Dear Friends and Family,
Since I follow the science, or at least the scientists sharing the gravity of our situation, (2023 was the hottest year in 125,000 years, that sort of thing) I cannot pretend that nothing is wrong, or that something is wrong but I’m going to just keep on doing what I’m used to doing. I am very focused on the need to change.
I do realize that the 1 percent cause much more than their fair share of carbon emissions and I do what I can to call that out, but I can see that we all need to change the way we think about community, the natural world, happiness and wealth.
In affluent democracies we find politicians promising economic growth on a planet that cannot safely deliver. As the poly-crisis becomes ever more evident, with extreme weather events, wars, and ever-growing inequality, business as usual is fraying at the edges. As many continue to be in denial, not of climate change, but of their need to significantly change their way of thinking and being, we have billionaires creating bunkers and every day folks ordering preppers’ guides.
To quote Barbara Williams on Medium,
Preppers and billionaires have yet to grasp that peaceful and equitable collaboration is the only road to ameliorate the mess that we have made…We see other people as the threat, when the biggest threat comes from within our own minds, our delusional addiction to ecocidal growth economics…
The paradigm shift to equitable Degrowth requires profound awareness of escalating dangers, and a willingness to be self-critical. We need to be willing to re-evaluate affluent lifestyles in the context of our global consumption which exceeds the available carrying capacity of the earth.
Then from Dustin Arand, also in Medium, his discussion of productive and unproductive innovations helped me understand the disconnect between saying the economy is fine and seeing something different on the street. I’ve tried to summarize as best I could.
Productive innovations benefit all of society by making new products available, or by making old ones cheaper and better…As the historian Eric Hobsbawm once wrote, “It is often assumed that an economy of private enterprise has an automatic bias towards innovation, but this is not so. It has a bias only towards profit… sometimes entrepreneurship can be unproductive, in that it simply shifts value around (usually to the rich). Sometimes it can even be destructive.”
Forms of unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship can include monopolizing a market, political lobbying, tax avoidance, litigation, and regulatory capture, activities that economists call “rent-seeking,” a form of wealth extraction that generates no social value, and tends to concentrate wealth at the top. Unfortunately, if the return on investment (ROI) is greater for lobbying politicians, or patent trolling, then those are the things business people will focus on.
In the US, unproductive forms of entrepreneurship have gradually been displacing productive ones for at least the last twenty years, and maybe longer. Since 2010’s Citizens United decision, political lobbying has become more lucrative than ever. If the fruits of lobbying — including tax breaks, subsidies, and noncompetitive procurement — are great enough, it makes more sense to invest resources there than in productive enterprises. A sign of this is new business creation has been declining for years.
Politicians can talk all day about how inflation and unemployment are falling, while wages and productivity are rising, but those figures don’t capture what many Americans sense: that doing well in America today is less about what you can make, than what you can take. High-paying jobs like corporate attorney or lobbyist only exist because corporate America needs a growing workforce to implement its rent-seeking strategies. But we don’t have to settle for an economy and a culture that puts soulless extraction over more meaningful work. We can turn things around.
There is so much to be done. We cannot blame the homeless for being homeless or the poor for being poor. Morally to continue to behave as though all is well is questionable to me. I have been listening to an interesting podcast called Holding the Fire: Indigenous Voices on the Great Unraveling hosted by Dahr Jamail, author of The End of Ice. It is good to hear ‘new ways’ of thinking beyond the extractivist, capitalist model. What we’re doing isn’t working and corporations are doubling down on destructive practices. We must stand up and drastically change our systems. The time is now.
(The genocide in Gaza weighs heavily on my mind, can’t really talk about it here).
Much Love,
Andrea
P.S, If you want to support my activism and learn in the process, join Medium using my referral link, I’ll get half the subscription fee. (link below)
Here’s a list of What I’m currently reading and/or recommend to you to get you started or keep you going on the journey to bring the corporate influenced “economy” beyond greenwashing and into truly life sustaining and affirming balance with life on earth.
Books
The Green Amendment: The People’s Fight for a Clean Safe, and Heathy Environment (second edition) by Maya K. Van Rossum. from the book jacket “Corporations profit off climate change, climate disasters devastate neighborhoods and the must vulnerable among us suffer the health effects of pollution. Yet our laws are designed to accommodate this distruction not prevent it. Without government support, it’s no wonder people feel powerless…(we should) protect our environmental rights by enshrining them in our state and federal constitutions.” I am reading this right now. It is so painful to read many examples how we continue to ‘allow’ corporations to harm our life giving environment in the name of the economy. I support the green amendment movement so I want to make sure I know the details.
Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel- by shining a light on ecological breakdown and the system that’s causing it, Hickel shows how we can bring our economy back into balance with the living world and build a thriving society for all.
The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet by Jeff Goodell. Goodell presents a searing examination of the impact that rising temperatures will have on our lives and on our planet. My friend gave me this one. If you need to be scared into action, this is for you. It’s also a pretty fast read.
Is Science Enough? Forty Critical Questions About Climate Justice by Aviva Chomsky. The book looks at what must be done to tackle the climate catastrophe breaking down the discussion into five areas: technical issues, policy issues, individual action, social, racial and economic justice, and the global and political economy. If you are a detail oriented person, this book is for you.
Climate Resilience: How We Keep Each Other Safe, Care for Our Communities, and Fight Back Against Climate Change by Kylie Flanagan. I haven’t even started this one yet, but since it centers “the voices of Native Rights Activists, queer ecologists, Gen-Z climate-justice organizers, Latine wilderness activists and others on the front lines.” I’m looking forward to getting to it!
Online Publications/Newsletters/Organizations
Heated by Emily Aiken
Third Act for folks 60 and over to have a go at activism.
Project Regeneration — The Waggle. ‘A weekly offering of compelling and inspiring stories about the regeneration and restoration of life on Earth, solutions to the climate crisis curated and authored by writers and researchers at Project Regeneration. Our newsletter is named for the waggle dance, what honeybee scouts do to show the hive where to find the nectar.’
—
This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
***
Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.
Register New Account
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—
Photo credit: iStock.com
