Green growth vs degrowth: are we missing the point? (excerpt): Open Democracy

Gerd Altmann from Pixabay. Public domain.

"It’s time to stop talking past each other and unite against the real enemies of environmental justice.

By Beth Stratford. Originally published at openDemocracy

4 December 2020 

The row about ecological limits to growth is back with a vengeance. On one side are those who are deeply sceptical about the idea of ‘infinite growth on a finite planet’. They argue that to be sure of offering a good life for all within planetary boundaries, we need to kick our addiction to consumption growth (in wealthy countries at least). These ‘green growth sceptics’ include those advocating for ‘degrowth’, ‘prosperity without growth’, ‘steady state economics’, ‘doughnut economics’ and ‘wellbeing economics’.

In the opposite corner are ‘green growth’ advocates who believe that the historical relationship between GDP and environmental impact can be not just weakened but effectively severed. For green growthers, the key to maintaining a habitable planet is decoupling — reducing the environmental impact associated with each pound or dollar of GDP. By deploying new technologies, and shifting the nature of our consumption, they argue we can do our bit for the environment while continuing to grow our economies, even in wealthy countries.

Green growth sceptics do not dispute the need for decoupling, but observe that the faster we grow the faster we have to decouple. Even a modest goal like 2% growth per year implies doubling the scale of consumption every 35 years. Unfortunately, we have never approached the rates of decoupling that would be necessary for rich countries to get back within their fair share of ecological space while maintaining that kind of exponential growth.

Green growth advocates tend to respond that the historical record shouldn’t be taken as a guide to what is possible in future. Pessimism about future technological breakthroughs will be self-fulfilling, they say.

For some this is a compelling and entertaining debate. But it is not going to be settled in a timeframe that is useful for maintaining a habitable planet. In the meantime, these adversaries are in danger of delivering a major own goal. Because the more time we spend in nerdy (and sometimes venomous) exchanges about decoupling, the less time we have to build the broad-based movement we need to take on the vested interests who benefit from the status quo."

See complete article in openDemocracy

 Related: Photo & Video: Climate Justice Activists Conclude 24-Hour Occupation at Dnc, Demand President-Elect Biden Be Brave (excerpt): Common Dreams

 

degrowth, #economy, growth economy, green growth, 

 

Photo & Video: Climate Justice Activists Conclude 24-Hour Occupation at Dnc, Demand President-Elect Biden Be Brave (excerpt): Common Dreams

"WASHINGTON - A coalition of grassroots groups, Black, Indigenous, and Brown leaders from across the nation occupied the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in Washington for 24 hours to demand that President-Elect Biden and his administration follow through on a bold agenda to address the climate crisis. They were joined at an afternoon rally by members of Congress who are leading the effort in the House and Senate to hold the incoming administration to its promises. 

The occupation was led by youth, movement leaders, frontline activists, and artists collectively representing a range of identities and communities confronting the interlocking crises in front of us. For 24 hours, the group marched, created art, and called on Biden to live up to his mandate to invest in Black, Indigenous, Brown, and working-class communities. 

Photos and videos from the event, including speeches from frontline leaders and progressive allies in Congress, are available at: https://media.greenpeace.org/collection/27MDHUS546A 

As Jennifer K. Falcon of the Indigenous Environmental Network put it: “We are beyond the tipping point with climate chaos. We must act quickly to mitigate the climate chaos we are experiencing for the sky, land and water. The people demand President-elect Biden move to a just transition centered in Indigenous knowledge so that Mother Earth can heal. We can't afford to continue to fight climate change with false solutions and carbon mechanisms that allow big polluters to pollute. It's time to divest from fossil fuels and invest in a regenerative economy that allows us to thrive.” ..."

See complete Common Dreams article

Related:  Trump gutted environmental protections. How quickly can Biden restore them? (excerpt): GRIST

Video: Why politicians have failed to tackle climate change | The Economist

Global warming is the defining threat facing the planet. So why has so little been done to curb it? 

