Spiral of contradictions between financialised capitalism and rural smallholdings in South and MesoamericaIrreversible destruction of the Earth's soil food webs leads to drought and collapse of global food security. The logic of peripheral capitalism slips through the cracks of economic growth without development... Thus we have a direct correlation between the dispossession of land, the alienation of the rural workforce and the loss of food sovereignty. — Nubia Barrera Silva Urban Commons and Collective Action to Address Climate ChangeCommunity centres can have a key role in the social mobilisation of community climate commons. Group-based learning on climate change is more effective than individual learning. We deal with three types of urban commons, i.e., “urban green commons,” “coworking spaces,” and “community climate commons.” — Johan Colding, Stephan Barthel, Robert Ljung, Felix Eriksson and Stefan Sjöberg Population in the IPCC’s new mitigation report.A new IPCC climate change mitigation report confirms that population increase and economic growth are the main drivers of today’s historically high greenhouse gas emissions. — Philip Cafaro Decent Living Standards: Material Prerequisites for Human WellbeingA normative basis to develop minimum wage and reference budgets, and to assess the environmental impacts—such as climate change—of eradicating poverty. — Narasimha D. Rao and Jihoon Min The Limits to Growth: Ecosocialism or BarbarismWe assess and review how capitalism is behind the ecological disorders and why the only democratic political solution to the ecosocial crisis is the ecosocialist project — Alberto Garzón Espinosa Scientists’ Warning on AffluenceAffluence as a driver of environmental and social impacts. Systemic drivers and possible solutions. The world’s top 10% of income earners are responsible for between 25 and 43% of environmental impact. In contrast, the world’s bottom 10% income earners exert only around 3–5% of environmental impact. –– Thomas Wiedmann, Manfred Lenzen, Lorenz T. Keyßer and Julia K. Steinberger Paradise Lost? — The iron cage of consumerismTo resist economic growth is to court economic and social collapse. To pursue it relentlessly is to endanger the ecosystems on which we depend for long-term survival. Our systematic failure to address existential anxiety robs society of meaning and blinds us to the suffering of others; to persistent poverty; to the extinction of species; to the health of global ecosystems. With this think piece, Tim Jackson adds to an eclectic set of essays, published in honour of Wolfgang Sachs. — Tim Jackson Africa boasts examples of ecological resilienceDespite its low pollution levels, the black continent is much more committed to ecological transition than many other territories tied to their old patterns of industrial production. Despite its low pollution levels, the black continent is much more committed to ecological transition than many other territories tied to their old patterns of industrial production. — Johari Gautier Carmona Note on the Limits To GrowthCapitalist growth must stop. But “Any human activity that does not require a large flow of irreplaceable resources or produce severe environmental degradation might continue to grow indefinitely”. The general message of The Limits to Growth is not to be faulted, namely that humanity, if it is to save itself, must enter “a period of great transition,” the “transition from growth to...a desirable, sustainable state of global equilibrium”. — The Editors of Monthly Review Marx’s Critique of Enlightenment Humanism: A Revolutionary Ecological PerspectiveMarx’s materialist perspective was ecological from inception: humanalienation from nature was simply the other side of the coin of the alienation of labor. Marx’s analysis was thus unique in offering a higher synthesis envisioning the reconciliation of humanism and naturalism, humanity and nature. — John Bellamy Foster Human well-being and climate change mitigationWell-being approaches that focus on capabilities and human needs are better suited to inform climate change mitigation research than hedonistic or happiness approaches. — William F. Lamb and Julia K. Steinberger Anthropocene, Capitalocene, and Other “-Cenes”Why a Correct Understanding of Marx’s Theory of Value Is Necessary to Leave the Planetary Crisis. Why a Correct Understanding of Marx’s Theory of Value Is Necessary to Leave the Planetary Crisis. — Carles Soriano Notes on “The Capitalinian: The First Geological Age of the Anthropocene”The Capitalinian Age reflects the fact that it is the capitalist system in its mature phase of globalised monopoly capitalism that has given rise to the current anthropogenic rift in the Earth System. — A Statement by John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark Vegan capitalism: food multinationals and BlackRockAfter seducing the population with the "wonders" of veganism, transnational meat producers and investors are presenting themselves as substitutes for the vegan diet. — Gustavo Duch Trees and the ‘Net-Zero‘ Emissions HoaxThe trees of the forest, a natural paradise of complex plant engineering under the deception of 'net zero' emissions in the Amazon. The irreconcilable contradictions of capital. — Nubia Barrera Silva COVID-19 and Catastrophe Capitalism — Commodity Chains and Ecological-Epidemiological-Economic CrisesCOVID-19 has accentuated as never before the interlinked ecological, epidemiological, and economic vulnerabilities imposed by capitalism. As the world enters the third decade of the twenty-first century, we are seeing the emergence of catastrophe capitalism as the structural crisis of the system takes on planetary dimensions. — John Bellamy Foster and Intan Suwandi Lithium and the Contradictions in the Energy Transition that Devastate the Global South In Favour of the Global NorthGreen Capitalism is a Hoax, because switching to batteries is not sustainable and it keeps depredating the ecosystems. — Nubia Barrera Silva The Contagion