Our BBC documentary on #degrowth is now available worldwide on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=596dU6pDEU8&t=935s

Just a subtoot: If you don't 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 nuclear, you'll find reasons to be against it - facts, climate change and human flourishing be damned.

It is therefore the wrong approach to respond against anti-nuclear arguments with facts. Believe me, I've tried. You can reply to worries about nuclear waste (spent fuel) for example with facts - like it being manageable just fine, or it only needing safe storage for 300 years before it becomes radiologically harmless, or it being able to be recycled perfectly fine, or its volume being negligible... If you get a denial of these facts, just stop bothering as people are just being dishonest with you.

I'm also not arguing with people who deny climate change, vaccines, the Earth being a globe (ffs), or whatever crazy batshit stuff people come up with these days. It's just not worth my time. I'll just smile and move along. Being against nuclear is likewise a denial of the science.

What does tend to work (better) is setting an optimistic narrative: industrialised society cannot run on solar and wind alone (this isn't hard arithmetic, it's just not enough, even ignoring other problems inherent with them) and nuclear is a 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 to this problem.

The third world, primarily Africa, is going to explode in energy consumption as they economically develop themselves (at long last) this century and, if we don't want them to burn coal for decades, nuclear energy is a 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 to this problem.

All energy sources have toxic waste streams. Nuclear has the fewest and best managed. It is a 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 to the problem of how to minimise our impact on the environment.

That spent fuel I was talking about earlier? It's full of energy still. So much so that it can power 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘵𝘺 for 𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴. No more mining needed if we wanted to. Nuclear 'waste' isn't waste at all, it is a 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘤𝘦.

The degrowth movement has a view that we need to use radically less energy, up to 95% less for the West and 60% less globally. These are numbers degrowthers share. The underlying view, explicit or implicit, is that there are just too many people on this planet. A malthusian view of sinful people. Sometimes this is wrapped up in an anti-capitalist rhetoric that 'infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible'. Catchy slogan, but it doesn't actually align with (capitalist) reality.

Yes, as a communist I strive for the end of capitalism and class society in general. And yes, we'll need to rearrange society by quite a bit. 'Degrow' some sectors, grow others. But for humans to flourish we need loads of clean energy. We need to in fact 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘥𝘦 our energy production as a species, up it by a factor 2 or 3 compared to the 200,000 TWh we consume now. Nuclear can deliver that, for billions of years, for the smallest footprint.

TL;DR, the two takeaways are:

Set the narrative, don't be reactive. The latter will cost you time and energy to combat. With the former people will have to engage with you.

If humanity is to have a future, the future will have to be nuclear.

#Nuclear#NuclearEnergy#Degrowth#ClimateChange#EnergyTransition

Welcome to post-growth Europe – can anyone accept this new political reality?

Apart from the reasons outlined here, a postgrowth Europe would be less colonialist, extractive, more equitable, caring, sustainable, & socially just.

#Post-Growth #Degrowth#Growth #Europe

https://theconversation.com/welcome-to-post-growth-europe-can-anyone-accept-this-new-political-reality-257420?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=bylinecopy_url_button

#degrowth
One of the things Kate Raworth talks about is how she sketched a picture that represented her idea of doughnut economics and then put it in a drawer for a few years before finally revisiting it when she felt ready to put it out into the world, and that the world might be ready for it.

It is such a simple drawing. But for me, and many others, compelling…

…in general, the something that must be done, is to do far far far fewer somethings.

That doesn’t fit mainstream economics dogma.

Thermodynamics doesn’t care what economics thinks
#degrowth

(🇮🇹 Versione in italiano qui sopra ⤴️)

📍La Pigna, Sanremo (IM), Italy
🗓️ 20–24 August 2025

🫶🏻 Scambi is a participatory festival entirely organised by under-30 volunteers, where we share ideas, passions, insights through interactive laboratories and activities on several guiding themes:

• 🌻 Social and Environmental Justice
• 🌱 Degrowth and local/global economy
• 👾 Political Technology and resistance to Technofeudalism–with @dario from @fsfe, @wikimediaitalia, and many others)
• 🧠 Education and learning

🔋 The Program

• August 20 → public events, with labs a live music night featuring @kenobit, Mano Manita, and Dietro l’Angolo.
• August 21–24 → Communal life among participants: assemblies, discussions, focus groups, pauses at the beach, and hikes in the woods in the area.

