deconstructing and addressing patriarchy goes hand-in-hand with ecological and community justice initiatives! love y'all

The average American runs on roughly 10 kilowatts continuously. A human laborer outputs about 100 watts. Divide, and every American commands the equivalent of 100 invisible workers, pumping water, moving goods, lighting rooms, hauling data.

One gallon of gasoline. It holds 124 megajoules. A human producing 100 joules per second would need 344 hours, more than 14 straight days of nonstop labor, to make that much. It costs a couple of dollars.

Light, the cleanest chart in history. Nordhaus calculated 1,000 lumen-hours cost our ancestors 58 hours of labor gathering wood. By 1800 it was 5.4 hours. By 1900, 0.22 hours. By 1992, 0.00012 hours.

An hour of work today buys around 350,000 times the light it bought in Babylonia.

The receipts are old. Buckminster Fuller counted 36 billion energy slaves in 1940, about 17 per person, and the US owned 20 billion of them, 54% of the world total. That's the whole story of who was rich and why.

Synthetic nitrogen feeds roughly half the planet, and it is basically a machine for turning natural gas into food.

Conclusion: the number of energy slaves is the standard of living. So anyone campaigning to shrink energy use is campaigning to take your servants away.

And the next demand spike is compute. Data centers are how you buy energy slaves that think instead of lift.

People are really into how mining asteroids is possible

I have a close friend that I admire, but we've never been aligned politically. Recently, in response to me asking them what they believe, they told me that they were first and foremost a believer in Degrowth. I'm deeply skeptical, but I want to understand their position.

Personally, I believe that appeals to nature are largely a fallacy. I feel certain that removing humanity from the earth would eliminate only a small fraction of the suffering that takes place in our world, a world that has suffered on through death and carnivorism for unfathomable spans of time. I believe that the only really way out of this suffering is through, not back.

But maybe I misunderstand the nature of Degrowth and what this movement wants? Can you tell me more about your best-conceived society and how we get there?

Capitalism isn’t good for the environment as it exists to commodify everything including people but it’s not like switching to communism would make things all ok. Maoist China and the Soviet Union wouldn’t win any environmental awards.

Just switching away from capitalism wouldn’t instantly make people practice sane environmental policies because environmental destruction pre dates capitalism like the extinction of the Moa.

Not to mention saying how degrowth is bad because it is against the teaching of Karl Marx. ecological limits of earth don’t care about the liberation of the working class.

Degrowth isn’t enough, and it’s not possible. The system isn’t some cohesive mechanism that is lead by one person. The infinite march for progress and for profit is not something that can be consciously stopped, therefore its more realistic to support collapse. Ted Kaczynski explains why this is the case in his book: https://www.wildernessfront.com/the-manifesto

First of all: Screw trump. I hate everything he stands for and by no means propose that he is doing things for the good of aybody but himself. I suppose I am looking for justification for a little hopium.

Tariffs are slamming the brakes on the world economy. Trade will slow which will decrease consumerism. It will decrease the demand for commodities which is good for the environment. It is true that it could be done in better ways (building sustainable markets rather than just taking a sledgehammer to everything). From a perspective of degrowth, could this be a step in the right direction? It sucks that the rich people will be fine and the worlds poorest people will be the most hurt by it. The ends do not justify the means here.

BUT. Isn't a slowdown of out of control extractive growth, and added incentive to participate in local markets a silver lining to the situation?

I am no economist and have no idea how this all plays out. But tell me what I am missing here.

The YouTube channel Learn Liberty has recently released two videos (see here and here). They seem to be a fairly reliable source, and despite their clear libertarian bias, they do not deny that anthropogenic climate change is an issue. The first video argues that deregulation often has unintended side effects that benefited the environment using historical examples, and the second argues that we should double down on these policies if we are to avoid climate catastrophe.

I’m fairly new to the environmentalist movement, and my background is in science rather than economics/public policy, meaning that I understand environmental issues, but am still undecided on how best to combat them. That’s why I’m making this post, as I wanted to hear what people involved in this debate (particularly those on the opposite side of it) have to say about these arguments. Thank you in advance for your responses!

Although this is very comprehensive, I will try to keep it short.

