Matthias Schmelzer Profile picture
Prof Uni Flensburg • economic history and social-ecological transformation • author of HEGEMONY OF GROWTH and THE FUTURE IS DEGROWTH • opinions my own
Mar 22, 2023 5 tweets 3 min read
Fossil fuel companies “have not simply been lying to the public, they have been killing members of the public at an accelerating rate, and prosecutors should bring that crime to the public’s attention.”

Paper accepted in Harvard Environmental Law Review
theguardian.com/environment/20… "Activists and journalists declaim the executives of ExxonMobil, Shell, and other large oil companies as 'mass murderers'", citing @KateAronoff.

This is how the paper "Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Deaths" starts.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Mar 1, 2023 4 tweets 3 min read
This is a fascinating deep dive into how the sustainability of bicycle production has changed.

A tale of planned obsolescence, overproduction, carbon inefficiency, rising energy and material use, and reduced life expectancy. @lowtechmagazine
solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/02/can-we… While the energy and material used for the production of bicycles increased over recent decades, in line with carbon emissions, life expectancy decreases.

One reason are changing materials.
Feb 27, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
Heute vor 70 Jahren wurden die Schulden Westdeutschlands gestrichen. Dies legte die Basis für das "Wirtschaftswunder".

Heute wird dem Globalen Süden diese Generosität verweigert, mit fatalen Folgen.

Schon auffällig: kein Wort dazu in der deutschen Presse
theguardian.com/commentisfree/… Deutschland steht daher in besonderer Verantwortung.

Weltweit gibt es heute Aktionen für Schuldenstreichung - eine zentrale Voraussetzung für Entwicklung und Klimagerechtigkeit.

Zum Hintergrund hier ein sehr informativer vom @KoalaKollektiv
Feb 10, 2023 9 tweets 4 min read
This is an immensely important intervention.

A new manifesto that critiques the "clean energy" transitions of the Global North and offers an alternative vision from the Global South.

Please read this key analysis and the demands ⬇️
fpif.org/manifesto-for-… It starts by taking stock of the post-Covid situation, in which the "engines of this unjust status quo—capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, and various fundamentalisms—are making a bad situation worse"
Jan 30, 2023 16 tweets 9 min read
While postgrowth and degrowth are often defined as the “planned” reduction of production and consumption, there is little engagement with what “planning beyond growth” could look like.

That's why we wrote a new working paper with @cedric_durand & @E_Hofferberth. Thread There is a wide acceptance, at the abstract, most general, even definitional level, that degrowth involves planning or amounts to a planned transition. 2/
Jan 10, 2023 13 tweets 5 min read
Scientists for civil disobedience and against the eviction of #Luetzerath

Here's our open letter with @SciReb_Germany calling to stop the eviction of this village that is blocking the expansion of one of Europe's biggest lignite mines.

Please sign, spread, support, come. 🧵 Image We cannot accept the decision that the village of Lützerath is to be sacrificed to the open-cast lignite mine Garzweiler II.

This red line must not be crossed: Lützerath must not be evicted, the coal underneath must not be used.
scientistrebellion.com/open-letter-ag… Image
Dec 5, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
New OECD report on tipping points should frighten everyone.

“Recent state-of-the-art research shows that important tipping points are already ‘possible’ at current levels of warming and may become ‘likely’ within the Paris Agreement range of 1.5 to 2°C warming…” The @OECD report summarizes latest research that shows these "self-reinforcing, severe & irreversible changes could occur far sooner & at lower levels of warming."

This means there are very few years left. #ClimateEmergency
Nov 21, 2022 5 tweets 3 min read
In 30 years of UN climate negotiations, eliminating the primary cause of global heating - fossil fuels - has never been mentioned in the decisions, not even in the COP27 in 2022.

And these were the results. Image And emissions are still rising
Oct 11, 2022 12 tweets 4 min read
I’ve written on how Liz Truss’ call for ‘growth’ reveals the economics of deception behind neoliberal growth politics in general. @NewStatesman

Since it’s paywalled, here’s the key argument 🧵
newstatesman.com/ideas/2022/10/… “I have three priorities for our economy: growth, growth and growth.” Liz Truss’s pronouncement reverberated around the world. So, too, did her attacks on what she called an #antigrowthcoalition. @TheAntiGrowthC4
Aug 23, 2022 20 tweets 7 min read
The critique of economic growth is as old as growth itself. And it’s not just about the more recent critique of GDP or about growth as a policy goal, but goes much deeper. How was growth criticized and by whom?

Check out my new article @GlobalizationsJ 🧵
tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108… It starts from the premise that while critiques of growth are likely to shape future social conflicts around economics, environment, & politics, we know little about the diversity of exiting growth critiques or about their historical origins and longterm trajectories.
Jul 26, 2022 31 tweets 14 min read
Being a provocative term, #degrowth is often misinterpreted or misrepresented, even by many who share its objectives.

