Guest aeuhhh??? by David Middleton
H/T to Pop Piasa…
Planning in and for a post-growth and post-carbon economy
John Barry
Contribution to Cowell, R et al (eds), Routledge Companion Volume to Environmental Planning and Sustainability
Introduction – the condition our condition is in[…]
John Barry, Professor of Green Political Economy
This was as the only useful portion of the manifesto… And it was only useful because it gave me an opportunity to post this Kenny Rogers and the First Edition classic…
I’ll quote a little bit more to provide a “flavor” of the 14-page manifesto…
How does the old end and the new begin? How do we identify the point beyond which a practice, idea or objective is no longer beneficial, productive or necessary but have now become the opposite? This the conundrum facing planning in the 21st century, how to decouple societies and economies from fossil fuel energy, but also the role of planning in decoupling societies from an uncritical focus on achieving, facilitating or coordinating the achievement of orthodox ‘economic growth’. Planning here is understood mainly as the purposeful, political and public (and ideally democratic) steering of infrastructural and mainly urban development, encompassing, inter alia, land use, spatial planning, energy planning, and includes the achievement of economic, cultural and environmental goals. This chapter mainly discusses planning debates within the UK and Irish contexts. The first question which serves as the starting point of this chapter is to ask if the objective of economic growth is now ecologically unsustainable, socially divisive and has in many countries passed the point when it is adding to human wellbeing? The second is how growth and planning are both currently dependent upon a fossil fuel energy system which, like the growth economy it fuels, is now ecologically unsustainable, socially disruptive, produces multiple problems from ill-health to extractive injustice and the creation of ‘sacrifice zones’, and ultimately constitutes a risky energy basis for a sustainable economy? Simply put our societies and conventional planning processes are dependent upon (some might say addicted to) GDP measured and endless economic growth…
[…]
John Barry, Professor of Green Political Economy
Did you catch this bit?
Planning here is understood mainly as the purposeful, political and public (and ideally democratic) steering of infrastructural and mainly urban development, encompassing, inter alia, land use, spatial planning, energy planning, and includes the achievement of economic, cultural and environmental goals…
John Barry, Professor of Green Political Economy
“Ideally democratic”??? How the frack else would a bunch of academic eggheads impose Agenda 21 on the Free World other than through a democratic process? That was a rhetorical question… which should have been intuitively obvious to the casual observer.
How could any human being with a real job have such a bizarre frame of reference?
INTERESTS
Green political theory, politics and political economy of sustainability, greening the economy, environmental and sustainable development policy-making, environmental ethics, transition to a low-carbon/renewable energy economy, normative dimensions of the transition from unsustainability, theories and practices of active citizenship, democracy and green politics, civic republicanism and green political theory, interdisciplinary and transdiciplinary sustainability research, Q methodology.RESEARCH STATEMENT
John Barry Queen’s University Belfast
Green political theory, politics and political economy of sustainability, greening the economy, environmental and sustainable development policy-making, environmental ethics, transition to a low-carbon/renewable energy economy, normative dimensions of the transition to sustainability, citizenship, democracy and green politics, civic republicanism and green political theory, interdisciplinary sustainability research.
Did any of that make any sense or appear to describe a real job?
Maybe the Rachel (killed more people than Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan and Cecile B. DeMille – COMBINED) Carson Center can help…
John Barry is Professor of Green Political Economy at the School of Politics, International Studies, and Philosophy at Queens University Belfast. He has a BA and MA from University College Dublin and a PhD from the University of Glasgow. He is a former co-leader of the Green Party in Northern Ireland and is a Green Party councillor on Ards and North Down Borough Council in Northern Ireland.
RCC Research Project: Beyond Economic Growth: The Political, Ethical, and Cultural Dimensions of a Post-Growth Green Economy
Rachel (killed more people than Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan and Cecile B. DeMille – COMBINED) Carson Center for Environment and Society
Is that better?
Did you ever notice that the science textbooks for non-science majors often tack the phrase “Environment and Society” onto the title?
- Chemistry in the Environment and Society
- Physics for the Environment of Society
- Biology of the Environment in Society
- Earth Science as if the Environment and Society Were Relevant to Rocks
- Calculus for SJW’s Who Can’t Handle Math Due to the Environment and Society
I got nuthin’ else… Apart from this…
And this…
What is a “post-growth economy”? World where no one is allowed to have dreams and ambitions, the government tells your exact place and you are never allowed to do anything else? A world where everyone is equal but poor, except the leaders who live in luxury?
They could atleast be honest about it, and say that it would be terrible for 99% of the people, but it would be necessary for the “greater good”. But, oh right, then no one would support it. Like Green politicians who always talk about the paradise they are trying to reach, but never mention the costs.
That’s the plan. Then kill off the useless eaters by reducing CO2 until crops fail……
So who’s the most useless to society? Woops, they didn’t think of that.
As I recall; it was the intelligentsia and the skill-less who were quietly disappeared first in Hitler’s utopia.
What was that about ‘sustainable’ energy?
“The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.” – Jeremy Rifkin, New York Times journalist on climate change
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” – Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University
“Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.” – Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute
Carbon: 6 protons, 6 neutrons, 6 electrons…
The human body is mostly carbon…
pre-Climategate replacing cash with a carbon card/chip was ramping up….
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/29/AR2008052903266.html
Carbon Chastity
“Only Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe. There’s no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.” – Charles Krauthammer, May 2008
Linda,
Actually, the human body is mostly water. But the chemical reactions we rely on to live is mostly carbon exchanges, which is why we are called carbon-based life forms.
The easiest way of understanding the post growth economy and what it means, is to see it and describe it in straight forward language.
Post growth means, “decline”.
I hope that clears up any lingering doubts in the minds of the Green Socialists re what their policies actually mean.
“Green” is the new “Red.”
It’s the standard Marxist/Communist assertion that economic growth cannot continue for ever because physical resources are finite while economic growth is exponential. Even when the contrary evidence is staring them in the face, decade after decade.
Use of physical resources is still decreasing per unit of economic output. Less steel, less concrete, less energy, less man-hours….this is the normal modus operandi of capitalism as it seeks increased efficiencies in pursuit of profit. In many ways it is actually a good definition of profit: to always strive to make things better and more efficiently than before.
That today’s green communists still don’t get it is, perhaps, the most damning indictment of Western educational institutions.