German goals to cut greenhouse emissions by 65% by 2030 are likely to be missed, meaning a longer-term net zero by a 2045 target is also in doubt, reports by government climate advisers and the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) show.
David Graeber wrote a great book called Bullshit Jobs that examines how many jobs really are effectively useless. This is enormously wasteful. We could easily reorganize labor to supply enough food and keep people employed. Jobs don’t just exist, they are created, and they are created in accordance with economic frameworks being used. To focus on jobs separate from the deleterious industry that commands them - instead of programs aimed to support communities - is to zoom in so much as to not be able to address the factors that are fundamentally contributing toward ecological collapse. The reality is that a capitalist economy aiming for infinite growth will not manage fossil fuels in a way that will restrict their use in a manner that is best for the long-term survival of life on Earth. This alone calls for examination of how to better utilize the labor force - both because it could be better employed to our benefit, but also because it as actively harmful at present.
A simple way to look at it is this: There is a metric called Earth’s Energy Imbalance. It measures how much extra energy is being added to our environment. If we have on climate change metric to look at in summary of all others, this is the simple but important one. We need to bring that number down. Unfortunately, every Funko Pop that is made and sold adds to that number. And someone who can be made happy by a Funko Pop can be made happy by something with a much smaller footprint, that isn’t made out of fossil fuels and shipped around the world. Every labor and industrial action we take that is unnecessary, is unnecessarily adding to the EEI. When we start looking at what we can optimize regarding the EEI, we find that what we have most control over and what is causing the most significant effect, we see our own industry on the cutting board. That’s what degrowth is about.
The goal of most degrowth support is to make it as likely as possible that any of humanity will survive, or failing to do so, to preserve a world that is as suitable as possible for other ecosystems to endure. Reducing the EEI is the best we can do to that end. It is 100% about avoiding death and tragedy. I don’t have kids, but there are kids in my family and I care about them very much. It pains me to think of what is in store for them - especially because we have known what we needed to do for so long. We just needed to reorganize our labor.
And how, exactly, do you expect to institute this proposal over the objections of the rich? Every previous attempt to do something like this, like the communist revolutions in Russia and China, ended up killing millions of people and accomplishing nothing of virtue, because the rich retained power and forcibly twisted the new post-revolution economy into something even worse than capitalism.
This plea to business-as-usual is the real call for omnicide in the discussion. This is exactly what I was referring to by projection. We both accept the premise that this path is not sustainable - but I am the only one calling for us to hit the breaks before impact, and you are the one attacking me because it invalidates your narrative that we should do nothing.
To answer your question I have largely given up on activism in recent years because it is too late to save most things - like I said, we needed certain changes, but we failed to enact them. However, the equation has not changed in terms of the problem or the solution. Yet we are still accelerating further and further from the solution.
But I still do what I asked of others: I reduce my footprint and encourage others to do the same, make lifestyle choices that are in line with my morals of compassion and communal welfare, build local dual power, support workers’ rights and economic equality initiatives, support my community, make myself available as a confidante for antinatalist-oriented conversations, study climate and agricultural science, cultivate a variety of plants to restore the soil health where I live, and teach others to grow/harvest/forage. I do my small part in reducing local overshoot. And although what I do has a very small effect, it would be a very significant effect if more people cared for each other and practiced a similar lifestyle.
There are other ways to pursue degrowth, including running for office and working towards things like ending harmful subsidies, but I personally am too burnt out to continue on in that capacity.
Capitalism’s death toll in the next 50 years (likely decades sooner) is going to increase by billions. And we know it, those who study this can see it as clear as day. I understand that not everything is perfect, but the science is pretty clear that capitalism is killing us. Dying for Funko Pops - and pretending it’s the fault of the people trying to point it out!
So, you propose that I live in a state of perpetual nausea from eating nothing but horrid-tasting, questionably-nutritious, plant-based “food” instead of actual food, and then die in the apocalypse anyway? No thanks. Civilization is done for, living in it is miserable enough already, and I am not interested in sacrificing what few shreds of happiness remain in order to accomplish basically nothing.
The only way to avert the coming disaster is decisive, mandatory action from the top of society on down, and that obviously isn’t going to happen, so the best I can realistically hope for is to live it up and be dead before it gets really ugly.
But I still do what I asked of others: I reduce my footprint
Not as much as you could. You still live in shelter, use electricity, exhale carbon, eat carbon-absorbing plants, and excrete methane. Humanity’s very existence is driving global warming. There is no escape.
support workers’ rights
running for office
working towards things like ending harmful subsidies
None of these things are going to happen. The rich will string you up by the toenails before they let you derail their gravy train, and your fellow proles will cheer as they do it. That’s why we’re doomed: powerful people are enforcing our doom, and everyone else worships them.
You should realize that you’re preaching to the choir. If you agree with my outlook on collapse, then why did you pop up to attack me? If you realize what is coming then you realize that our trajectory is the omnicide. Again, I can only imagine that you feel obligated to attack the countercultural in order to relieve discomfort from condoning the mainstream through projection. This whole conversation is a bit absurd to be honest.