of CapitalThe U.S. economy and society at the start of 2021 is more polarised than it has ever been. The wealthy are awash in a flood of riches, marked by a booming stock market, while the underlying population exists in a state of relative, and in some cases even absolute, misery and decline. The result is two national economies as perceived, respectively, by the top and the bottom of society: one of prosperity, the other of precariousness. At the level of production, economic stagnation is diminishing the life expectations of the majority. At the same time, financialisation is accelerating the consolidation of wealth by a very few. Although the current crisis of production associated with the COVID-19 pandemic has sharpened these disparities, the overall problem is much longer and more deep-seated, a manifestation of the inner contradictions of monopoly-finance capital. Comprehending the parameters of today’s financialised capitalist system is the key to understanding the contemporary contagion of capital, a corrupting and corrosive cash nexus that is spreading to all corners of the globe, and every aspect of human existence. — John Bellamy Foster, R. Jamil Jonna and Brett Clark Transitioning to Geocratia — the People and Planet and Not the Market Paradigm — First StepsParting from the fact that saving Planet Earth, our home, changes everything, we need to build a new ethos where the majority of humankind commits to a system whose only purpose is the pursuit of the welfare of people and Planet Earth. This requires that all Earth resources necessary for the enjoyment of life of all living things be managed to achieve true long-term sustainability. — Álvaro J. de Regil Leaked Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ReportsOn the Climate Change Planetary Crisis. If we want future generations to live with happiness on a healthy planet, we must stop denying reality and take action, for all governments are driving us to our final demise. —(Required reading to become aware that it is up to us, the citizenry, to save ourselves by taking eco-revolutionary action. — The Editors of Monthy Review Marketocracy and the Capture of People and Planet — The acceleration of Twenty-First Century Monopoly Capital Fascism through the pandemic and the Great ResetThis study examines the trajectory that the world has followed since neoliberalism was imposed on humanity half a century ago, assessing the subsequent motivations—and their consequences for humanity and the planet as a whole—of key global elite groups and individuals (Gates, Musk, Bezos and the World Economic Forum, and its proclaimed "Fourth Industrial Revolution" through "The Great Reset") who have powerful influence on the world's governments. We live in dangerous times on our planet that threaten the future of all living things, but there is a way to avoid such a future –––– Álvaro J. de Regil “Notes on Exterminism” for the Twenty-First-Century Ecology and Peace MovementIn 1980, the great English Marxist historian and theorist E. P. Thompson, author of The Making of the English Working Class and leader of the European nuclear disarmament movement, wrote the groundbreaking essay "Notes on Extermination, the Last Stage of Civilization." Although the world has undergone a series of significative changes since then, Thompson's essay remains a useful starting point for addressing the central contradictions of our time, characterized by the planetary ecological crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, the New Cold War, and the current "empire of chaos," all stemming from deeply rooted features of contemporary capitalist political economy. - John Bellamy Foster Is Population Crucial for Degrowth?Most proponents of degrowth tend to avoid the population factor, many of them fearful of being perceived as Malthusian. This is not the case. However, in the context of a genuinely democratic ethos, we must incorporate population degrowth into the core of any degrowth imaginary, as we are the preeminent source of our planet's unsustainable consumption. If people become aware of the existential danger we face, we expect that many will choose to embark on a transition that includes gradual population degrowth as a key driver of our trajectory. If the majority refuses, that is always their right. In such a case, we will have to face the consequences of significantly reducing the chances of achieving a safe and just transition-ecologically safe for all species and socially just for people, especially in the Global South-to avoid the obvious existential threat we face. –– Álvaro J. de Regil Capitalism of Dispossession in the Palm Oil Plantations in the Countries of the Global SouthThe commodification of land has deepened the ecological, social and economic crises. The unprecedented global pandemic of the covid-19 virus comes from the destruction of the habitats of species of wild animals and plants and the subsequent migration to humans. The neoliberal model is unsupportable in the sustainable conservation of nature and the planet's economy. A change in the capitalist economy is urgently needed. — Nubia Barrera Silva Is China Transforming the World?In the early years of the 21st century, many Western capitalists saw China as a "new El Dorado". In most Western media, China is now presented as a threat, a conquering "empire", an "imperialist" power, even if the term imperialism is taboo when it comes to the behavior of global banking establishments, companies or Western institutions. And this threat seems all the more serious because Beijing's "regime" is easily described as "dictatorial" or, in diplomatic terms, "authoritarian". The United States, which remains the world hegemon, is worried about China's rise to power, and its successive administrations are building up the anxiety-provoking image of a China eager to supplant them and steal their leadership of the capitalist world system. On the other hand, it is also the case, to some extent, for the governments of