After Starmer’s speech calling for ‘growth, growth, growth’, #degrowth is trending – a good time to discuss the most common misunderstandings. 🧵 based on book ImageImage This is based on our just published @VersoBooks with Andrea Vetter and @a_vansi. More info here 2/
Jul 25, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
"9 Euro sind nicht einfach nur ein Ticketpreis. 9 Euro heißt Entlastung bei steigenden Preisen, Mobilität für alle, Klimaschutz, Gemeinwohl und einen Schritt in die Zukunft."
Jetzt Verlängerung unterstützen: 9-euro-ticket-weiterfahren.de Es gibt viele gute Gründe für den Erhalt des 9 Euro Tickets. Die Initiative 9 Euro Ticket Weiterfahren hat hier die neun besten Gründe zusammengestellt:
Jun 8, 2022 13 tweets 5 min read
Is degrowth a neoliberal “politics of less” and ultimately against workers? These are the arguments in a new book by @Matthuber78.

Since we have a book coming out @VersoBooks too, we’ve been asked to engage. Fortunately, @PoliticOfNature has done this already - some thoughts 🧵 I have read Huber’s book "Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet" and find many of his arguments really convincing – in particular where he discusses the need for broad strategic alliances, a materialist analyses, and class-based climate politics. 2/
Feb 15, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
New study finds that the average carbon footprint in the top 1% of emitters is more than 75-times higher than that in the bottom 50%. The top 10% are contributing almost half of all emitted CO2. nature.com/articles/s4189… Average country carbon footprints differ widely between countries – but must be drastically reduced in most regions to achieve climate targets.
Jan 3, 2022 4 tweets 3 min read
50 years ago, the Club of Rome published its landmark report 'Limits to Growth'. Its scenarios, leading to a collapse of industrial growth by the 2040s, have sparked controversial debates - but also proved remarkably accurate ⬇️ In 2016, @ProfTimJackson @CUSP_uk published Limits Revisited: "There is unsettling evidence that society is still following the ‘standard run’ of the original study – in which overshoot leads to an eventual collapse of production and living standards."
cusp.ac.uk/themes/p/limit…
Dec 7, 2021 7 tweets 3 min read
The global concentration of capital is extreme: The richest 10% own around 60-80% of wealth, the poorest half less than 5%, according to just published World Inequality Report. Image Economic growth does *not* lead to a more equal world. Image
Dec 1, 2021 4 tweets 2 min read
The material dimensions of capitalism are staggering.

In 2020, the amount of human-made mass exceeded for the first time the dry weight of all life on Earth.

Its current increase corresponds to each person on the globe producing more than their body weight every week. Every year, we extract almost 90 billion tons of raw materials from the Earth.

Graphic from here: visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-th…
Oct 5, 2021 11 tweets 5 min read
Die Postwachstumsökonomie, wie sie Niko Paech vertritt, ist in Deutschland sehr prominent - aber auch umstritten.

@corinna_viajera und ich haben in der Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensethik einige Kritikpunkte aus Degrowth-Perspektive aufgeschrieben. 1/x Anmerkungen zu Niko Paechs Postwachstumsökonomie
Plädoyer für weniger Individualethik, mehr Kapitalismuskritik und eine intersektionale Gerechtigkeitsperspektive 2/x
nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/1439-8…
Sep 30, 2021 9 tweets 6 min read
Today, the @OECD turns 60 years. While many constantly use its statistics and refer to its reports, its history is little known.

But it's key to understand the power behind what is often idealized as a rational and neutral think tank. Here's two books on this ⬇️ For our take on the history of the OECD resulting from the OECD history project with @M_Leimgruber see our website oecdhistoryproject.net

And our book at @Palgrave: palgrave.com/gp/book/978331…
Sep 23, 2021 14 tweets 20 min read
It's official: Our book „The Future is Degrowth“ (with @a_vansi and Andrea Vetter) will be published next June with @VersoBooks. What's in it? ⬇️ This book provides a vision for postcapitalism beyond growth. Building on a vibrant field of research, it discusses the political economy and the politics of a non-growing economy.
versobooks.com/books/3989-the…
Jun 11, 2021 7 tweets 4 min read
Economic growth in rich countries is based on the appropriation of materials, energy, land, and labor from the global South.

This is called ecologically unequal exchange - and here's a paper providing the most comprehensive empirical evidence to date. 1/x
sciencedirect.com/science/articl… These numbers are so important, since market exchange often obscures inequalities. A material perspective on asymmetric global resource flows can become a key corrective. 2/ Image