Posted on 02/28/2014 4:30:44 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Environmentalists are pushing a new way to deal with global warming and overpopulation: the U.S. needs to “de-grow” its economy.
What is “de-growth”? It means forcing people to work less to make them more equal, consume fewer goods and use less electricity. Think of it like camping, but for the rest of your life.
Environmentalists at the New Economics Foundation in London and the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C. argue that cutting the 40-hour work week and using less electricity is necessary. This includes a living wage requirement and a more progressive tax code.
“There’s no such thing as sustainable growth, not in a country like the U.S.,” Worldwatch senior fellow Erik Assadourian told Sierra Magazine.
“We have to de-grow our economy, which is obviously not a popular stance to take in a culture that celebrates growth in all forms,” he said. “But as the saying goes, if everyone consumed like Americans, we’d need four planets.”
De-growing the economy means working less and consuming fewer goods and electricity — the foundation of modern life. Most cheap, reliable electricity that businesses and homes rely to power their everyday needs comes from sources like coal, natural gas and nuclear power — which environmentalists argue are killing the planet.
“If we had a livable wage and could each work a 20-hour week,” Assadourian said, “we’d have time to choose more sustainable options that are also better for ourselves.”
With the world population projected to be 10 billion by 2050, Assadourian and others argue that cutting the work week would allow everyone to have a job and enjoy life more.
“Why do we work? What do we do with the money we earn?” asks Anna Coote, head of social policy at the New Economics Foundation. “Can we begin to think differently about how much we need—to get out of the fast lane and live life at a more sustainable pace, to do things that are better for the planet, better for ourselves?”
“Whether you move to a smaller house or an apartment, downsize to one or no car, or simply have fewer lattes to-go, a smaller paycheck could reduce consumption overall,” noted Sierra Magazine, a publication of the Sierra Club, which is an anti-fossil fuel and nuclear power environmental group.
“We could cook dinner instead of unwrapping and microwaving it, Assadourian suggests, or hang laundry to dry, which would cut electricity use and let us spend time in the sun,” the magazine added.
Assadourian and Coote aren’t the only ones with Malthusian points of view. About a month ago, former Vice President Al Gore suggested that “fertility management” was crucial to fighting global warming and promoting development in poor countries.
“Depressing the rate of child mortality, educating girls, empowering women and making fertility management ubiquitously available — so women can choose how many children and the spacing of children — is crucial to the future shape of human civilization,” Gore said on an international panel on global warming in January.
“Africa is projected to have more people than China and India by mid-century; more than China and India combined by end of the century, and this is one of the causal factors that must be addressed,” the failed presidential candidate added.
But one man’s paradise is another man’s hell. Many of Sierra Magazine’s commentators did not think “de-growth” was such a good idea.
“At least you’re honest about your agenda of lowering people’s standard of living. Very few people on the Left are so honest,” one commenter said. “But as always, some animals are more equal than others. When Michelle Obama starts hanging the family laundry out to dry on the White House lawn, please let us know.”
“This is pure Socialist Horse Manure! ‘so we need to spread the money around more evenly,’” said another.
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialised civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” Maurice Strong, head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and Executive Officer for Reform in the Office of the Secretary General of the United Nations.
“We can and should seize upon the energy crisis as a good excuse and great opportunity for making some very fundamental changes that we should be making anyhow for other reasons.” — Russell Train (EPA Administrator at the time, and soon thereafter became head of the World Wildlife Fund), Science 184 p. 1050, 7 June 1974 “Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to (find a) way to scare the public ... and this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are.” Petr Chylek (Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia) Commenting on reports by other researchers that Greenland’s glaciers are melting. (Halifax Chronicle-Herald, August 22, 2001)
“People are the cause of all the problems; we have too many of them; we need to get rid of some of them, and this (ban of DDT) is as good a way as any.” Charles Wurster, Environmental Defense Fund.
