We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

No Climate Protection without Climate Justice; No Climate Justice without Degrowth

Click here to access article by Christiane Kliemann from degrowth (Germany).

And as the German author apparently argues, there can be no "degrowth" without ending the capitalist system and rule by capitalists.
To be able to successfully develop a different type of growth, the countries of the South will require their fair share of the global resources and emissions – which must be much more than the leftovers of the rich North. By consequence the Global North will have to drastically reduce its emissions and resource exploitation. This is, however, impossible within the framework of continuous capitalist economic growth. ....

...we can’t simply rely on technological progress without overhauling the whole economic, social and political environment this progress is embedded in. As many examples in history show, purely technological solutions tend to relocate their negative effects to other sectors, ecosystems or continents, or from the present to the future.
However, I'm not so sure she means this. Maybe like Naomi Klein she thinks that we can simply regulate capitalism better so that we don't have continuous growth.