Jason Hickel Profile picture
Dec 21, 2018 3 tweets 1 min read Read on X
Rojava's YPG have been the bravest and most effective ground-troops in the battle against ISIS. Now the US withdrawal from Syria leaves them fully exposed to Erdogan's aggression in what will likely become a bloodbath. It is a horrifying betrayal.
For decades the US has invaded other countries under the guise of promoting "democracy". It has always been a lie. Now, when actual democracy is at stake - a radical experiment in eco-feminist direct democracy - the US is throwing it under the bus. #StopTurkeyDefendRojava
It's not just that the US is leaving #Rojava to its fate, as if washing its hands of the matter. Let's not forget that Erdogan's invasion of Rojava will be by a US ally and NATO member, and will only be possible with US consent.

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More from @jasonhickel

Oct 31
This Bloomberg report is a stark reminder: we cannot rely on capital to achieve green transition. Capital is not investing enough in green energy because it's not as profitable as fossil fuels. The solution? We need a public finance strategy and fast.

bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-…
Public finance, together with a credit guidance framework. Central banks have the power to force capital to stop making climate-destroying investments and direct investment instead in necessary activities: foreignpolicy.com/2024/08/16/cli…
People assumed that renewable energy development would increase once it became cheaper than fossil fuels. But capital doesn't care about cheapness. It cares about *profits*. Capital won't invest when the outlook is like this. You need to make the necessary investments directly. Image
Read 4 tweets
Jul 30
I strongly disagree with these remarks. They are empirically incorrect, but also illustrate a terrible reactionary tendency among some environmentalists that must be rejected. Image
The claim is that ecological collapse will undermine industrial production, so we should not pursue development to meet needs in the South.

For instance, we should not ensure refrigerators for people b/c this would inhibit their ability to migrate away from uninhabitable zones!Image
Image
Going further, the OP says instead of pursuing human development, we should be preparing for a world where we have no capacity to produce things like refrigerators and phones.

These are wildly problematic positions...Image
Read 19 tweets
Jul 29
In this new paper we calculate the unequal exchange of labour between the global North and global South. The results are quite staggering. You'll want to look at this... 🧵

nature.com/articles/s4146…
Image
First, a crucial point. Workers in the global South contribute 90% of the labour that powers the world economy, and 91% of labour for international trade.

The South provides the majority of the world's labour in all sectors (including 93% of global manufacturing labour).Image
And a lot of this is high-skill labour.

The South now contributes more high-skilled labour to the world economy than all the high-, medium- and low-skilled labour contributions of the global North combined.
Read 13 tweets
Jul 25
New paper: "How much growth is required to achieve good lives for all?"

Is it possible to realise this vision without exacerbating ecological breakdown? Yes! But it requires a totally different approach to the question of growth and development. 🧵
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Image
Some narratives hold that ending poverty and achieving good lives for all will require every country to reach the GDP/cap of high-income countries. But this would have severe ecological consequences. It forces a brutal dilemma between poverty reduction and ecological stability.
Convergence along these lines is also not possible given the imperialist structure of the world economy. High consumption in the core of the world-system depends on massive net-appropriation from the periphery. This model cannot be universalized.
Read 13 tweets
Jul 12
I'm excited to announce the latest release of the Sustainable Development Index, now with data through 2022. Costa Rica tops the list!

sustainabledevelopmentindex.org
As usual, middle-income countries that have strong public provisioning systems tend to perform best. This model allows countries to deliver relatively high levels of human welfare with relatively low levels of resource use.
Latin America boasts eight of the ten best-performing countries.

Most high-income countries continue to decline. Norway and Iceland— often mistakenly regarded as sustainability leaders — have declined nearly to the level of the United States.
aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/…
Read 7 tweets
Jun 26
People would better understand North Korea’s disposition toward the US if they remembered that US forces perpetrated an industrial-scale bombing campaign that destroyed nearly all of the country’s cities and towns, civilian infrastructure, and 85% of all buildings.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians were incinerated. The US dropped more bombs on North Korea in the early 1950s than they did in the entire Pacific theatre during WW2, making North Korea one of the most bombed countries in the world. You don’t easily forget such a thing.
All of these are war crimes today under Protocol I of the Geneva Convention.

“After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops.” en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_o…
Read 4 tweets

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