In two statements, internationally renowned climate-activists Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben have raised their voices to support the mass-action against coal-mining in the Rhineland that will take place right after our summer school.
Naomi Klein, author of "This changes everything. Capitalism vs the Climate" emphasizes the importance of the German anti-coal struggle for the global climate: "Germany's rapid energy transition has been driven by the people, a victory that now serves as a model to the rest of the world. But as long as the German political class insists on using massive machinery to tear up the earth, producing the continent's single largest source of carbon emissions, that transition will remain woefully incomplete. These coalfields pose an existential threat to humanity, which is why our movements need to step in once again and shut them down. This August, there is no more important place to be."
Bill McKibben, co-founder of the climate-campaigning organization 350.org writes: "I'm so glad to see people drawing a firm line in the coalfields, and stopping the planet's largest coal-digging machines. We're driven not by ideology but by physics: there's simply no way to burn all this lignite and keep the climate intact. These protesters are lifeguards for an endangered planet."
Green growth advocates praise resource efficiency for its potential to incentivize the economy and lower its ecological impact. On the other hand, the Jevons Paradox, describes multiple situations (or rebound effects) in which increased efficiency leads to further consumption (either direct or indirect) which offsets the initial ecological benefits achieved. In this piece, I join this discussio...
The debate on flying in contributors to the Degrowth-Summer School By Janna Aljets At the second planning meeting for the Summer School in February, the organizing team spent some time on discussing the participation of contributors from the Global South – which could involve long-distance flights: How can we ever „authentically“ talk about climate justice without people from the Global South...
By Ulrich Schachtschneider A new star is born in the sky of the social movements: the degrowth-movement. The traditional left, however, observes this novelty somewhat critically – degrowth being a path that seems possible without the traditional left. Marxist, feminist and anti-racist analyses were largely missed at the latest Degrowth-Conference and where they were present, participants eyed ...
