Thread by @IngridRobeyns

Now @GreenRupertRead giving the annual Ul Haq lecture at #Hdca2019

@GreenRupertRead he warns us he will give us a message that we're likely to resist. He thinks we should resist the term 'development'. He doesn't think it makes people happy or fulfilled. Starks claims, as he admits.

@GreenRupertRead "Climate and ecological breakdown will make development history". ... "we must face up climate reality", and this changes everything. now: fact reminder/checks with the audience. "Fosile fuels are weapons of massive self-destruction".

@GreenRupertRead "The story we tell ourselves of the continued increase of the standard of living are over." The situation will get much worse still, except if we get rid of our addiction of development. E.g. SDG #8 undermines all that is important in the other SDG. We are heading for collapse.

@GreenRupertRead how to go forward? "The beautiful coincidence" is that the very things we need to do avoid self-destruction, is the things we need to do make us happy. Avoid loneliness. Relocalisation and systemic reduction of the ecological footprint will overcome the malaise of societies.

@GreenRupertRead We may be thinking: that's easy for a white middle-class man, from a privileged position, to lecture the world on how to be.
How to answer this critique? (1) not shoot the messenger. let's focus on content. Also in the UK, we are not immune for the disaster to come.

@GreenRupertRead (2) don't listen to me, but to the indigenous peoples of the world, who have been defending a vision of a more harmonious way of living for centuries.
(3) listen to the voice of the Earth itself.

Intermezzo/a critique: @GreenRupertRead just said: Industrial growth capitalism, a.k.a. 'development' - but the whole point of the HDCA is to challenge that model of 'development'... as philosophers, we should now that 'development' is a concept in need of conceptualisation.

So my point is: let's not get rid of the term "development" but rather stress that that we need another view on what "development should be, and green it. Basic insight #1 from the Capability Approach and the Human Development approach: Economic growth is not development.

...
Extinction Rebellion's first claim is that the (UK) government should speak the truth, and e.g. include in our emissions stats also the fossil fuel that we export; if we do that, we see that emissions don't go down.

coming to a conclusion: of course we need international collaboration; recommends book "the Paradise built in Hell"; but localisation is going to replace globalisation as a path for the future. In the future we shall be living on much less, but we will be happier.

now debate/discussion.
(1) Q: assume we agree, how to get there? A: the north should learn from the south; people need to learn how to grown food, including ways that are deeply defamilisarised.

(2) what to do? You have to make your actions congruent to what you're saying. Join Xtinction Rebellion "Come and get arrested this October." If you're not ready to get arrested, take the first step in the direction of mass nonviolent protest, which does require large numbers.

(3) My Q: why drop 'development', rather than replace it with one that is focussing on non-material capabilities? (cfr. this paper I wrote: cusp.ac.uk/themes/m/m1-4/, in which I lay out the problems)
A: the term 'development' is profoundly tainted by history. >

The CA: it is too individualistic, is it genuinely different? Is there really the possibility to question eachother preferences?
+ Philosophical discussion on the distinction between 1st person and 3rd person plural, which I take to have poisoned contemporary philosophy.

More Q&A at the #HDCA2019 .... @HDCA2019_London

(4) Q: What does @ExtinctionR do?
Answer: google, there are plenty of videos.

(5) Q: is the future you see one where we have [pre-modern] practices, such as polyandry, high maternal mortality rates, as well as people not having access to sciences-based medicine?
A: we don't need a foolish romantization, we need to keep the best of both. >

< but some hard choices are needed, we need e.g. health services that are less tech-heavy, and more (family-)care-based. We can't have this industry-based health care everywhere, and we need these hard and honest choices.

(6) In rural forst India: there have been challenges and problems; it was previously eco friendly; now all shoes and food and cloths are imported. How could we what could we do in Universities?
A: we need a new imaginary. e.g. take it from Ursula McGuinn. Ghandi.

(7) Why have a war-time mobilisation of climate crises? Emergency powers always subjegate democracy and dissent. What risk is there that this will not happen?
A: the gamble is worth taking since representative democracy has failed to address this crises. Therefore our 3rd demand

is to create citizens' assemblies. So we wants a new form of democracy.

Q8: what is the role of Law in the climate crisis? [NB: interesting question given the strategy chosen by @urgenda]

Q9: Erik Palmer (a) I hope you give 'development' a chance. If you add Ubuntu to Sen, you have much of what you need to see.
A: freedom is so deeply build in DNA of societies, that it needs to be opposed. As a Wittgenstinian Philosopher I think freedom is the ultimate value >

but we also should focus on embeddedness.

(b) students often go to psychological egoism to explain why we do what we do. People might think you do all this because of your own ego.
A: the reasons we got into the media in April is because people saw people being there as authentic selves, not egotistic. The reason >

why 1100 were willing to be arrested, is because we listen to the lives of our children. The climate strikers and other youth are begging for their lives. We will be writing on our forearms the names of our children, our nephews and nieces. So it has nothing to do with me.

Q10: The power that is in the wealthy 1%. The global institutional economic order. Do you think that civil disobedience and mass protests is enough to change this?