You do you, and I’ll do me. I know I’m not making significant change. At best I might save a cactus species for another few decades - hardly a win in the big picture. But I feel fine about my life and that’s all I ask for. I hope you feel the same about yours.
Degrowth means job loss. Job loss means no income. No income means no food. No food means starvation.
David Graeber wrote a great book called Bullshit Jobs that examines how many jobs really are effectively useless. This is enormously wasteful. We could easily reorganize labor to supply enough food and keep people employed. Jobs don’t just exist, they are created, and they are created in accordance with economic frameworks being used. To focus on jobs separate from the deleterious industry that commands them - instead of programs aimed to support communities - is to zoom in so much as to not be able to address the factors that are fundamentally contributing toward ecological collapse. The reality is that a capitalist economy aiming for infinite growth will not manage fossil fuels in a way that will restrict their use in a manner that is best for the long-term survival of life on Earth. This alone calls for examination of how to better utilize the labor force - both because it could be better employed to our benefit, but also because it as actively harmful at present.
A simple way to look at it is this: There is a metric called Earth’s Energy Imbalance. It measures how much extra energy is being added to our environment. If we have on climate change metric to look at in summary of all others, this is the simple but important one. We need to bring that number down. Unfortunately, every Funko Pop that is made and sold adds to that number. And someone who can be made happy by a Funko Pop can be made happy by something with a much smaller footprint, that isn’t made out of fossil fuels and shipped around the world. Every labor and industrial action we take that is unnecessary, is unnecessarily adding to the EEI. When we start looking at what we can optimize regarding the EEI, we find that what we have most control over and what is causing the most significant effect, we see our own industry on the cutting board. That’s what degrowth is about.
The goal of most degrowth support is to make it as likely as possible that any of humanity will survive, or failing to do so, to preserve a world that is as suitable as possible for other ecosystems to endure. Reducing the EEI is the best we can do to that end. It is 100% about avoiding death and tragedy. I don’t have kids, but there are kids in my family and I care about them very much. It pains me to think of what is in store for them - especially because we have known what we needed to do for so long. We just needed to reorganize our labor.
And how, exactly, do you expect to institute this proposal over the objections of the rich? Every previous attempt to do something like this, like the communist revolutions in Russia and China, ended up killing millions of people and accomplishing nothing of virtue, because the rich retained power and forcibly twisted the new post-revolution economy into something even worse than capitalism.
This plea to business-as-usual is the real call for omnicide in the discussion. This is exactly what I was referring to by projection. We both accept the premise that this path is not sustainable - but I am the only one calling for us to hit the breaks before impact, and you are the one attacking me because it invalidates your narrative that we should do nothing.
To answer your question I have largely given up on activism in recent years because it is too late to save most things - like I said, we needed certain changes, but we failed to enact them. However, the equation has not changed in terms of the problem or the solution. Yet we are still accelerating further and further from the solution.
But I still do what I asked of others: I reduce my footprint and encourage others to do the same, make lifestyle choices that are in line with my morals of compassion and communal welfare, build local dual power, support workers’ rights and economic equality initiatives, support my community, make myself available as a confidante for antinatalist-oriented conversations, study climate and agricultural science, cultivate a variety of plants to restore the soil health where I live, and teach others to grow/harvest/forage. I do my small part in reducing local overshoot. And although what I do has a very small effect, it would be a very significant effect if more people cared for each other and practiced a similar lifestyle.
There are other ways to pursue degrowth, including running for office and working towards things like ending harmful subsidies, but I personally am too burnt out to continue on in that capacity.
Capitalism’s death toll in the next 50 years (likely decades sooner) is going to increase by billions. And we know it, those who study this can see it as clear as day. I understand that not everything is perfect, but the science is pretty clear that capitalism is killing us. Dying for Funko Pops - and pretending it’s the fault of the people trying to point it out!
So, you propose that I live in a state of perpetual nausea from eating nothing but horrid-tasting, questionably-nutritious, plant-based “food” instead of actual food, and then die in the apocalypse anyway? No thanks. Civilization is done for, living in it is miserable enough already, and I am not interested in sacrificing what few shreds of happiness remain in order to accomplish basically nothing.
The only way to avert the coming disaster is decisive, mandatory action from the top of society on down, and that obviously isn’t going to happen, so the best I can realistically hope for is to live it up and be dead before it gets really ugly.
Not as much as you could. You still live in shelter, use electricity, exhale carbon, eat carbon-absorbing plants, and excrete methane. Humanity’s very existence is driving global warming. There is no escape.
None of these things are going to happen. The rich will string you up by the toenails before they let you derail their gravy train, and your fellow proles will cheer as they do it. That’s why we’re doomed: powerful people are enforcing our doom, and everyone else worships them.
You should realize that you’re preaching to the choir. If you agree with my outlook on collapse, then why did you pop up to attack me? If you realize what is coming then you realize that our trajectory is the omnicide. Again, I can only imagine that you feel obligated to attack the countercultural in order to relieve discomfort from condoning the mainstream through projection. This whole conversation is a bit absurd to be honest.
You do you, and I’ll do me. I know I’m not making significant change. At best I might save a cactus species for another few decades - hardly a win in the big picture. But I feel fine about my life and that’s all I ask for. I hope you feel the same about yours.