👉🏻 If you’re interested, apply to the Call for Participation, ⚠️ open until July 20! ⤵️

✨ We’re looking forward to meet you! ✨

(boosts are welcome)

#ScambiFestival#Scambi#Scambi2025 #degrowth #economics #economy#Italy #event #camp #festival#CfP#openCall #invite#TechnoFeudalism#Technology #tech#Fediverse#OpenKnowledge #education #assembly

A healthy economy doesn't break if one big conglomerate goes down, for whatever reason.

Our economy is not healthy, but it could be. Local and Regional producers are the key to a sustainable future, not relying on exploitative food and goods shipped halfway around the world.

The caveat is that sweatshop conditions cannot be tolerated. It only works with living wages and reasonable incomes.

Link: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2025-06-23/commoning-diversity-and-small-scale-manufacturing/

#Localization #Community#Sustainability#Economy#DeGrowth#LivingWage #

Thought this article from Low Tech Magazine was very interesting, and encourages me to think of ways to reduce temperature, besides just AC, during the upcoming heatwave:

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2025/06/dressing-and-undressing-the-home/

#lowtech #solarpunk #degrowth #anticonsumption #hvac #ac #heatwave #heat #cooling

This is what #degrowth looks like. It doesn’t need to be replaced if you can kludge it

Elections of the past decades directed our future towards dystopia. So here we are as ordered. Who would want that? I don’t take growth for an answer.

#war#Degrowth #dystopia #economy #neocons #neoliberal

What does a sustainable internet look like in a successful degrowth scenario? Where we're massively reducing the energy and resources going into luxury production, to make sure everyone has the essentials of life.

Are computers even part of this picture? Or do we regress to something like ham radio as our inter-bioregion communication tool?

#DeGrowth

It's easy to see what a terrible mess we are in.

Some have called it the 'polycrisis', a confluence of breakdowns in the environment, the climate, and in our social and political structures. The future certainly looks grim.

But there is a way out. It won't be easy, and it may not happen at all, but it is possible...

Earth will only remain able to provide even a basic standard of living for everyone in the future if economic systems and technologies are dramatically transformed and critical resources are more fairly used, managed and shared, according to an international research team.

Their report, published in the journal Planetary Health, found the planet's ability to provide and protect is being stretched past its limits, although it remains possible for humans to escape poverty and harm caused by these changes if urgent action is taken.

It found the only way to provide for everyone and ensure societies, businesses and economies thrive without destabilizing the planet is to reduce inequalities in how critical Earth system resources, such as freshwater and nutrients, are accessed and used, and how responsibilities, such as reducing carbon emissions, are shared, alongside economic and technological transformation.

By 2050, unless urgent transformations are made, the researchers argue that Earth's climate will deteriorate to the point where there will be no "safe and just space" left.

The researchers say Earth systems face the risk of crossing dangerous tipping points, which would cause further significant harm to people around the world unless energy, food, and urban systems are urgently transformed.

They don't call their plan #degrowth but it looks very similar to me.

The point is, we can't go on the way we are. We must have system change, or we will lose everything.

FULL ARTICLE -- https://phys.org/news/2024-09-outlines-path-prosperity-planet-people.html

#Economics#Science#Environment#Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis

Hej!

This is our #introduction / #introductions

We are the Institute for Degrowth Studies, based in #Malmö#Sweden. We are an association (“ideell förening”) founded with the aim of spreading knowledge about #degrowth, creating and/or supporting activities aligned with degrowth, providing opportunities for our members to learn more about degrowth, and fostering collaboration both locally and internationally with other degrowth groups and organizations that share similar values.

After organizing the 6th International Degrowth Conference we have arranged study circles and study visits, lectures, workshops, film screenings, and projects. We have also collaborated with other civil-society organisations for public events and activities.

As part of prefiguring the world we want to see, we are now happy to also have a presence on the #fediverse. We will post updates of related events in the area and share other relevant materials!

Since apparently it needs repeating:

Yes, capitalism is boiling the planet. Yes, it's capitalism and not some special, uniquely corrupted system that's somehow distinct from Real Pure Equitable Regulatable Non-Toxic Capitalism(TM). Yes, capitalism may have changed and gotten worse lately, but that doesn't mean its earlier iterations were at all redeemable. They all contributed to getting us to this planet-boiling point.

Stop defending the system that's killing millions and incubating multiple infectious diseases rather than disturb business as usual. Stop letting your friends defend it. Capitalism is biocide. Capitalism is death. Abbey was right: capitalism is the ideology of a cancer cell.

#capitalism #economics #politics#EverythingIsPolitical #degrowth