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 InternationalistSince the very beginning of modern growth-critique, starting with the publication of the report „Limits to Growth“ in 1972, the mainstream response to this critique has always been: “Well, we can grow the limits by making things ever more efficient”. Now, with the shiny user interface of the ongoing digital revolution, the holy grail of the efficiency revolution gets yet another new finish: By ...
Things are big in the United States of America. Returning home after a year away reacquaints me with big detached single-family homes, big single-occupant vehicles, and big single-species grass lawns. I find wider roads, longer distances, larger supermarkets, and more stuff everywhere. As a student of ecological economics, it makes me a little anxious. Such individualistic extravagance isn’t e...
Dieser Text ist eine gekürzte Fassung des Beitrages zur Jugendumweltbewegung für „Degrowth in Bewegung(en)“ Wir sind beide langjährig mit der BUNDjugend ehren- beziehungsweise hauptamtlich verbunden und sprechen daher vor allem für diesen verbandsgeprägten und organisierten Teil der Jugendumweltbewegung. Gleichzeitig fühlen wir uns als Teil der Degrowth-Bewegung. Dieser Text ist eine subjekti...