“The world has a cancer, and that cancer is man”. Alan Gregg, former longtime official of the Rockerfeller Foundation
It's getting near time. Politicians, lawyers, radical environmentalists and liberals. The lowest forms of life. I don't know which is lowest and I don't know which I hate more.
I’ll bet you use your big honkin’ salary on gas for your SUV, designer pantsuits made by slave labor in Sri Lanka, and tony vacations to Nepal and Galapagos.
...someone vacations in Nepal...?
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".........In 1969, the year that publishers reissued Alinsky’s first book, Reveille for Radicals, a Wellesley undergraduate named Hillary Rodham submitted her 92-page senior thesis on Alinsky’s theories (she interviewed him personally for the project).6 In her conclusion Hillary compared Alinsky to Eugene Debs, Walt Whitman and Martin Luther King. The title of Hillary’s thesis was “There Is Only the Fight: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.” In this title she had singled out the single most important Alinsky contribution to the radical cause - his embrace of political nihilism. An SDS radical once wrote, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” In other words the cause - whether inner city blacks or women - is never the real cause, but only an occasion to advance the real cause which is the accumulation of power to make the revolution. That was the all consuming focus of Alinsky and his radicals.
Guided by Alinsky principles, post-Communist radicals are not idealists but Machiavellians. Their focus is on means rather than ends, and therefore they are not bound by organizational orthodoxies in the way their admired Marxist forebears were. Within the framework of their revolutionary agenda, they are flexible and opportunistic and will say anything (and pretend to be anything) to get what they want, which is resources and power......" Barack Obama's Rules for Revolution - David Horowitz 2009
I’d say they have the right man and the right policies currently in the administrative branch of the federal government to do exactly what they want.
All of this is true, but I wonder if Gore understands the implications. Affluent societies are already doing these things spontaneously. It turns out the affluence is the answer to Malthus. Wealthy societies, and wealthy cohorts within societies, have fewer children for all sorts of perfectly understandable reasons. The sooner we can get the third world up the development ladder, the better.
Of course, if one's real objective is to grow government, population control. limits to growth, and micromanaging other people's choices are just handy excuses.
If they are willing to walk their talk why don’t they move to the Sudan or Somalia.All their wishes will become true.
That will allow us stupid ones to remain and suffer a lingering horrendous suicide,driving vehicles and living in air conditioned misery.
Who realizes Hitler was vegan and big enviro before he become Chancellor?
Nazism's Final Solution was a direct product of German environmental socialism. Their presumptive scarcity of resources introduced a valuation of citizenry ...and the solution.
Ever notice the left’s idea of Utopia always starts with the mass reduction of the human population and that mass reduction of the human population never includes them, it’s always the elimination of people they disagree with.
“...Wealthy societies, and wealthy cohorts within societies, have fewer children for all sorts of perfectly understandable reasons...”
Yes, and the Ted Kaczynski types who live a primitive existence by choice do more environmental harm than those who live the suburban lifestyle. Wood-burning stoves are swell but if you have a whole community using them the smoke in the air is remarkably thick. Those big-ticket items like modern power plant are models of efficiency and very Green compared to many Sierra Club endorsed alternatives.
>> ...someone vacations in Nepal...?
You bet your sherpas they do! Those new-age greenies loves them some Nepal.
http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/asia/ann.html
There are 7 billion people on the planet.
Demographic projections show that by 2050 Asia and Africa will each add an additional billion and by 2100, Africa will add an additional 2 billion for a total of 11 billion.
Mass Reduction?
Eco-Luddites.
FMCDH(BITS)
I’d like to hear them explain how they propose paying all the social security, medicare and Nat’l debt liabilities when expected growth is taken out of the formula?
Good post.
Hillary’s thesis should have been known to all Americans years ago.
The connection between Hillary, Alinsky, Machiavellianism and nihilism is essential. It’s everything opposite what the vast majority of Americans desire and hope for.
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