#
Related:
The Atlantic Justified ‘Degrowth Communism’ to Fight Climate Change … Yes, You Read That Right
June 5, 2024
Climate Depot founder Marc Morano at least credited The Atlantic for saying “the quiet part out loud” in comments to MRC Business. “Net zero in the climate agenda is really nothing short of Soviet-style central planning. Every sector of our economy is subject to long range planning to meet net zero goals.”
Morano saw right through The Atlantic’s ploy to mainstream psychotic climate change fanaticism and underscored what the real agenda is:
“Every sector of our economy is subject to long range planning to meet net zero goals. This agenda is nothing short of the rationing of energy food and transportation in order to create chaos and give the government more Covid lockdown like controls. After all, what was a Covid lockdown but the governments’ attempt at forcing degrowth on the world. We have truly entered the era of climate communism.”
May 28, 2024
The Atlantic – May 28, 2024: By Christopher Beam –Kohei Saito’s theory of how to solve climate change is economically dubious and politically impossible. Why is it so popular?
Excerpt: The crazy idea is “degrowth communism,” a combination of two concepts that are contentious on their own. Degrowth holds that there will always be a correlation between economic output and carbon emissions, so the best way to fight climate change is for wealthy nations to cut back on consumption and reduce the “material throughput” that creates demand for energy and drives GDP.
The degrowth movement has swelled in recent years, particularly in Europe and in academic circles. The theory has dramatic implications. Instead of finding carbon-neutral ways to power our luxurious modern lifestyles, degrowth would require us to surrender some material comforts. One leading proponent suggests imposing a hard cap on total national energy use, which would ratchet down every year. Energy-intensive activities might be banned outright or taxed to near oblivion. (Say goodbye, perhaps, to hamburgers, SUVs, and your annual cross-country flight home for the holidays.) You’d probably be prohibited from setting the thermostat too cold in summer or too warm in winter. To keep frivolous spending down, the government might decide which products are “wasteful” and ban advertising for them. Slower growth would require less labor, so the government would shorten the workweek and guarantee a job for every person.
Saito did not invent degrowth, but he has put his own spin on it by adding the C word. As for what kind of “communism” we’re talking about, Saito tends to emphasize workers’ cooperatives and generous social-welfare policies rather than top-down Leninist state control of the economy. He says he wants democratic change rather than revolution—though he’s fuzzy on how exactly you get people to vote for shrinkage. This message has found an enthusiastic audience. Saito’s 2020 book, Capital in the Anthropocene, sold half a million copies.
_________________________________________________________________
“Climate change” or more recently “The Climate Crisis” isn’t a problem, and doesn’t need a solution.
The De-Growth advocates can make such proposals until the next Ice Age except the voting public will never accept them outright or back any governments that try to implement them. De-Growth is much like Net Zero: essentially unattainable unless some monumental new energy production sources are discovered.
They have, it’s called nuclear
The voting public has already accepted curtailment to our freedoms and control of our lives. We’ve just been conditioned to believe the little nudges, here and there, to control our behaviour are in our “best interests”
The Atlantic post is an example:
‘The voting public has already accepted curtailment to our freedoms and control of our lives.’
Sad but true. Also inevitable once people realize they can vote to obtain stuff at the expense of others.
The Green Blob are sadomasochistic nihilists who regard conservation and anything that harms people in general as an end in itself.
And yet the advocates of this agenda won’t be expecting any degrowth in their own lives.
A very interesting article in the WAPO – using Sheffield, Pa as an example – provides an example of de-growth.
‘Too many old people’: A rural Pa. town reckons with population loss …
People have left these small PA towns – me, as an example.
Christopher Beam:
Elementary deductive fallacy: just because growth in GDP does’t account for all kinds of human flourishing it does not follow that GDP growth is antithetical to human flourishing.
Nowhere does the author quote any examples where GDP shrinkage of a country has improved “human flourishing”.
The only place we need degrowth is in the government.
I would classify the burgeoning bureaucracy as the real enemy of society, their growth is at all odds with their productivity to help people, instead of hinder them with more stupid regulations. On top of this they get much more generous pay than private industry, with cozy superannuation on top of this plus inability to get sacked! One could start with the Climate bureaucracy- get rid of the lot and no one would miss them except for compliant politicians looking for more funding for pet environmental and “renewable” projects. All leeches on the system, get rid of all current climate legislation and start again with proper science driven policies to help people cope with natural climate hazards.
“On top of this they get much more generous pay than private industry”
Certainly true here in Wokeachusetts- as much as double for the same work in private industry. And of course they don’t have to work nearly as hard- plus far better untaxed benefits.
It is an immutable fact that bureaucracy always grows, just like it is an immutable fact that it takes more energy to produce hydrogen than that hydrogen then contains. But many people still refuse to recognise this.
There should be an amendment to the constitutions (the federal and all states) limiting the size of the bureaucracies, other than wartime.
Yes and that is one way the GDP growth number can be deceptive because it includes government spending that is usually unproductive or worse counterproductive as in the case of subsidies to inefficient electricity generation applications.
It would open a lot of eyes to see a GDP calculation with government spending backed out or, as Murray Rothbard suggested, 2X government spending backed out to account for the fact that most of it is harmful.
You can have a modern industrial economy or you can have net zero. You can’t have both.
Nah, degrowth is fine. Let’s get rid of cheap, always available power. Instead of emails and texts, we can go back to writing letters. Instead of having huge ERP systems that track products, finances and every other aspect of running a business, we can go back to paper ledgers, forms and labels. Instead of cars, we can go back to horses and carriages and shit-fillled streets. Instead of light switches, we can go back to candles and oil lamps. No need to worry about unemployment, because we’ll need 90% of able-bodied people to work on farms once more. You won’t get paid much, but that’ll be fine, because there won’t be much to buy.
