Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

Product Information

There was some cherry picking of evidence to feed a narrative regarding social welfare programs but to my knowledge the cherry picking was minimal and the arguments were convincing regardless. This forced them to serve as a source for raw materials and an important market for mass-produced goods.

Daar wringt het schoentje toch wat: directe democratie is allemaal goed en wel, maar in deze gepolariseerde maatschappij waar macht vaak corrupt is kan ik me niet voorstellen dat deze noodzakelijke snelle en wereldwijde overgang zonder slag of stoot zou kunnen gebeuren, of zonder dat totalitaire leiders zich hier en daar in het machtsvacuüm wringen. ways of thinking that are assumed to be truisms but are at the heart of most of the crises and injustices we see today. Negative emissions technology: NET (and BECCS, in particular) is included in the IPCC’s scenarios for carbon drawdown, but the technology doesn’t even exist yet. The baseline is reset and we start off anew, with the goal of squeezing in even more output into the same amount of time.Hickel’s logic is that everything is interconnected; therefore, we cannot analyze the world or our existing systems through a reductionist lens. When I was reading about why capitalism is destructive for the world (climate change, the sixth extinction) there is always a "but"? I was hoping to have that dealt with coherently, and have explained how there are other ways, better ways, fairer ways to get that prosperity and wellbeing. With just the tiniest sliver of today’s population, they wiped out over 3/4 of the biomass of all the large animals in North America, South America, and Australia (a fact which Hickel, to his credit, acknowledges).

It is perhaps well enough that the people of the nation do not know or understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. In Eastern philosophy, the Axial Age produced the Buddha whose “Son’s Flesh Sutra” Hickel quotes with approval in his Acknowledgments. We all deserve clean air, clean water, healthy soil, a healthy ecosystem, and access to public programs such as education, housing, healthcare, food, and anything else that is simply a fucking basic human right. It’s a rare political economist who can tease hope from the abundance of data around planetary collapse. By modern standards these ancient empires were not exactly apostles of nonviolence, but compared to the “constant battles” that came before, they were an important step forward, and everyday life became much less violent.Our society has bought into the myth that the economy of human society must constantly grow to be successful. De eerste helft is een uiteenzetting van wat tegelijkertijd als een totale open deur als als een revolutionair verhaal. The Axial Age thinkers are our friends; the problem is the earlier and more violent culture against which the Axial Age reacted. Capitalism has robbed us of our ability to even imagine something different; Less is More gives us the ability to not only dream of another world, but also the tools by which we can make that vision real. Well, I’m sad to say that they’re not going to do that, and we’ve got 500 years of history to prove it.

Although decoupling is sometimes talked about within the environmental community as a feasible solution, many scholars have debunked it. Even when Pollin considers “degrowth” of GDP, his progressive reformism barely registers as he compares this with economic crises which also “degrow” GDP! The author very convincingly argues for a just society by reducing excess consumption by those who have over-consumed for too long, to get us out of the climate and ecological crisis. e. infant/women's health, reproductive rights, education, and of course overall improved living standards. However, it seems to spend more time positing a concept of an idyllic past where humans were happy and at one with nature.Marx’s M-C-M’ (Money invested into Commodity production for the goal of more Money) representing capitalist production's logic in contrast to pre-capitalist market exchange C-M-C (Commodity exchanged via Money for another Commodity). For years, I (and many others, I suspect) have been reacting to this tug the same way: Saying Yeah, something is wrong here and then continuing to go about my day.