the European Union who realize they are trapped in their free trade dogma. -- Tony Andréani, Rémy Herrera and Zhiming Long The Deceptive Delusions of Green Capitalism — Why Endless Consumption of Our Finite Planet Will Take Us to Our Cliff of Doom and How We Can Prevent ItEndless Consumption of Our Finite Planet's Resources is Taking Us to Our Cliff of Doom... But we can save ourselves by saving the planet by changing our economic/consumption systemsBut we can save ourselves by saving the planet by changing our economic/consumption systems. This implies a radical transition of structures, replacing capitalism with a new paradigm whose sole purpose is to pursue the welfare of people and planet and NOT the market. To do this, people must organise to force change because all governments are subservient to the market and will lead to our extinction in this century. — Álvaro J. de Regil Show COP26 and EcologyA true ecology of consumption—a new system of enduring needs is only possible by incorporating it into a new ecology of production, which requires the destruction of the capitalist system. — Alejandro Teitelbaum Trajectories of the Earth System in the AnthropoceneWe explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent climate stabilization with intermediate temperature increases and cause continued warming on a "Greenhouse Earth" trajectory, even if human emissions are reduced. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause severe disruptions to ecosystems, society and economies. Collective human action is needed to move the Earth System away from a possible threshold and stabilize it in a habitable state similar to the interglacial. Such action involves management of the entire Earth System -- biosphere, climate, and societies -- and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of the biosphere's carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformation of societal values. -- Will Steffen et al Deforestation and World Population Sustainability: a Quantitative AnalysisIn this paper we afford a quantitative analysis of the sustainability of current world population growth in relation to the parallel deforestation process adopting a statistical point of view. We consider a simplified model based on a stochastic growth process driven by a continuous time random walk, which depicts the technological evolution of human kind, in conjunction with a deterministic generalised logistic model for humans-forest interaction and we evaluate the probability of avoiding the self-destruction of our civilisation. Based on the current resource consumption rates and best estimate of technological rate growth our study shows that we have very low probability, less than 10% in most optimistic estimate, to survive without facing a catastrophic collapse. –– Mauro Bologna and Gerardo Aquino Toward an Ecosocialist DegrowthToday, we face the most pronounced and remarkable contradictions between "the time of capital" and "the time of nature". As a result, a series of intertwined ecological and social crises have come together, posing existential threats to life on the planet. In the face of today's profound crises, social organization and collective political action are necessary. Otherwise, as historian Vijay Prashad has afirmed, the climate justice movement "will have no legs." An ecosocialist degrowth must be built on internationalist alliances in which the periphery takes centre stage. The political subjects and collectives of the North are called upon to humbly assume the historical claims that the South has tirelessly and justly made. Only in this way will we be able to look with hope to the future and, above all, to the present. –– Alejandro Pedregal and Juan Bordera Degrowth is About Global JusticeCampaigners for degrowth have thrown into question the dogma that holds that a growing economy is always a sign of progress. In Less is More, anthropologist Jason Hickel argues that only degrowth can steer the world away from its worsening ecological crisis. We sat down with him to discuss his new book and ask what degrowth would mean for relations between the Global North and South. –– Jason Hickel Notes on Time is Running OutTime is running out for the world to carry out the social transformations necessary to avert irreversible climate catastrophe, keeping the increase in global average temperatures below 1.5°C (or below 2°C). The most optimistic scenario currently provided by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) describes a pathway in which the increase in temperature will not rise to 1.5°C until 2040, peaking at 1.6°C, and then falling back to 1.4°C by the end of this century. But to achieve this will require revolutionary scale transformational change in global social relations affecting the human relation to the climate and the planetary environment as a whole. –– The Editors of Monthly Review | ||
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Climate Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century
Imperialism can be defined broadly as the struggle of large, monopolistic capital over economic territory, actively aided and assisted by states. However, imperialism cannot be comprehensively addressed simply on a nation-by-nation basis but requires the recognition of the existence of an imperialist world system dominated by a hegemonic power. This was broadly the approach developed by V. I. Lenin more than a century ago. Though it has not changed in essence, it has morphed significantly in form, structure, and reliance on particular legal and institutional architectures. The economic territory is the subject of contestation and control, and it can take many forms: land; resources extracted from nature; labor (both paid and unpaid); markets; newly commodified services that were formerly seen to be more in the domain of public provision, ranging from electricity to education tosecurity; newly created forms of property such as knowledge or intellectual property; even cyberspace.
