or “transition”.
Another problem with “the good things argument” is that it is couched in growth terms. 2% annual growth doubles a “thing” every 35 years. If Egypt started with one cubic metre of possessions and grew them by 4.5% per year, by the end of its 3,000-year civilization, it would need 2.5 billion solar systems to store its stuff. Perpetual growth, even of organic food, is an absurdity. It is time to abandon the idiom of growth and focus on good things that need to flourish to a quantity and quality sufficient for satisfying basic needs.

I doubt that transitioning to a “good things” economy could sustain growth.  But if  it could, then it would  mean that absolute decoupling—whereby the growth of economic activity continues and resource use declines—would be possible, as Paul Krugman has recently argued. Let me list three reasons why this is unlikely.

First, a renewable economy will produce less energy surplus (energy return on energy investment) than the fossil fuel economy. An economy with lower energy surpluses will be more labor-intensive, and hence smaller.
Second, a static, disaggregated snapshot of the economy is misleading. It might appear that more GDP from renewables, education, and health and less from the military will equal net GDP growth. This is wrong. Solar panels, hospitals, or university labs are end-products in long chains utilizing primary and intermediate inputs that are energy and resource-intensive. With the danger of overstretching my examples, Britain’s emblematic National Health Service was subsidized by oil secured with arms through the Suez.
Third, a transition from, say, a resource-intensive economy of SUVs to a “weightless” economy of Priuses and Kindles would reduce throughput, but only for a while. Once the transition is complete, any further growth of the Prius-Kindle economy, however resource-light, will still grow throughput. In other words, even if we attempt to ‘grow’ our supply of Priuses, we will still need to increase material and energy use.

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There is definitely room for empirical work here. I am willing to consider that a shift to “more good things” may increase GDP, especially if we devise and count a ‘greener’ GDP. I would like to be even more agnostic: I agree that we should simply ‘ignore GDP’, doing “more good things” independent of whatever effect they might have on GDP.

The problem however is that the current system is not “agnostic”. Without GDP growth it collapses (witness Greece). And the vested interests that govern the system are dead against falls in GDP (witness the reaction to climate regulation by lobbies or conservative forums such as ‘the Club for Growth‘ in the U.S).

In other words, we cannot afford to be agnostic in a system that does depend on GDP growth: we have to actively change the institutions of the system so that it no longer depends on GDP growth. We need new institutions to make the inevitable degrowth socially stable and sustainable.

GDM
3. Beyond GDP means beyond Growth

The third critique is that the problem is GDP, not growth. If we could only measure the goods an economy provides, say “massages,” and count out the bads, say “oil spills,” then there would be no reason not to want growth.
First, perpetual growth, of whatever, even of a “perfected ” GDP, is an absurd objective. I do not look forward to an Earth with people frantically giving enough massages to satisfy 2.5 billion solar systems. Quantifying success through a set of reliable indicators is one thing, but demanding that they grow perpetually will always be a pointless undertaking.
Second, GDP counts what counts for the current economic system: capital circulation, whatever its source. The decision of the EU to count drugs and prostitution in GDP, but not unpaid care work, is illustrative. GDP counts total monetized value. This is what feeds corporate profits and public coffers, and this is what governments want to secure and stabilize. The metric is an epiphenomenon; it is the result of the social system, not its cause. This is why GDP persists despite criticisms from prominent economists.
Many argue that mainstream economics with its reductionist obsession with maximizing a homogeneous quantity called utility (aka “money”) is part of the problem. I would go further. The emergence and entrenchment of the neoclassical orthodoxy has to be situated within its social context: the triumph, first, of growthism and, then, of neoliberalism. Maximizing money is what the system cares about. As Serge Latouche puts it—tellingly, if somewhat exaggeratedly—”economists are the priests of the religion of growth.” A different type of economics will be part and parcel of a transition to a different social system.

"We" need to degrow so that "Southern" cosmologies and political alternatives can flourish. Source: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/30/yasuni-campaigners-oil-drilling-petition-results-referendum
“We” need to degrow so that “Southern” cosmologies and political alternatives can flourish. Source: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/30/yasuni-campaigners-oil-drilling-petition-results-referendum

4. “We” should degrow, but not so that “they” grow.

