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Redistribution, not growth - why the Left should embrace degrowth

09.11.2015

By Giorgos Kallis

A new Left has to be an ecological Left, or it won’t be left at all. Environmental change ‘changes everything’ for the Left too, Naomi Klein argued. Capitalism requires constant expansion, an expansion predicated on exploitation of humans and non-humans, that irreversibly damages the climate. A non-capitalist economy will have to sustain itself while contracting. But how can we redistribute or secure meaningful work without growth? There is not yet a concrete ‘economics of degrowth’. Lamentably, Keynesianism is the most powerful tool the Left, even the Marxist Left, has for dealing with issues of policy. But this is an economics of the 1930s when unlimited expansion was still possible and desirable.

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What happens to wellbeing when economies do not grow?

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By: Andrew Fanning

Ten years ago G20 leaders committed a staggering $5 trillion of public funds to rescue the banks and restore growth during the largest economic contraction in modern times. The economies of an unprecedented number of countries — and their associated environmental footprints — experienced very low growth over the decade that followed. In a recent study published in the Journal of Cleaner Prod...

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Growth and Destruction

By: Nnimmo Bassey

By Nnimmo Bassey The industrial mode of food production is known to greatly contribute to global warming through such means as the large-scale land use changes, deforestation and the use of chemical fertilisers. Industrial agriculture promotes monoculture, erodes biodiversity and treats agricultural produce as mere commodities and for speculation. it continues to be single-mindedly supported b...

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Klimagerechtigkeit und Degrowth – zwei Seiten einer Medaille?

Coal protest1

Von Tadzio Müller Im Vorfeld der letzten UN Klimakonferenz in Lima, Peru, machte immer wieder eine Schlagzeile die Runde: der Versuch, ein bestimmtes Ideologem im Bewusstsein der globalen Eliten und auch der breiteren Bevölkerung zu verankern: „Leute“, hieß es, „Ihr habt recht, Euch um den Klimawandel zu sorgen, aber, nach Berichten des Internationalen Währungsfonds und einem neuen Report zum ...