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.
Read the whole article in the New InternationalistBy Kanchi Kohli and Manju Menon Is the world going through an environmental crisis? If yes, who has caused it and where does the onus to remedy it lie? If one is to go by the policy debates and outcomes worldwide, the existence of a crisis seems established, the attribution contested, and the road map for remedies under perpetual review. Each year several international conventions revisit thei...
By Mark Burton Most ecological economists argue that continued economic growth is incompatible with ecological safety. That is to say continued increases in Gross Domestic Product, (GDP and also Gross Value Added, GVA) cannot happen while reducing ecological impacts in general, and climate change-causing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in particular. It isn’t a popular message, and is one that ...
In ihrem neuen Buch “Wachstumswahn – was uns in die Krise führt und wie wir wieder heraus kommen” erklären Christine Ax und Friedrich Hinterberger woher die Wachstumsbegeisterung in der Vergangenheit rührte, widerlegen unterhaltsam und verständlich das Credo, dass es ohne endloses Wachstum nicht geht, und zeigen, warum Wachstum keine zeitgemäße Antwort auf die aktuellen Probleme [...]