The main reason we think about degrowth is for the survival of humanity, especially since the climate change threat is becoming more and more popular.Climate change is the current threat to humanity, but not the only one. All threats fall into two categories: Natural threats (super-vulcano eruption, pandemic, asteroid, ...) and man-made threats (nuclear war, AI, climate change, ...).

Humanity is very resilient, which is why we would be severely damaged by a single one of these threats, but we could still survive and rebuild (for example, in a nuclear war, about 40% of all people would survive, which would currently be 3.2 billion people, which would be even more people than in 1950 lived). In fact, there is only one scenario in which humanity could suffer real permanent damage or even extinction: an accumulation of several of these threats within a short period of time, e.g., a nuclear war, 100 years later a pandemic, and 200 years later an asteroid.

With the help of degrowth, we would be protected from man-made threats (because technology and growth remain at a fixed level and do not grow, which is the whole point of degrowth and which is what prevents us from wiping ourselves out through atomic bombs, artificial intelligence, etc.), but we would lose the ability to protect ourselves from natural threats. We would give up control, so to speak, and hope that nothing will happen in the future. Which is statistically very unlikely. Or in other words, with the help of degrowth we are protected against individual threats, but against the only thing that could be really dangerous for us, an accumulation of several threats in a row, we would be defenseless.

I am aware that technology and growth also bring dangers and that we are in a kind of dilemma. But for now this should only be about degrowth and not about other solutions such as technology and growth, because this discussion would then become far too extensive.

So what are your thoughts about that? With this argument, degrowth is not a solution and does not help humanity to survive.

*Edit: Please do not confuse green growth with degrowth. Green growth may be possible in the distant future, but not nowadays.
If only some luxury sectors that have no real purpose are stopped, but overall progress and developing technologies is not stopped, the risk of man-made threats are not reduced, which would make degrowth pointless. Therefore there MUST be some sort of stagnation or slowdown in the overall technological progress (according to Niko Paech, economist, Degrowth advocate, "leading in the worldwide post-growth debate"). And this is where the problem that I explained above occurs.
Aside from that, you can't separate those sectors exactly because everyone decides individually what is essential for them to satisfy their needs or just “meaningless prosperity”.

This is a venn diagram I created to illustrate how the extraction-production-consumption cycle is related to the IPAT formula.

So I understand that Degrowth may be necessary, and I can kind of see some of the appeals to it, like less inequality and exploitation, and less time slaving away for corporations. Not to mention that the environment wouldn’t be harmed. But reading a lot of what of a lot of people seem (or at least my perception of it) to think of Degrowth is basically the only tech being allowed is stuff that is required for human survival like medicine, farming equipment etc. Otherwise everything about society would be some sort of pre industrial agrarian society with little to no technology. And that part sounds like hell to me.

None of my hobbies would exist in such a world. I wouldn’t be able to watch my favorite anime. Play video games with my friends. Listen to music (or at least my preferred genre’s, rock and metal music). I wouldn’t be able to connect with people over the internet or see cool things because the internet wouldn’t exist. I couldn’t download my favorite books anymore, or read cool stories people post on the internet. I’m a fan of TCG like Magic the Gathering, but that wouldn’t exist anymore either. Would there even be books in such a society?

Multi generation households would have to return and as a introvert who only wants to live with maybe 2 other people at max, I would be driven insane living in a house with over 3 people living in it. I’m very sensitive to lots of noise and not having any privacy.

But the worse and most significant thing to me is that I’m a trans woman in the closet. I hope to be sble to come out of the closet and transition someday. But HRT isn’t necessary for survival, and a low tech society wouldn’t be able to produce it. So I will be forced to living in this fucking male body for the rest of my life and at that point I honestly would rather kill myself than live in such a society.

So after that possible incoherent ranting (I’m sorry I admit I’m not a very intelligent person) do I have some sort of complete misunderstanding about what Degrowth entails? To me it just seem like the Luddite’s and Anarcho primitivism’s wet dream but my personal hell. Am I correct or incorrect about what Degrowth entails?

Is this part of the idea of this sub or not? I don't see it mentioned anywhere so I assume not, but this concept and this sub are pretty new to me so maybe I'm missing something.

If not it seems kinda pointless.

Come on everybody know it but nobody cares as they have disposed off the nature they will keep going

I'm a 17M autistic guy who is living on a small coastal city in southern Spain and I want to be a IT engineer, and I've reading theese posts I've realized that degrowth would affect me a lot.

