This is exciting. New research by @JKSteinberger's team, hot off the press, finds that we could scale down global energy consumption by 60% and still provide good living standards for 10 billion people by 2050, with universal healthcare and education. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
This would make it much easier for us to achieve a rapid transition to 100% renewable energy, meeting our climate goals in a matter of years, not decades. In fact, we already produce half of the renewable energy that this scenario would require.
Continuing to grow total energy use while trying at the same time to transition to renewables is a strategy that is guaranteed to continue failing. We need to be smarter than that.
Study co-author Professor Narasimha Rao from Yale University said: “This study confirms that eradicating poverty is not an impediment to climate stabilization, rather it’s the pursuit of unmitigated affluence.”
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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…
We have *extraordinary* productive capacities. We can do virtually anything. Renewable energy? Integrated public transit? Regenerative farming? High-quality affordable housing for all? DONE. But we are prevented from doing these things because they are not profitable to capital.
Medicines to end preventable diseases. Universal public healthcare. Insulated buildings. High-efficiency appliances in every household...
We live in a *shadow* of the society we could have because we do not have democratic control over finance and production.
We face mass deprivation, human misery and ecological crisis all around us. All of it totally unnecessary. And we are told to believe that this is somehow natural and "normal". It's wild.
Major investors like BlackRock and JPMorgan have pulled out of Climate Action commitments because they can achieve higher profits doing fossil fuels and emissions. A clear reminder that capitalism cannot achieve green transition with the necessary speed. ft.com/content/ab26da…
Renewables are cheap. Rapid decarbonization can be achieved. But affordability and feasibility are not what matters to capital. What matters is profits. They will invest in whatever is most profitable, and all of us are hostage to their insane logic.
It is critical to understand: finance represents power over our collective productive capacities - *our* labour and resources. With these capacities we can easily solve social & ecological problems. But we are prevented from doing so because capital directs our efforts elsewhere.
Did capitalist reforms reduce extreme poverty in China? New empirical data suggests the opposite. In the 1980s, socialist China had some of the lowest rates of extreme poverty in the periphery, while the capitalist reforms caused poverty to increase. theconversation.com/chinas-capital…
Scholars have long argued that the World Bank's $1.90 method suffers from a significant limitation, as it does not tell us whether people can actually afford essential goods (food, shelter, clothing, fuel), whose prices may move differently to the rest of the economy.
To overcome this limitation, we need to measure incomes against the cost of basic needs. This is a more robust approach.
With this method, we see that China's public provisioning systems ensured that even low-income people could access essential goods.
Here’s a quick roundup of highlights from research we published in 2023, on climate change, capitalism, colonialism, degrowth and post-capitalist futures. As always, free PDFs are available via the link at the end of the thread. 🧵
1) This one is my top highlight. Rich countries have dramatically exceeded their fair-shares of the carbon budget for 1.5°C. In a zero-by-2050 scenario they will owe $192 trillion to global South countries in compensation for atmospheric appropriation. nature.com/articles/s4189…
2) Rich countries and elites are overwhelmingly responsible for excess emissions, but communities in the global South—and racially minoritized groups within nations—face a disproportionate burden of illness and mortality due to climate change. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Thanks to a lot of tech bros and economists getting Very Upset about degrowth, this article is now the number one trending publication at Nature. nature.com/articles/d4158…
I mean, the authors of this piece wrote totally obscene things like "Wealthy economies should scale down destructive and unnecessary forms of production to reduce energy and material use, and focus economic activity around securing human needs and well-being." Heretics, all.
But, but... but what about technology!
Yeah mate we like technology too. We also like a habitable planet. And we don't like imperialism. All of these things can go together. monthlyreview.org/2023/07/01/on-…