The call for courses for our Degrowth in Action - Climate Justice Summer School 2015 has now been extended to 7 May. The summer school will take place from 9 to 14 August 2015 in the lignite-mining region of the Rhineland in cooperation with the annual climate camp. The core of the summer school programme is made up of courses that take place continuously over 4 days. In addition, there is the possibility to offer two day long courses. Each day for 2,5 hours, the same group of people (about 20 - 30 people) focuses on specific topics in the field of alternative economic models or climate justice, or works on tangible approaches for putting degrowth into political practice. If you're interested in preparing a course, you can find all relevant details here. the updated PDF-version is available here
In the 1980s, cities were defined as the ‘growth machines’ of the economy (Molotch, 1976). Today, urban economists epitomize them as economic ‘triumphs’ (Glaeser, 2011). Cities, intended as dense and mixed forms of urban living organized in agglomerations of economic activities, are presented as the solution to many of contemporary socio-ecological problems. They are viewed as the location of t...
In a recent post, a group of authors expressed their concerns that degrowth risks being lost in pluralism and argued for the need to co-produce a mix of context-sensitive strategies. I believe this re-stirring of the debate on strategy in the degrowth movement is both relevant and timely. While I agree with many of the authors’ concerns, and proposals, I would here like to propose a somewhat di...
Middle-Europe's prosperity as well as our high levels of mobility and consumption are based on three industrial revolutions whose technical progress has constantly been increasing labour productivity. The consequences are paradoxical: On one hand it is possible to produce ever more goods with the same amount of work. On the other hand these productivity increases are being used to make human la...