German goals to cut greenhouse emissions by 65% by 2030 are likely to be missed, meaning a longer-term net zero by a 2045 target is also in doubt, reports by government climate advisers and the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) show.
I have one axiomatic argument I stand by, although I recognize both pros and cons.
We’ve missed our targets and deadlines and climate change is happening faster-than-expected. Infrastructure is being brutalized by weather extremes. I believe it is reasonable to assume that many regions will decomplexify as a result of the changing environment reducing the carrying capacity and energy economy. Nuclear power plants are some of the most complex technology we have - even the supply chains and maintenance are extremely complicated. When we currently plan for these installations, it is with the assumption that society will be carrying on as usual. They would appear much riskier if we had to take into account situations where resources and/or personnel may be unavailable. Those situations will be almost inevitable for some regions, but determining where and how stability will collapse is still impossible to predict.
Where there are other solutions available (including degrowth), I would first support those.
Well if you don’t support nuclear because its “too complex,” you de facto support coal, which will inevitably turn into “degrowth” as most of the world can’t support agriculture anymore, and so you will get to nod your head as 100’s of millions are “de-growthed” into starvation.
David Graeber wrote a great book called Bullshit Jobs that examines how many jobs really are effectively useless. This is enormously wasteful. We could easily reorganize labor to supply enough food and keep people employed. Jobs don’t just exist, they are created, and they are created in accordance with economic frameworks being used. To focus on jobs separate from the deleterious industry that commands them - instead of programs aimed to support communities - is to zoom in so much as to not be able to address the factors that are fundamentally contributing toward ecological collapse. The reality is that a capitalist economy aiming for infinite growth will not manage fossil fuels in a way that will restrict their use in a manner that is best for the long-term survival of life on Earth. This alone calls for examination of how to better utilize the labor force - both because it could be better employed to our benefit, but also because it as actively harmful at present.
A simple way to look at it is this: There is a metric called Earth’s Energy Imbalance. It measures how much extra energy is being added to our environment. If we have on climate change metric to look at in summary of all others, this is the simple but important one. We need to bring that number down. Unfortunately, every Funko Pop that is made and sold adds to that number. And someone who can be made happy by a Funko Pop can be made happy by something with a much smaller footprint, that isn’t made out of fossil fuels and shipped around the world. Every labor and industrial action we take that is unnecessary, is unnecessarily adding to the EEI. When we start looking at what we can optimize regarding the EEI, we find that what we have most control over and what is causing the most significant effect, we see our own industry on the cutting board. That’s what degrowth is about.
The goal of most degrowth support is to make it as likely as possible that any of humanity will survive, or failing to do so, to preserve a world that is as suitable as possible for other ecosystems to endure. Reducing the EEI is the best we can do to that end. It is 100% about avoiding death and tragedy. I don’t have kids, but there are kids in my family and I care about them very much. It pains me to think of what is in store for them - especially because we have known what we needed to do for so long. We just needed to reorganize our labor.
Degrowth is a dangerous ideology. For those living in rich countries, degrowth might just mean austerity, for those living in middle and lower income countries, degrowth is going to mean destitution and certain death for x percentage of the population.
I disagree for many of the reasons I’ve already explained on responses to this comment. The climate science community also disagrees based on a consensus of studies. After becoming informed on the situation, degrowth is clearly the least dangerous ideology to pursue because it doesn’t further extend our overshoot. And that applies to all locations.
I have one axiomatic argument I stand by, although I recognize both pros and cons.
We’ve missed our targets and deadlines and climate change is happening faster-than-expected. Infrastructure is being brutalized by weather extremes. I believe it is reasonable to assume that many regions will decomplexify as a result of the changing environment reducing the carrying capacity and energy economy. Nuclear power plants are some of the most complex technology we have - even the supply chains and maintenance are extremely complicated. When we currently plan for these installations, it is with the assumption that society will be carrying on as usual. They would appear much riskier if we had to take into account situations where resources and/or personnel may be unavailable. Those situations will be almost inevitable for some regions, but determining where and how stability will collapse is still impossible to predict.
Where there are other solutions available (including degrowth), I would first support those.
Well if you don’t support nuclear because its “too complex,” you de facto support coal, which will inevitably turn into “degrowth” as most of the world can’t support agriculture anymore, and so you will get to nod your head as 100’s of millions are “de-growthed” into starvation.
Why would anyone who’s against nuclear automatically be pro coal? It’s not like the only options available to us are nuclear and coal.
That is the truth. Nuclear competes with fossil fuels, not wind or solar.
That’s going to happen anyway.
Living up to your name.
Then why are you here? Your horrid omnicidal wish will be, by your own admission, inevitably granted. You have nothing to worry about.
I have no such thing.
Why are you here, just to drop in on conversations and harass people?
If you want degrowth, you want to see billions dead, because that is what degrowth means.
That’s not true. Choosing degrowth prevents deaths, kicking the can until nature forces degrowth leads to more deaths.
Is this one of those projection things driven by a guilty conscience?
Degrowth means job loss. Job loss means no income. No income means no food. No food means starvation.
David Graeber wrote a great book called Bullshit Jobs that examines how many jobs really are effectively useless. This is enormously wasteful. We could easily reorganize labor to supply enough food and keep people employed. Jobs don’t just exist, they are created, and they are created in accordance with economic frameworks being used. To focus on jobs separate from the deleterious industry that commands them - instead of programs aimed to support communities - is to zoom in so much as to not be able to address the factors that are fundamentally contributing toward ecological collapse. The reality is that a capitalist economy aiming for infinite growth will not manage fossil fuels in a way that will restrict their use in a manner that is best for the long-term survival of life on Earth. This alone calls for examination of how to better utilize the labor force - both because it could be better employed to our benefit, but also because it as actively harmful at present.
A simple way to look at it is this: There is a metric called Earth’s Energy Imbalance. It measures how much extra energy is being added to our environment. If we have on climate change metric to look at in summary of all others, this is the simple but important one. We need to bring that number down. Unfortunately, every Funko Pop that is made and sold adds to that number. And someone who can be made happy by a Funko Pop can be made happy by something with a much smaller footprint, that isn’t made out of fossil fuels and shipped around the world. Every labor and industrial action we take that is unnecessary, is unnecessarily adding to the EEI. When we start looking at what we can optimize regarding the EEI, we find that what we have most control over and what is causing the most significant effect, we see our own industry on the cutting board. That’s what degrowth is about.
The goal of most degrowth support is to make it as likely as possible that any of humanity will survive, or failing to do so, to preserve a world that is as suitable as possible for other ecosystems to endure. Reducing the EEI is the best we can do to that end. It is 100% about avoiding death and tragedy. I don’t have kids, but there are kids in my family and I care about them very much. It pains me to think of what is in store for them - especially because we have known what we needed to do for so long. We just needed to reorganize our labor.
Degrowth is a dangerous ideology. For those living in rich countries, degrowth might just mean austerity, for those living in middle and lower income countries, degrowth is going to mean destitution and certain death for x percentage of the population.
I disagree for many of the reasons I’ve already explained on responses to this comment. The climate science community also disagrees based on a consensus of studies. After becoming informed on the situation, degrowth is clearly the least dangerous ideology to pursue because it doesn’t further extend our overshoot. And that applies to all locations.