The Green New Deal bill is an audacious 10-year mobilization plan to move the U.S. to a zero-carbon economy. Bold and ambitious interventions like it are necessary, in the U.S. and elsewhere, if we are to unsettle the current complacency with climate breakdown. Academics like economist Robert Pollin, who kept alive the idea of a Green New Deal in the past years and[Read More...]
Ever since out first ancestor lit a fire, humans have been pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Add to that the first herder because ruminants are another large emitter of greenhouse gas (GHG). Some people want to declare a national emergency and ban fossil fuels within ten years. How? I am for it and all ready to go. But please[Read More...]
Co-Written by Gary Null and Richard Gale The recent release of the proposed Green New Deal is a template, an outline identifying some of the most crucial issues facing the nation regarding climate change and a wish list of measures to address those issues. It contains a variety of inspired agenda items, many of which have been voiced by the[Read More...]
Since the mid-1980s, Mexico has been a poster child for globalization. Through free trade treaties and structural adjustment policies imposed by international financial institutions, the country has been “liberalized” – opened up to unfettered corporate investment and imports – to an extent matched by few other countries. Though the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is the most well-known trade treaty[Read More...]
Only immediate climate action can save the future. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon. Here is a recent statement by Jakob von Uexküll, founder of the World Future Council: “Today we are heading for unprecedented dangers and conflicts, up to and including the[Read More...]
This article is part of a series on degrowth.info discussing strategy in the degrowth movement. The introduction to the series and an ongoing list of contributions can be found here. In a previous piece in this blog series, Joe Herbert and colleagues pointed out the “how to move towards a degrowth society” gap in degrowth discourse. As I have also come[Read More...]
A burgeoning save-the-climate effort called the Green New Deal, explains Vox’s David Roberts, “has thrust climate change into the national conversation, put House Democrats on notice, and created an intense and escalating bandwagon effect. … everyone involved in green politics is talking about the GND. … But WTF is it?” Roberts goes on to give a good summary, but no[Read More...]
Both the U.S. economy and the global economy have expanded dramatically in the past century, as have life expectancies and material progress. Economists raised in this period of plenty assume that growth is good, necessary even, and should continue forever and ever without end, amen. Growth delivers jobs, returns on investment and higher tax revenues. What’s not to like? We’ve[Read More...]
Many citizens throughout the world have concluded that our Capital Market system is an ecological Negative Zero Sum game driving human civilization toward an “end of time” apocalypse of horrific proportions. XXXXXXXXX With the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution that followed, the economic theory of Adam Smith relating to efficiency of an open and free capital market distribution of goods[Read More...]
An interview with Daniel Chavez. What are the commons and what is their political, social and economic relevance? In recent years, many researchers and social activists from very different countries, like myself, have rediscovered the notion of the commons as a key idea to deepen social and environmental justice and democratise both politics and the economy. This reappropriation has meant[Read More...]