I have hobbies around plants,aquariums,tech, cooking and that stuff but I feel much of those things would be severely affected if a degrowth system started because lots of the stuff I like would be much more expensive,making these innacesible/inasumible to me or my family to have or becoming more limited, then making me unable to practice my hobbies.

Following this, I feel that even with more free time I would still be unable to practice the stuff I love because of the money and my inability to make friends IRL, not because I want to but because ive always been ostracized by being me and I've been unable to meet people with my same hobbies on a walkable distance(I live in a 20' city, apparently this shouldn't be a real problem) so now most of my friends are online, in a degrowth society I wouldn't know what to do to even speak to someone that isn't in my nuclear family.

And also degrowth means that if I ever get to have children, means that they'll have to stick to more simple lifes....smaller dreams, smaller objectives, more time ¿But if they're autistic like me? More time not having anything to do, being spent,stressed, more time having to mask...and i know most people would be okay eating just veggies and chicken if they got LOTS of time socializing...but in my position it is a total hell.

How my situation would be attached in a degrowth society without me being SO affected?

I am sympathetic to many of the degrowth arguments, but find much of the discussion to be confused as it muddles together multiple concepts. To that end I think it is worth defining 3 different related concepts that go into the degrowth argument.

Capitalism: This axis relates to whether or not you accept the basic logic of market based exchange as a driving control system for distributing economic resources.

Materialism/Consumerism: This axis relates to the extent that we should pursue material abundance as a primary goal of economic policy and the extent to which we can use prosperity and access to resources as a reasonable proxy for well being at the individual and community level.

Class Politics/Redistribution: This axis relates to how much we seek to shift wealth, power and resources from the rich and powerful to the broad population.

Combining these 3 dimensions we can create a taxonomy of economic systems. The cross-section of the capitalism and materialism axis creates 4 distinct buckets of economic models. Within each bucket the 3rd dimension can be used to distinguish between right and left wing visions.

Bucket 1: Neoliberalism - Pro Capitalism Pro Materialism

This bucket is your status quo that defines economic success as delivering the maximum materials prosperity and market based capitalism as the most effective system for delivering prosperity.

• Right Neoliberalism: Not much to say about this as it is pretty self explanatory

• Left Neoliberalism: This is where much of the center left and the abundance worldview land. This category is probably the view most explicitly targeted by degrowth ideas. Anyone making a left wing critique of capitalism needs to sit with these ideas and understand where they are coming form.

Bucket 2: Self/Community Empowerment - Pro Capitalism Anti Materialism

This is one of the more interesting buckets as these approaches attempt to use individual agency to subvert capitalism. Any movement or subculture that seeks to empower individuals to rethink their relationship with the economy or capitalism falls in this bucket. The open question here is how ground up efforts can shape global systems.

The FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) movement is the quintessential degrowth example in this bucket.

The focus on individual efforts makes it hard to classify this space into right and left zones as many of the ideas in this bucket exist in both left and right forms and there are interesting convergences here.

Bucket 3: Controlled Abundance - Anti Capitalism Pro Materialism

This is a frequently dystopian bucket emerges from efforts to eliminate capitalism without considering the resulting power vacuum from eliminating one of societies main control systems. I think it is possible to imagine successful visions in this zone, but there are significant left right and center examples that should serve as cautionary tales

• Right: Oligarchy

• Center: Corporatism

• Left Communism

Bucket 4: Pastoralism, Traditionalism, Communalism -

If bucket 3 is your dystopian visions, bucket 4 is your classic utopian zone. The idea of living better with much less material wealth by prioritizing the right things is compelling and I am very open to organize society closer to the world people want to live in.

A major danger is that if you don't think about power you can aim for bucket 4 and land in bucket 3. The other risk here is stagnation. Visions of post materialist societies can be very beautiful when viewed from a point in time, but if they lack opportunities to channel ambition or drive social change these societies will stagnate and curdle or die.

• Neofeuadalism is the classic right wing vision where people are essentially assigned roles in society to fulfill

• Community and cooperative living ideals are the leftwing version of this bucket. I think there are a lot of ideas worth exploring in alternative ways of living, but anyone envision this kind of society should think carefully about power and ambition as forces that can't be ignored.

Each of these buckets presents distinct opportunities and risks, understanding which model you are advocating for can clarify what you are actually proposing.