By: Constanza Hepp
Chile despertó, “Chile woke up” reads the main slogan used in the massive protests that have brought Chile to a halt. People flooded the streets demanding deep structural changes in enormous, mainly peaceful protests, the biggest one of which took place on 10/25 gathering more than one million people. No son 30 pesos, son 30 años No son 30 pesos, son 30 años, reads another popular protest...
By: Giorgos Kallis
Self-limitation is not about constraining, but about defining collectively as societies our limits. Political ecology ‘has made strong arguments against natural limits’ and is in friction with ‘degrowth’s .. urgency of less’, writes Paul Robbins. Indeed, political ecologists developed the field as a response to 1970s neo-Malthusianism. Nancy Peluso, Lyla Mehta or Betsy...
Digitalization is changing the world. And it's true: The vehicles of digitalization have spread through society at a rapid pace. Smartphones only entered the market a good ten years ago! Moreover, everywhere else in society - in companies, administrations, in agriculture, in transport and even in art and music - sensors, processors and many other digital devices are introduced. Yes, it is fair...
By: Giuseppe Feola
Degrowth scholars and activists often turn to past cases of social or socioecological transformation for inspiration to inform transformative action in the present. Yet, there has so far been insufficient awareness of the bias that comes with using any historical analogy. The insights provided by historical analogies are limited, but can fruitfully complement analyses of the present and...
By: Martin Oetting
I come from the dark side. Between 1994 and 1999, I studied at two business schools. Then I worked in advertising and marketing from 1999 until 2016 — for 17 years. First I was an employee in a couple of advertising agencies. Then I got a doctorate in Marketing and helped build our own specialised agency, with a group of friends and colleagues. The one over-riding goal of everything was...
By: Brian Tokar
Local action is often the best remedy for the failings of the current system — a worldwide confederation of democratic communities can have the same impact at a global scale. Today we are seeing an inspiring resurgence of progressive action at the local level, even as reactionary nationalist movements in Europe and beyond seek to position themselves as the true voices of a renewed localism....
Dear Life, I was not aware, when I was born, that I was born onto a battlefield. I was not aware, as I learned to walk, that I was stomping over the habitats of many creatures. I was not aware, as my mother drove me to school, that we were riding roughshod over the unmarked graves of our fellow humans. I was not aware, as we flew around the world, that I was attacking my child’s chances. I was...
Localisation can lead to a sustainable and more fulfilling future for people and our planet. The crude ‘bigger is better’ narrative has dominated economic thinking for centuries, but it is finally being challenged by a much gentler, more inclusive perspective that places human and ecological well-being front and centre. People are coming to recognise that connection,...
By: Mark Burton
Degrowth poses a fundamental challenge to a Labour Party that has yet to decide how far it wishes to transcend – and not merely reform – a growth- oriented, capitalist political economy. The British Labour Party has seen a resurgence of radicalism since the 2007-8 financial crash. With the collapse of the authority of neoliberalism, a space has opened for alternative ideologies, theories and...
The arrival of smartphones, self-driving cars and the Cloud are all symptomatic of a profound shift that is re-writing modern society from within: the Fourth Industrial Revolution. New technologies claim to provide answers to a host of problems, but is technology unbound always a force for good? In the first of a three-part series on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, EcoPolítica’s Paz Serra...
By: Make Rojava Green Again group
In Rojava (Northern Syria), in the midst of a raging war, a society based on the values of women's liberation, radical democracy, and ecology is being built. In early 2018, we, people from across the world, launched the campaign 'Make Rojava Green Again' in co-operation with the newly-established local autonomies to help find solutions to the vast destruction of nature that has resulted from...
When the BBC asked me if I would participate in a debate panel on climate change, capitalism and democracy, I first panicked and then said yes. All I really wanted to do this week was finish up and (re)submit some research I started a long time ago. This research shows that, despite their massive growth, energy and carbon emissions cannot (statistically) explain improvements in...