Among the many new forms of economic territory that have proliferated in the neoliberal globalising phase of capitalism, those associated with direct human environmental interaction with the planet remain in many ways the most crucial and the most strongly associated also with coercion, conflict, and war. The nineteenth century saw many such conflicts in the colonial expansion to other lands, in the attempt to establish control over physical territory with its attendant advantages. Wars in the late twentieth century were closely related to control over energy sources like oil. The twenty-first century may see growing water wars. Increasingly, the change resulting from anthropogenic rifts in the Earth System metabolism has come to define a sphere of struggle over influence, control, and appropriation that is now a major aspect of contemporary imperialism.
This particular feature of global capitalism today and its association with not just capitalism but with imperialism is becoming more and more evident in: (1) how core countries and elites are able to produce and consume based on an imperialist mode of living, generating increasing global carbon emissions with rising ecological footprints; (2) the deceptive and debilitating ways that climate change is addressed in international negotiations; (3) the operations of global finance that increase carbon emissions while failing to make available the required finance for effective mitigation strategies; (4) the privatised knowledge monopolies that prevent most of humanity from being able to access critical technologies required to confront the climate challenge; and (5) the changing technological requirements for both mitigation and adaptation, which give rise to further natural resource grabs aimed particularly at strategic minerals, along with new forms of extractivist competition among the leading powers.
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Research and analysis to provoke public awareness and critical thinking
We contribute to the liberalisation of the democratic instituions of society, for they have been captured by the owners of the market. They work in tandem with their market agents, who, posing as public servants, are entrenched in the halls of government. The political class has betrayed its public mandate and instead operates to impose a marketocratic state to maximise the shareholder value of the institutional investors of international financial markets. They own the global corporations and think they own the world on behalf of their very private interest.
Our spheres of action: true democracy – true sustainability – living wage – basic income – inequality – ecological footprint – degrowth – global warming –human development – corporate accountability – civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights, responsible consumption, sustainable autonomous citizen cells...
Parting from an ethos of true democracy and true sustainability, We, the citizenry, work to advance the paradigm whose only purpose is to go in pursuit of the welfare of People and Planet and NOT the market.
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Existing Climate Mitigation Scenarios Perpetuate Colonial Inequalities
The challenge of climate mitigation is made more difficult by high rates of energy use in wealthy countries, mostly in the Global North, which far exceed what is required to meet human needs. In contrast, more than 3 billion people in poorer countries live in energy poverty. A just transition requires energy convergence—reducing energy use in wealthy countries to achieve rapid emissions reductions, and ensuring sufficient energy for development in the rest of the world. However, existing climate mitigation scenarios reviewed by The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change do not explore such a transition. On average, existing scenarios maintain the Global North's energy privilege at a per capita level 2·3 times higher than in the Global South. Even the more equitable scenarios perpetuate large energy inequalities for the rest of the century. To reconcile the Global North's high energy use with the Paris Agreement targets, most scenarios rely heavily on bioenergy-based negative emissions technologies. This approach is risky, but it is also unjust. These scenarios tend to appropriate land in the Global South to maintain, and further increase, the Global North's energy privilege. There is an urgent need to develop scenarios that represent convergence to levels of energy that are sufficient for human wellbeing and compatible with rapid decarbonisation.
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Nuclear Fusion, Icarus and Techno-Magical Thinking
The unbridled enthusiasm with which the recent experiment has been received in the media shows the obsession with the search for an unlimited source of energy
The Iam sure you have heard or read about the new technological promise set to save everything: nuclear fusion. A historic milestone. Unlimited energy within reach in just a few years; energy created out of nothing (screw yourself, thermodynamics!). These are just a few niceties with which the breakthrough is garnished in most media.
