I read The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson a while back, and wrote here some notes on it from a degrowth activist perspective. I was left with very mixed feelings.
NB: The post contains spoilers, so you should finish the book first!
It's positive #ClimateEmergency is getting more attention and headlines in the #HeatWave. But it's not because the attention will force legislation changes – we'll be back to normal the moment the heat is gone – but because this can mobilize more people to join the struggle.
@jonne Joo, ymmärtääkseni Tiuraniemien sukututkimuksen puuhamies omistaa sen. Hälle se suotakoon :)
I finally have a personal site for long-form texts! 🎉
In this first post I break down the why, how and what of my little place on the internet. It's... unconventional.
Feedback welcome!
UPDATE: I had no idea about the terrible colonial/crypto background of .io TLD, and for some reason it never occured to me to check.
Thanks @jonne for the heads up!
I'll move to a better domain and repost, this domain will disappear soon!
@jonne Thank you, had no idea about that. That's pretty terrible.
The .fi was taken, so didn't spend much time at all with the TLD, just thought .io would be as good as any.
Really need to reconsider this then. Damn.
@adam
I do the first two but also:
✅ Quit my job to work full-time as an environmental activist.
Making small personal changes is good, but moral licencing needs to be avoided. That means not losing sight that the real struggle is to stop colonial fossil capitalism from destroying our planet. That can only happen with a system change demanded by political mass movements.
Haven't yet read The Future Is Degrowth but this review is excellent in itself.
"[W]e need to break free from the capitalist economy. #Degrowth gives us the tools to bend its bars."
https://timotheeparrique.com/book-review-the-future-is-degrowth/
@kev Personally I've stopped thinking in terms of winning or losing.
The struggle for an ethical internet, against whatever immoral garbage is being pushed at any given time, isn't going to end.
The same goes for environmentalism: no matter how bad (or good) things get, the fight for future generations and non-human life will never be over.
For this reason, the main issues you must not fail at are long-term physical and mental sustainability and choosing battles strategically.
Jevons paradox is alive and well: relying on tech fixes to lower total energy consumption will backfire under capitalism.
"We find that the economy-wide rebound effect is between 78 and 101% across our sample of countries, which differ in industrial structure and energy mix [...] This implies that energy efficiency improvements that save energy by adopting more efficient cost-reducing technology will have limited long-run impact on aggregate energy consumption."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014098832200113X