Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The coming decade is arguably the most important in human history, especially as relates to climate and the environment. The status quo – of a planetary emergency and deep inequalities – is unsustainable and insupportable. Strategies for extending democratic public ownership over the commanding heights of the twenty-first century economy can open up a more innovative, sustainable, and inclusive futur
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.
The key problem is economic growth on a finite planet – with critical limits at both the resources and the sinks end of the chain – in addition to the internal contradictions of the (can I say “capitalist”?) economy.
Adding aspirational adjectives to growth, “inclusive”, “green”, “smart” …. doesn’t change the basic reality.
Emergencies tend to reveal our true priorities. When our house is burning down or the storm waters are flooding in, we hold on to what we value most, and leave the rest behind.
It’s time to swim perpendicular to the tide, time to become a real citizen, and time to practice democracy like my life depends on it, because it does. And start off in this new direction through a one year life experiment I’m calling The Year of Living Locally, which I’ll blog here on Shareable.net.
Few books have had the scale of impact on me as this one. It took me 5 days to read and revealed a world that was completely unexpected and quite new. Zuboff is aware that what she writes is about something novel and unprecedented. It is unlike what has gone before. That is what makes us vulnerable.
A nationalized money supply would transform government spending into the monetary creation mechanism and embed justice and sustainability as hallmarks of how we manage our national economy.
It’s much too early to predict the outcome of the November balloting—but is it too late to be worrying about the Democrats blowing themselves up before they have a chance of blowing the election?
Should Democrats mortally wound themselves during the nominating process and lose to Trump in November, any chance for aggressive federal climate action will be lost for at least the next decade.
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.
We, representatives of 45 indigenous peoples in Brazil, more than 600 participants, were summoned by chief Raoni to meet between January 14 and 18, 2020 in the village Piaraçu (Terra Indígena Capoto Jarina), with the objective of bringing together our forces and denounce that a political project of the Brazilian government of genocide, ethnocide and ecocide is underway.
The biosphere and econosphere are deeply interlinked and both are in crisis. Industrial, fossil-fuel based capitalism delivered major increases in living standards from the mid-18th through late-20th centuries, but at the cost of widespread ecosystem destruction, planetary climate change, and a variety of economic injustices.
This essay reflects on these questions, firstly by considering how fossil fuel use has grown to unsustainable levels through history; then, by highlighting the disastrous failure of the international climate talks process; and, finally, by arguing that a transition away from fossil fuels means changing not only the technological systems that use them, but also the social and economic systems in which they are embedded.