 

Read more here: https://econ.st/3gevRJu 

 

Click here to subscribe to The Economist on YouTube: https://econ.st/2xvTKdy 

 

Related: 
Why we need political action to rein in the oil, coal and gas companies | video explainer: The Guardian

 

#jailclimatecriminals  #China  #KyotoAgreement  #fossilfuels  #climateaction  #cambio-climatico

 

The Covid-19 crisis creates a chance to reset economies on a sustainable footing : The Guardian

New Zealand climate minister says governments must not just return to the way things were, and instead plot a new course to ease climate change

James Shaw

Thu 23 Apr 2020 10.18 AEST

James Shaw, New Zealand’s climate change minister, has asked the country’s independent climate change commission to check whether its emissions targets under the Paris agreement are enough to limit global heating to 1.5C. He explains why he’s prioritising the issue during a strict national lockdown to stop the spread of Covid-19, which could send New Zealand’s unemployment rate soaring.

To say that we find ourselves in an unprecedented moment is so obvious and has been so often repeated it’s almost become white noise. What is less obvious, however, is where we go from here.

In any significant crisis, let alone one as catastrophic as the Covid-19 pandemic, it is an entirely understandable human reflex to want things to “return to normal”, to “go back to the way they were before”.

And, when faced with economic headwinds – in recent decades, the Asian financial crisis, the global financial crisis and, in our own case, the Christchurch earthquakes) successive governments the world over have directed their efforts to meeting public expectation and getting back to business as usual.

Unfortunately, one of the features of business as usual was a highly polluting and ecologically unsustainable economy on a pathway that was locking in catastrophic climate change.

Successive responses to economic crises have seen climate change and the natural environment we depend on for life on Earth as a nice-to-have, something to think about once we’ve got the economy back on track and there’s a bit more money to go round.

Read the complete The Guardian article

Greta Thunberg condemns world leaders in emotional speech at UN : The Guardian

• Thunberg, 16, says governments have betrayed young people
• ‘You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. You are failing us’

“The summit was designed to accelerate countries’ ambition to address the climate crisis amid increasingly urgent warnings by scientists. A new UN analysis has found that commitments to cut planet-warming gases must be at least tripled and increased by up to fivefold if the world is to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris agreement of holding the temperature rise to at least 2C above the pre-industrial era.“

Read complete The Guardian story

Climate change: Big lifestyle changes 'needed to cut emissions': BBC

"People must use less transport, eat less red meat and buy fewer clothes if the UK is to virtually halt greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the government's chief environment scientist has warned.

Prof Sir Ian Boyd said the public had little idea of the scale of the challenge from the so-called Net Zero emissions target.

However, he said technology would help.

The conundrum facing the UK - and elsewhere - was how we shift ourselves away from consuming, he added.

In an interview with BBC News, Sir Ian warned that persuasive political leadership was needed to carry the public through the challenge.

Asked whether Boris Johnson would deliver that leadership, he declined to comment.

Mr Johnson has already been accused by environmentalists of talking up electric cars whilst reputedly planning a cut in driving taxes that would increase emissions and undermine the electric car market."

Read the BBC article 

Related: Death, blackouts, melting asphalt: ways the climate crisis will change how we live : The Guardian

Video / Climate Scientist Jason Box: “Our Economic System Is Crashing With Reality”: Democracy Now

Democracy Now!

 

Published on Aug 2, 2019

 

A heat wave is causing unprecedented melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization just declared July 2019 the hottest month ever recorded. We speak with Jason Box, professor and ice climatologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, about the intensifying climate crisis. 

He says humanity must move toward living in balance with the environment. “If we don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ultimately stabilize CO2 … there’s no real prospect for a stable society or even a governable society,” Box says. “Perpetual growth on a finite planet is, by definition, impossible.”

Related:  

Heatwave: think it’s hot in Europe? The human body is already close to thermal limits elsewhere :The Conversation

Escaping extinction through paradigm shift: Medium

Drone footage of displaced family tents in one settlement in Badghis, Afghanistan, due to ongoing drought and climate change. There are thousands of makeshift homes spread between mountain hills on the outskirt of Qala-i-naw city. (Source: NRC/Enayatullah Azad)

"‘Rebellion’ is not enough. We need to build new systems from the ground up, right now

"We have been trained to believe that voting every once in a while in parliamentary systems suffices for effective democratic action that serves our legitimate interests. We now know that this is not enough. Our democracies are not just broken, beholden to special interests belonging to an interlocking network of energy, defense, agribusiness, biotechnological, communications and other industrial conglomerates dominated by a tiny minority.