But has there really been such a spectacular breakthrough? Short answer: no.
The only solution is to get rid of this kind of blind faith in technology that dominates our societies as soon as possible. And fast. The higher the faith in the power to fix problems with the same cultural frameworks we have generated grows, the more the distance to the ground will also increase. We must realise that many of the stories we regularly read in the media are more about hope than experience, faith than reason, and despair than poise.
This situation is reminiscent of the nuclear (fission) energy furore of the 1950s when everything was to be powered by small reactors when it was said that electricity would become too cheap to charge for. Nuclear fission is the energy that has led us - after Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Fukushima - to this winter, in which France, the biggest nuclear reactor powerhouse, has warned of rolling blackouts to its population mainly because a good part of its power plants are shut down. What surprises will there be when we open this new Pandora's box of technology if we ever manage to do so?
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Which Future Are We Living In?
Two tumultuous decades have passed since the publication of Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead, the essay that prompted the formation of the Great Transition Initiative (GTI). Although the ambient pessimism of 2022 darkens the twentieth anniversary of a treatise that harboured hope for the future, it is also good reason to reflect on the durability of its message.
From the vantage point of 2002, GT envisioned contrasting scenarios for the twenty-first century. Now, standing partway into that unknown future, we are witnesses to how lived history collapsed all the possibilities into a single path—so far. The moment is propitious for locating where we are and where we are headed—and for recalibrating our conceptual framework and action agenda.
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Ten Questions About Marx—More Than Twenty Years After Marx’s Ecology
An interview with John Bellamy Foster
Roberto Andrés: I have long wanted to interview you about a book that was decisive in my intellectual formation: Marx’s Ecology. This book was published in 2000 in English and immediately translated into Spanish and inaugurated what has become known as second generation ecosocialism, which recognises the ecological conception of Karl Marx, unlike the previous generation. However, in the more than twenty years since, Marx’s Ecology not only opened a wide debate but was also the object of multiple criticisms (it could not be otherwise). Later, you and Paul Burkett, author of Marx and Nature, published an anti-critique: Marx and the Earth, where you rigorously answered each of those criticisms. And then Kohei Saito further extended this line of inquiry with Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism. All of this has led me to wonder about the answers you gave in 2000 to ten controversial questions that have puzzled analysts of Marx’s vast theoretical corpus for a long time. Given the debates over the last two decades, would you answer these ten questions the same way you did in 2000 with Marx’s Ecology? I tend to believe that, in general terms, much progress has been made during this time in this line of research. That is why I would like to do a very specific interview with you dealing with these ten controversial questions, some twenty years after Marx’s Ecology.
John Bellamy Foster: I am of course pleased to provide answers to your questions with respect to Marx and my book Marx’s Ecology two decades after its publication. My views have remained generally the same, though they naturally have been refined over the years. Nevertheless, I am glad to offer some clarifications.
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Is Degrowth the Future?
As the flaws in the currently prevailing paradigm of unfettered growth become ever more apparent, degrowth is increasingly regarded as a tangible alternative. Far from a radical notion confined to the realm of abstract debates, it may hold the key to a more just and sustainable world. An ambitious new book, The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World beyond Capitalism (Verso, 2022), sets out to be a roadmap towards a future without growth.
The climate breakdown, the growing gap between the wealthiest and the poorest, the gap between the Global North and South, and the ongoing pandemic have proved that the mainstream growth-based economic model is not fit for purpose. But what is the alternative?
The pandemic turned out to be a major moment for the degrowth debate. On the one hand, advocates of economic growth used lockdowns as evidence of what a degrowth society might look like, even though our growth-dependent economic model was at least partly responsible for driving the pandemic. Degrowth supporters, on the other hand, took the opportunity to clarify their proposal and stress the urgent need to move to a post-growth economy. Degrowth entered the mainstream debate like never before. As scholar Timothée Parrique shows, it is even present in themost recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.
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The Unbearable Unawareness of our Ecological Existential Crisis
Only a Revolution can stop our demise, but capitalism’s behemoth keeps people deceitful and mostly unaware of being on the verge of a catastrophic end. We must arouse Now!
In the last two years, the full report on Mitigation of Climate Change prepared by the IPCC scientists, as well as research from other centres, such as the Stockholm Resilience Centre, have consistently confirmed that we are following a trajectory of doom. Unless we veer fast in the opposite direction, the odds that we will be facing planetary catastrophes that will put at great risk the existence of life in our planet on the next twenty years are realistic and likely.