It is often argued that degrowth is irrelevant for the great part of the world still living in poverty. The argument is that while “we” (wealthy, overfed Northerners) may have to degrow, “they” (poor, underfed Southerners) still want and need to grow. This is the most powerful discourse that perpetuates the ideology of growthism. It has to be discarded.
We all—to some degree, or at some periods—feel like “Southerners.” My Greek compatriots tell me degrowth is not for us, for we are now poor and in crisis. The 99% in the US has good reasons to believe that it is the 1% that has to degrow so that it can grow. Even when millionaires are surveyed on how much money they need in order to feel economically secure, they typically state twice what they already have, irrespective of their actual income. Positional comparisons drive and perpetuate the quest for growth. Economic insecurity, at all levels of income, makes everyone run faster and faster so as not to fall. And economic crises, when standards of living suddenly fall and insecurity intensifies, are the moments where the quest for growth reappears most forcefully, as a progressive cause this time. There will never be a time for degrowth.
The people on this planet, perhaps a majority, who lack access to basic goods, such as water or public health, deserve them, and this might entail higher energy and resource use. This need not be couched though in the absurd terms of growth. It is a matter of redistribution and sufficiency. “We” need to degrow so that “Southern” cosmologies and political alternatives closer to the spirit of sufficiency (such as Sumak Kawsay or Ubuntu) can flourish. Southern alternatives are colonized intellectually by developmentalism and materially through the extractive industries that in the name of growth bring destruction and poverty.
I propose the same logic for countries in economic crisis. We do not need to grow our way out of economic crisis in Greece. We need to come up with alternative models of sufficiency rooted in Greek tradition, materialized into institutions that will let us prosper without growth.
I am wary of those talking in the name of others reminding me that unlike what I—an elite intellectual—think, “poor people” (sic) dream of plasma TVs and Ferraris and we can’t deny them their dreams. Most people that I know, including myself, do indeed have materialistic dreams: our positional societies force those on us if we are to remain its dignified and secured members. Fortunately, we also have a longing for a simpler life, for community, friendship, and many other needs that collide with the imaginary of growth. The question is how to change social structures and institutional contexts so that it is these latter aspirations that come to be fulfilled and not our worst acquisitive desires.

"Capitalism can sell many things, but it can't sell less." -George Monbiot
“Capitalism can sell many things, but it can’t sell less.” -George Monbiot

5. A transition beyond growth is a transition beyond capitalism

Capitalism is an ensemble of property, financial, and exchange institutions that create relentless competition, forcing enterprises to grow or die. The surpluses generated by this dynamic are constantly reinvested into further growth. A society without growth may still have markets, forms of private property, or money. But as Edward and Robert Skidelsky argue, an economic system which does not grow and in which capital no longer accumulates is no longer capitalism, whatever one might want to call it. Property, credit, or employment institutions will have to be reconfigured in radical ways so to make the system stable without growth. Proposals such as a basic citizen’s income or the public control of money are such radical reforms.
Benign enterprises such as Mondragon or Novo Nordisk, which combine economic with social and environmental considerations are rare exceptions for a reason. In a capitalist economy, the bottom line is profit. Environmental and social concerns can be accommodated by few players who can increase their market share by cashing on socially-responsible consumers. As George Monbiot put it, “capitalism can sell many things, but it can’t sell less.”
If the corporation signifies the globalized growth economy, the sharing cooperative is the emblem of a localized, degrowth economy. In an economy that will no longer grow, worker or consumer cooperatives, which do not depend on perpetually growing profits, have a natural advantage. Of course, not all sharing enterprises have features that make them apt for a degrowth transition. I distinguish the sharing economy from the “rental economy” of AirBnB and similar capitalistic corporations, which, however innovative, reproduces rent-seeking and the dynamics of perpetual surplus creation.

In conclusion

It is appropriate here to invoke Tim Jackson’s dictum that “growth is environmentally unsustainable, but degrowth is socially unstable.” Curiously, this dictum is often invoked against degrowth, insisting on a one-way future where we will make growth sustainable, by a technological, or social miracle. Adherents of this techno-paradise often appeal to innovations like smart housing, hydroponics, robotics, fusion, and supercomputers. Count me out. The point is that such a future is unsustainable, unnecessary, and undesirable (at least by those of us who consider ourselves proponents of degrowth ). Technological fixes shift costs to others, to the environment, and to future generations, at an ever-grander scale. Climate change is the legacy of our past technological achievements. I read Tim Jackson differently. Given that further growth is unsustainable, we have to bring forward the systemic and institutional changes that will make degrowth stable.

 

Giorgos Kallis is an ecological economist, political ecologist, and professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Barcelona. He is the coordinator of the European Network of Political Ecology and editor of the book Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. His research is motivated by a quest to cross conceptual divides between the social and the natural domains, with particular focus on the political-economic roots of environmental degradation and its uneven distribution along lines of power, income, and class.