Maybe if the people promoting this stuff demonstrated their belief in it by living it, I’d be less sarcastic. Even the off-the-grid crowd do a better job of showing the practical reality of living their beliefs.
The question that needs to be addressed is, ‘degrowth of what economic activities’?
If we look at the whole of human activities in developed societies, we find that most of the energy we produce and use, from all sources, is related to entertainment activities, and purchases of rediculously expensive items to boost our ego and satisfy our vanity.
For example, the purchase of a $500 item of fashionable clothing serves no more practical benefit than a $20 dollar item of clothing manufactured in a less developed country such as Bangladesh, bought in Kmart.
Billions of dollars are given away to people who show off that they can run faster than someone else, or hit a small white ball into a little hole, with fewer strokes, using a golf club.
Consider how much money (energy) is wasted on rediculously expensive ICE vehicles that are far more expensive that the average BEV car.
Here’s a list of expensive ICE vehicles ranging from a price of $1.7 million to $30 million.
https://www.motor1.com/features/308149/most-expensive-new-cars-ever/
There are many more ICE vehicles ranging in price between $100,000 and a million dollars, which is still more expensive than most BEVs.
In other words, the current supply and use of energy, world-wide, is sufficient to provide every man, woman and child with a secure and healthy standard of living, if we were to use those resources sensibly and pragmatically, instead of wasting the resources on foolish activities.
You first, mate.
Who gets to decide what’s foolish and what’s not? You?
Dang, I commented before reading. Guess that question is pretty obvious.
Everyone who is not foolish gets to decide what is foolish. Those who are foolish are incapable of deciding what is foolish, by definition.
Who gets to decide who is foolish? Because I think you are foolish.
So provide us with an objective definition of “foolish”
“Those who are foolish are incapable of deciding what is foolish”
Great introspection..
Except you seem to have figured out you are not only a fool , but a moron. !
“if we were to use those resources sensibly and pragmatically”
No problemo, all we need is a huge bureaucracy of sensible and pragmatic folks to run the world. /s
Who is this “we” that is going to decide for everyone else what uses are sensible and pragmatic and what uses or activities are foolish? And how are “they” going to control and enforce it?
“Who is this “we” that is going to decide for everyone else what uses are sensible and pragmatic and what uses or activities are foolish? And how are “they” going to control and enforce it?”
Those who are educated and who understand the concepts of ‘sensible’ and ‘pragmatic’.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
This is what happened when the “educated” British thought they understood the concepts of “sensible” and “pragmatic” better than the uneducated colonists in America.
It didn’t work out well for the British. It won’t work out well for the self-proclaimed “educated” today either.
Care to supply us with some names of those who meet your qualification?
“Those who are educated“
So.. not you. since you are obviously ill-educated and a complete fool.
Obviously the “we” are those who have finagled their way into “The Farmhouse”.
(Animal Farm reference)
Then, Vincent please throw away your computer, cancel your internet, and eat only bugs.
Is that a paraphrasing of “leisure” activities?
What an incredibly DRAB and WORTHLESS existence you must lead.
Sorry you have led such a down-trodden insignificant victimised existence…..
(… well not really… just a Rhett Bulter moment..)
Only a complete fool or a rabid socialist would yap the way you do.
Someone should ask WaPo to delineate, in scientifically rigorous detail, just what WOULD ‘save the planet’.
There is, of course, the assumption implicit in here that the earth actually needs saving.
The earth certainly doesn’t need saving. 7.5bn humans might need saving from the eugenics-mad genocidal billionaires that wish the earth to only have 500 million humans…..
This goes beyond communism, per se, which is at its foundation is a leveling of human consumption across all “classes” (a clearly outmoded concept – communism was espoused by Marx in the late 19th century when the world was a very different place socially than today). This is nothing short of fascism, which (despite leftists’ whines to the contrary) is not about hating Jews and gays, but is at its foundation the theory that the governing few must control the lives of the many. The word “fasci” is Latin for bundle of sticks. Why? Because under the theory of fascism a bundle of sticks is much harder to break than a single stick. A bundle of sticks was in fact the logo of the Fascist Party in Italy which preceded the German Nazi party. The rights and powers of the individual were considered evil.
For those who say that the Fascists were different than the Nazis – they were, though while all Nazis are Fascists, not all Fascists are Nazis – does not take away from the fact that Nazis and Communists, monarchists, theocrats, and all despots of any stripe still depend upon Fascism to function. Unless the state can totally command the individual in all aspects of life, the supposed benefits of the particular ideology can never be realized.
So while communism, or monarchism, or just plain individual dictatorship may espouse particular ideological aims, they are all built upon a foundation of Fascism.
These “degrowthers”, and indeed all radical warmunists, are all Fascists – they just won’t admit it.
All within the state, nothing outside the state, no one against the state.
Fascism at its end is nothing but slave-owner and slaves. Each “house-hold” will have a government official living in it that controls every part of your life. You define it the way you like, monarch and subjects, central planner and worker, or bourgeoisie and proletariat, chief and tribe, etc. It is all the same. The few controlling the many.
These morons never state what the perfect level is. Population is still growing – how many people should be on planet Earth? And what methods and timeframe do they prefer to get there? I’ve heard this since the 90’s and nothing changes
Degrowth is not communism, even communism needs economic growth in the plan economy.
panem et circenses
“This message has found an enthusiastic audience. Saito’s 2020 book, Capital in the Anthropocene, sold half a million copies.”
THese sales may not all be to those that agree with him. They could be purchased in order to ‘know your enemy’ in order to debunk his ideas. Let’s hope this is the higher proportion of purchasers rather than being used as an educational text.