Not surprisingly, we continue to see that such existential threat— the direct result of the dominant socioeconomic structures of capitalism—continue to fall on the indifferent ears of those in power, particularly in the Global North, the overwhelming precursor of the planetary rift we face. Instead, these elites persist on a narrative that makes most people think that all we need to do is to decrease our carbon dioxide emissions to address climate change (which is only one of the nine planetary boundaries that we are on the verge of or have already transgressed) without changing the consumeristic lifestyle systems required for capitalism to sustain itself. They push, explicitly and implicitly, the idea that Promethean technological prowess will solve our problems, such as the fact that we are well underway of the Sixth Mass Extinction, so that we can confidently continue to pursue our consumeristic impulses in our quest for happiness.
Based on the track record delivered by the centers of power, it is evident that humans and nonhumans will surely reach our demise in the next few decades unless the common people rid themselves of the delusional and Promethean narrative advanced by the centers of power that has captured public opinion. To accomplish this, we must debunk this narrative and set the record straight. There is no possibility of future generations enjoying a sustainable and dignified life unless we radically change our culture and lifestyle habits and learn to live in harmony with our home, planet Earth. We must treat our planet with great care, as we would a friend we depend on for our lives. Hence, we must wake up, mobilise, and organise in order to force the replacement of the structures of unrelenting growth, endless consumption, and enormous inequality at the same time that we change our values and daily habits if we want to bequeath to future generations a life with dignity and joy.
The great challenge is to provoke awareness and critical thinking among the common people. The market reigns supreme, transforming people into consumer units, alienating and depriving them of their dignity and making them believe that success and happiness lie in having things, so that we can consume and feel happy through instant gratification. Consequently, replacing the deeply embedded culture of consumerism that is instrumental for capitalism to sustain itself is a colossal challenge. Yet, people must become conscientious and internalise that the only way to save humans and nonhumans, and the resources required from nature for both to survive and prosper, is by drastically radically cutting consumption in order to diminish our ecological footprint, replacing our structures and steering our trajectory towards a transition of consumption degrowth until we reach a sustainable steady state of production and consumption. We must embark on a sustainable transition that is safe and just for all living things and the planet.
Furthermore, because capitalism’s nature requires endless growth, the only way to accomplish this is through an ecosocial Geocratic Paradigm, or “Government by the Earth”. In this paradigm, humankind lives to take good care of its home as its friend, the planet. In Geocratia, instead of vying to possess and consume to survive, people enjoy a dignified life without all of the excesses of consumerism. In Geocratia, many basic needs, such as health care, education, and water—currently rendered as mere merchandise—are universal rights with guaranteed access to all people to live comfortably but frugally. There is no choice if we want to avoid the catastrophic trajectory of doom that we are rapidly undergoing, unless we prefer to ensure reaching our final demise in the next few decades.
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The fallacy of renewables and climate change
Between the fallacious positioning of "they are indispensable" and a complete opposition of the "we should not install any" type, there is a huge gap between rationality and, above all, true democracy.
In Claiming that renewable energies are the solution to climate change has become commonplace. However, in the face of the accelerated expansion of their installation, it is worth asking ourselves whether there is a verifiable reality behind this commonplace or whether we are, on the contrary, faced with yet another myth of what has come to be called the decarbonisation of our societies.
Because it is not only our political class that we hear telling us that "we need to install renewable energies", but even more than a few sectors of environmentalism assert that we need to "massively and rapidly" install large structures of what they call renewables, but which it would be better to call, to be precise and avoid dangerous self-deception, non-renewable systems of temporary capture of renewable energy flows (NRSRE or simply pseudo-renewables). If we don't do this, says a well-known disseminator, the consequences will be "droughts, fires, extreme weather" that will devastate "our fields and our biodiversity".
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The Return of the Dialectics of Nature: The Struggle for Freedom as Necessity
It is a fundamental premise of Marxism that as material conditions change, so do our ideas about the world in which we live. Today we are seeing a vast transformation in the relations of human society to the natural-physical world of which it is a part, evident in the emergence of what is now referred to as the Anthropocene Epoch in geological history, during which humanity has become the major force in Earth System change. An “anthropogenic rift” in the biogeochemical cycles of the earth,arising from the capitalist system, is now threatening to destroythe earth as a safe home for humanity and for innumerable species that live on it on a timeline not of centuries, but of decades. This necessarily demands a more dialectical conception of the relation of humanity to what Karl Marx called the “universal metabolism of nature.” The point today is not simply to understand the world, but to change it before it is too late.
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