Against the cannabilism of capital (tags)
Degrowth - not just Green New Deals! (tags)
We live in a time of many and accelerating crises. Climate breakdown is breathing down our neck. Biodiversity is collapsing in ecosystems around the world, and many natural safety nets – water cycles, soil fertility, fish stocks, microbial diversity – are unraveling.
Myths of the Crisis and Enemy Images in the Media (tags)
The Ukrainian ambassador was quoted in the FAZ as saying: "All Russians are now our enemies". This rhetoric is classic enemy image cultivation... This homogenization is so pre-Enlightenment and always wrong.
Stress for the soul. Climate change triggers stress and despair (tags)
Psychology understands fear as an arousal that primarily causes displeasure. Fear is never rational, but sometimes it is appropriate and serves as an alarm. Anxiety disorders, on the other hand, according to the common definition, are directed at non-existent dangers...
Ecosocialist strategy: industrial restructuring (tags)
The findings of international climate research and the IPCC are clear. World society is heading for tipping points that will abruptly change the earth and climate system. As a result, several billion people will lose their previous livelihoods in a few decades.
On the "end of the climate crisis" (tags)
"Global warming, environmental degradation, and growing inequality are primarily the consequences of an unleashed economic mode that is focused on profit and quarterly numbers, but not on the well-being of people and nature."
An economy that does not grow can nevertheless always change and even improve in the process. It can become more ecological, for example. Last year, for example, CO2 emissions fell by almost six percent - more than at any time since the Second World War.
Shrinkage means the voluntary downsizing of the national economy, including a reduction in gross domestic product. "Voluntary" here indicates a preference for voluntaristic solutions - though not as individualistic and unplanned where well-to-do opt out of the consumerist market model.
The car industry and the climate crisis (tags)
The car companies should now be converted into providers of mobility needs based on socio-ecological sustainability. Reduction of working hours-short full time of an average of 30 hours/4 days per week for all-part of the radical change for human survival amid plutocratic economics.
Bioeconomical resilience (tags)
Bioeconomical resilience
Downshiftism
Survival instead of Profit (tags)
Capital is a powerful machine of commodification. Since the capitalist market economy became autonomous and "separated" from society, capital has only functioned according to its own laws, the impersonal laws of profit and accumulation.
Limits to Growth Published Forty Years Ago (tags)
The MIT scholars under Dennis Meadows came to four core conclusions: 1) there are limits to economic growth on finite planet, 2) the economy and population are growing exponentially, 3) exceeding limits will lead to collapse and 4) collapse could be avoided by turning from growth
Trumponomics: Failure Pre-Programmed (tags)
Macro-economic and ecological connections are simply ignored with the concentration on short-term profit. The planned reduction of corporate taxes from the current 35% to 15 or 20% recalls the Laffer-curve as the basis of Reagan's fiscal policy error.
Who Owns the Sky? The Climate in the Globalization Trap (tags)
The bad news is that there are more inconvenient truths. Climate change is present, not future. Globalization and protection of the atmosphere do not go together. Climate policy has a past. Economic profit dominance always has a priority over climate protection.
On the End of Capitalism (tags)
The bridge from capitalism to the new "post-growth economy" is lacking. Hardly anyone reflects about the process of transformation...If the climate should be spared, flying cannot be a human right. The R-word will be unavoidable again: renunciation.
Growth, Prosperity and Quality of Life (tags)
"Our understanding of a modern economic and social system is strongly influenced by the phase between 1950 and 1975 when the social market economy was created and democracy was re-stabilized. Since then conditions have changed. New answers are necessary."
Growth Criticism and Social-Ecological Transformation (tags)
Unlike a chair, an idea can be shared by a whole people. Words can be like spears breaking frozen souls. (Kafka) Education is the great transformer (John Kenneth Galbraith). Economics as taught today is like brainwashing. (Ulrich Thielemann) Incentives to investing in the real economy are vital after the phase of credit- and bubble prosperity.
Capitalism and Its Crisis Proclivity (tags)
The liberal economists of the 19th century claimed no crises could occur in capitalism since every supply creates its demand. On the other hand, Marx and Engels recognized early on the causes for crises in capitalism. The contradictions of the accumulation process lead to crises.
TheInheritance of Inequality and Rethinking Growth (tags)
The economy exists for people, not vice versa. Economics should be pluralist, not a monolith. The economy should be embedded in society; society should not be embedded in the economy. Thomas Piketty and alternative economics emphasize inequality and mass unemployment.
New Economy and New Prosperity (tags)
Economic structures that form the basis for social prosperity have become dysfunctional. The financial markets have expanded their original function and are now self-financed markets in which protection from risks has become a highly speculative business.
International Multicultural Literary Magazine Features Armenia in Spring Issue (tags)
TTIP: International Mega-corporations prevent social and ecological globalization (tags)
In the reality of international monopolist competition, narrow economic profit interests dominate to the disadvantage of broad prosperity gains. Protection of foreign mega-investors before indirect expropriation leads to a dispossession of nation state democracy.
Less Growth = More Happiness (tags)
The question about alternatives to the dominant western model of life and greowth becomes increasingly urgent together with the looming-or already occurred-surpassing of Peak Oil. New measurements of prosperity include life satisfaction, access to health care and education
APIEL Environmental Law Conference in Knoxville, TN Oct 20-23 (tags)
Attend the 2nd annual Appalachian Public Interest Environmental Law Conference www.apiel.org
Free Internet Book: "Needs and Limits" (tags)
"The logic of capitalism must be replaced to address the crisis of ecological overshoot and to achieve a sustainable well-being."
