degrowth webinar this Thursday

https://www.resilience.org/events/?mc_cid=c0a5a89ed3&mc_eid=55de1a3fed

Degrowth for a New Generation

October 26, 2023 | 1:00pm ET (online event)

* * * *

The concept of degrowth is catching on … slowly but surely.

What’s really meant, in an overarching way, is:
. undo
. back off
. deconstruct
. U-Turn
. change direction

duh

* * * *

Some people think it should involve reduction of population. I do. I wrote about that in the last issue of Green Horizon. Some leftists get all a-flutter about that, saying the idea will become a basis for capitalist austerity and eco-fascism. In the forthcoming Green Horizon David Schwartzman tells me that development will alleviate the too-many-babies problem and socialist redistribution will enable nine billion humans to live satisfactorily, with social and ecological sustainability. I respond:

David Schwartzman advocates more development, assailing how “Cuban citizens consume significantly less energy per capita than is necessary to achieve the highest world standard life expectancy.” And in his accompanying Note #4: “The present primary energy consumption level consistent with the highest achievable life expectancy is at minimum 3 kW/person. The primary energy consumption level in Cuba corresponds to 1.096 kW/person.”

This is reflective of a typical thought process of a citizen of Western industrial modernity re: kilowatts-per-person as representative of progressive development. A leftist might add: How the kilowatts are used and how they’re distributed is of vital concern.

Nature to humanity: “You’re killing me. There’s too much stuff and there are too many people.”

Humanity replies: “We have a plan: Via expanded development we’ll level ourselves off at nine billion. We’ll redistribute kilowatts so that everyone can enjoy about 3. In addition, we’ll generate enough kilowatts to clean up our act and ameliorate the damage we’ve been doing.”

David is correct to note that it’s not possible to live well within industrial modernity without a lot of kilowatts-per-person. But perhaps we should view that requirement (that dependency) as a problem. A degrowther would say that it’s a misguided mindset is to keep striving for more kilowatts. It can lead to advocating for hyper-toxic nuclear energy, which could provide more with fewer carbon emissions. Greens should point out that the dynamics of More tend to lead toward the generalized hypertrophy which is crowding out habitat for All Our Relations (whether the means of production are owned privately or socially).

Yes, it might be technologically possible for the fabrication processes of industrialism to continue to increase material throughput. The global megamachine complex likely could feed nine billion people. But it takes what we call “development” of just about all the land mass and oceans; farming and resource exploitation just about everywhere; encroachment upon habitat just about everywhere; wild expanses smothered by solar arrays. All told: lifeways that are not very green.

Yes, extant social justice issues are immediate and primary, no doubt. But our praxis can simultaneously be informed by the long-range imperative of Edward Goldsmith’s “Great U-Turn.” And a seven-generations-forward perspective on social transformation can enable us to shift trajectories with gradualness and sensitivity.

I agree with David that we need an ecosocialist transition. It would open doors toward the ultimate creation of a society characterized by both social and ecological sustainability; a society based on an ethos of eco-communitarianism and decentralization. Within that context, population reduction could be a gradualistic process, part of an overall incremental downscaling toward re-localization, re-inhabitation, and the restoration of human scale . . . in all aspects.

Only revitalization of community life can enable the grassroots form of democracy Greens advocate. The kilowatt-consuming modern mega-states and megalopolises should be anathema to us. The former can’t possibly be egalitarian or deeply democratic. The latter are a manifestation of a pathologically atomized and alienated mass society. The Left needs to be more critical of the techno-institutional totality and recognize that there is too much urbanization, too much extraction, too much production, too much pollution, too much exploitation, too many people — and too little of what really provides life satisfaction.