Our democracies are in a state of collapse: incapable of addressing the systemic complexity of the crisis of civilization. As they fail, they are veering toward rejecting their own democratic ethos toward increasing authoritarianism — shoring up centralized state powers to ward off dangerous ‘Others’ and unruly citizens. And so it is only natural that we feel the most immediate response must be to react against this state of abject failure. Yet this response itself is a function of the same sensation of helplessness and paralysis induced by the system itself.

The problem is that liberal democracies in their current form are in a state of collapse for a reason: they are, indeed, incapable of addressing the systemic complexity of the crisis of civilization. No amount of nonviolent resistance will provide our existing political institutions with the capacity to address the crisis. Because the problem runs much, much deeper."

Read the article

A Postmortem for Survival: on science, failure and action on climate change

CO2 Reading April 21, 2019

Failing to learn from past mistakes is the only truly unforgivable mistake in science. And on climate change, the scientific community (by and large) has been criminally negligent when it comes to observing — and especially learning from — its own track record. This blog post is a postmortem in 4 acts: an anatomy of failure, so that we can hopefully learn, act and change. Fast.

Act 1: Science as success

Let’s get one thing out of the way, shall we? The physical science of climate change has been a resounding, phenomenal, triumphant success. As a colleague from the University of Leeds recently put it, “We’ve been right for decades.” This makes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change first Working Group (on the physical science) assessment reports an absolute dawdle to write up: “Still right!” [That’s a joke, by the way. There are always absolute stacks of new science to report on: just the large lines of it have not budged at all.] So there is not much to learn from there in terms of failure. Well done, physical scientists, you’ve observed & modeled external reality. You aced the case.

Read the article 

Apr 24

 Related:

DESMOG: Renewables Offset 35 Times More CO2 Every Year Than All Carbon Capture Projects Ever, New Analysis Finds

 

Climate Change perceptions

 

The Bank of England lays bare the “very real” trillion-dollar risks of climate change: QUARTZ

My message today is simple. Climate change poses significant risks to the economy and to the financial system, and while these risks may seem abstract and far away, they are in fact very real, fast approaching, and in need of action today.

That’s how Sarah Breeden began her speech titled “Avoiding the storm: Climate change and the financial system” (pdf) yesterday. Breeden is the Bank of England’s executive director of International Banks Supervision and she was speaking at the Official Monetary & Financial Institutions Forum in London.

The urgency in Breeden’s speech was also on display on London’s streets. Earlier in the day, the environmental group Extinction Rebellion blocked traffic in five iconic locations across the city in a peaceful, non-violent protest to bring attention to “inactivity” of governments on fighting climate change.

Read the QUARTZ article

British MP calls for immediate climate emergency declaration by government.

Green Party of England & Wales

Published on Apr 2, 2019

"We need a green new deal.."

"It can't be dealt with tomorrow or the day after." 

"It is the number one issue. Not Brexit. Not economic growth."

Related: Urunga NSW: Very affected by sea level rise.

Why Growth Can’t Be Green

"New data proves you can support capitalism or the environment — but it’s hard to do both."

"But ending growth doesn’t mean that living standards need to take a hit. Our planet provides more than enough for all of us; the problem is that its resources are not equally distributed. We can improve people’s lives right now simply by sharing what we already have more fairly, rather than plundering the Earth for more. Maybe this means better public services. Maybe it means basic income. Maybe it means a shorter working week that allows us to scale down production while still delivering full employment. Policies such as these — and countless others — will be crucial to not only surviving the 21st century but also flourishing in it."

Read the Medium article

FP article: The Hope at the Heart of the Apocalyptic Climate Change Report

Along with their latest dire predictions, the world’s leading climate scientists offered a new path forward—but will anyone take it?

 

"When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a new special report last week, it came with both good news and bad.