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2024-05-09 12:00:14
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Bread and Circuses on Nostr: PART 2 — Excerpts from an article titled “A (Friendly) Critique of the Degrowth ...

PART 2 —

Excerpts from an article titled “A (Friendly) Critique of the Degrowth Movement”…
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Most people do not grasp the extent to which this society has become unsustainable. We have far exceeded the limits to growth. There is no possibility that current per capita levels of resource consumption in rich countries can be kept up for long. Only a few of the world’s people enjoy these living standards, and the rest can never rise to anything like them. This is the basic cause of our big global problems, including resource depletion, environmental damage, the deprivation of billions in the poor countries, and resource struggles.

There is a strong case that if we are to live in sustainable ways that all could share, rich world per capita rates of consumption must be reduced by 90%. The common response is the ‘tech-fix’ claim that technical advance will enable GDP growth to be ‘decoupled’ from resource and environmental impact. But there is now overwhelming evidence that, apart from some limited areas, this is not happening and is not going to happen. [See https://thesimplerway.info/DecouplingRefs.htm]

If GDP is increased, impacts increase. It is not possible to solve the biggest problems if we are determined to maintain present levels of consumption and production — the solution can only be found on the demand side; that is, by greatly reducing production and consumption.

A major cause of our predicament is that we have an economic system which must have growth and which allows the market and profit to determine what happens. As a result, what is produced, who gets it, and what is developed is determined by what is most profitable to the few who own most of the capital. The outcome is not determined by what is most needed. That is why 1% now own about half the world’s wealth, and the poor countries have been ‘developed’ into a form which ships their resources out to enrich corporations, while most people in even the richest countries struggle to get by.

The crucial point is that we have to shift to values and ways that enable all to live well on a very small fraction of the per capita resource and environmental impacts we in rich countries have now. We cannot achieve a sustainable way of life which all can share unless there is an enormous degrowth transition to far simpler lifestyles and systems.

The magnitude of the required degrowth is not sufficiently recognised within the movement. Nor are the implications for social change — because the current overshoot is so big that only change to extremely different lifestyles and systems can solve the global problems.
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Part 3 will follow soon.

Full article is here -- https://medium.com/postgrowth/a-friendly-critique-of-the-degrowth-movement-f0bd2297072d

#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Degrowth
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