Flying Is One of the Worst Things You Can Do for the Environment (tags)
Flying Is One of the Worst Things You Can Do for the Environment -- So Why Do So Many Well-Intentioned Folks Do It?
A Global Ecological Argument for a Basic Income (tags)
Erik Christensen is an associate professor of economics in Denmark.
20 Theses against a Green Capitalism (tags)
Is a Green New Deal possible? These theses were published in an English translation in: Prager Fruhling (Prague Spring) in December 2009.
Climate Justice, Not Growth Mania (tags)
"In green capitalism, the bio-crisis is at the center of the growth strategy. The Green New Deal represents a kind of ecological inversion of Kennedy's famous sentence: Ask not what you can do for the environment but what the environment can do for you..."
All Cards on the Table: For a Social Ecological New Deal (tags)
The neoliberal and fossilist finance market capitalism has become a discontinued model. With his New Deal, Roosevelt introduced state pensions, unemployment insurance and the minimum wage, reduced working hours and strengthened unions.
Worldwide 136 cities of millions at the coasts are directly endangered by the rising sea level.. The president cannot win a two-front war against the conservatives.. Over 100 German regions resolved to be completely renewable by 2025.
As 10 years ago, there is again resistance against the chaotic, polarizing destructive power of the markets and against the false alternatives of the governments. A globally democratized climate justice requires turning away from the status quo and the "imperial lifestyle."
Satiation or Two Limits of Growth: John Maynard Keynes (tags)
"The first great economic crisis of the 21st century marks the end of a failed political-economic experiment..The past 30 years of redistribution from bottom to top were a glistening epoch for the owners of capital.."
Ecological Justice Instead of Growth Economy for the Rich (tags)
"Now the market, the god of neoliberals, cannot help any more and speculators cry for the already instrumentalized state.. Studying pre-capitalist approaches is vital to develop a post-capitalist vision. The vision of the Bible is an economy of enough for all, an economy for life."
From Bubbles to Living Economies (tags)
"The old story promised stability based on enterprise but delivered chaos based on speculation. It preached transparency but created a world ruled by occult financial knowledge.."
Social capital has dangerously disappeared in the last years and decades. In the whole economy, there should be more cooperation and less competition, more sustainability and less monetary striving for gain. One cannot solve problems with the same thinking that caused the problems,
Ecosocialist Meeting Report (tags)
More than 60 activists from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States belonging to various political parties and ecological movements took part in this meeting.
Social Economies and Political Conflicts (tags)
Most of our serious social, ecological and economic problems can only be solved bottom-up with the insight and will of concerned citizens. The challenge consists in a radical democratization of the economy. Otherwise we put the cart before the horse and bridle the horse by the tail.
Brazil, Paraná: Syngenta's GMO alert! (tags)
The farm is located in the band of ecological protection of the National Park of Iguaçu. "In case that it begins again to be used as field of tests toward research with GMOS, it will demonstrate that the Swiss company really wants to make, at Paraná, what it would never make in the Swiss city of Basel, headquarters of the company" affirmed Silveira.
The Battle for Mass Transit in Los Angeles (tags)
Scenes and public commentary from the MTA's public hearing on the recent fare hike, as well as general commentary on the event and a discussion as to what prevents Los Angeles from creating the mass transit system it direly needs.
Sustainability or Consumerism (tags)
The industrial nations must lower their CO2 emissions at least 80% by 2060.. Consumerism, accumulating goods as a substitute for meaning, is the great enemy of climate protection today.
BTL:The Ecological Footprint Offers a Tool to Measure Human Consumption of... (tags)
...Resources ~ Interview with Mathis Wackernagel, co-creator of the Ecological Footprint, conducted by Between the Lines' Melinda Tuhus
The total commercialization of the world has triumphed..A dynamic of growth withdrawal could be initiated through a few simple measures..Internalizing costs would drastically change our societies..Democratic local initiatives are realistic.
The Garden of Eden: Gus Speth (tags)
Gus Speth describes a "world full of wounds," the final loss of the "garden of eden," environmental pollution and the waste of resources in an ever-more densely populated world.. He outlines an "eightfold path" to sustainability.
The predicted consequences of global warming are manifest.. In 2050 England will be half under water.. Production shifts to low-wage countries. Instead of preventing this shift, politics still urges all people to adjust to the little group of egoists.
Economics for a Shrinking Planet (tags)
The expansion of humanity's ecological impact on the planet cannot continue much longer without violating natural thresholds. To survive, we must develop a new way of thinking about our economic activities. This article briefly describes the author's approach to such a new mode of thought.
An Invitation to Join Californians for a Ge-Free Agriculture (tags)
The Ecological Farming Association, based in Watsonville, is excited to be a founding member of a new coalition working to prevent genetically engineered (GE) crops in California. We are encouraging people to get involved with this coalition and lend support to the campaign.
The Environment is Always an Economic Boom: Debating the Rightwing (tags)
The five rightwing arguments for downsizing ecology are criticized. "Ecological moderniza-tion triggers innovations, creates jobs, opens up export chances and lowers health costs.. In Switzerland per capital energy consumption could be reduced two-thirds.."
Free-Market Capitalism and Ecological Disaster (tags)
The Free-Market libertarian argues that business leaders see and understand the effects of long-term environmental damage. But business leaders concentrate on short term profits, thus the planet continues its free-fall toward ecological disaster.
Appeal to all governments of middle east (tags)
You can help the US to make a better tomorrow
Social & Ecological Responsibility (tags)
Montage and analysis of ecological disasters and the political and corporate perpetrators