- YaketySass
- Jan 15, 2019
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Blind Idiot Dog
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On the topic of degrowth, is there any way to make it so that other people have to do but I'm not affected? I kinda wanna continue having little treats like bananas and it would be really handy if someone else somewhere perished into destitution to make that happen. Thanks 🙏
You make billionaires pay for it and you can have socialism with bananas.
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May 6, 2024 09:38
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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May 26, 2024 17:04
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- Harold Fjord
- Jan 3, 2004
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I think you people need to start being realistic.
I am reliant on internationally produced medicine to survive and cannot be allowed to simply die by going without it.
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May 6, 2024 12:41
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- SixteenShells
- Sep 30, 2021
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It's a tiny drop in the bucket compared to flight and oil and animal agriculture but we aren't addressing those and we aren't addressing this. You aren't saving the world by delivering snark on fellow posters
In this case, since it was my own flippant posting that caused this derail, I think I'm allowed to be snarky to myself.
Edit: thank you, though! I do appreciate it
SixteenShells has issued a correction as of 13:16 on May 6, 2024
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May 6, 2024 13:08
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- Actuary X
- Jul 20, 2007
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Not really the best actuary in the world.
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You make billionaires pay for it and you can have socialism with bananas.
"Socialism with bananas" seems like a modest goal, compared to fully automated luxury communism.
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May 6, 2024 13:15
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- Zodium
- Jun 19, 2004
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i have, and i've mastered it along with all the fascisms.
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May 6, 2024 13:37
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- Car Hater
- May 7, 2007
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wolf. bike.
Wolf. Bike.
Wolf! Bike!
WolfBike!
WolfBike!
ARROOOOOO!
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I'm doing my part for the biosphere by only buying used phones and not eating any bananas
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May 6, 2024 13:43
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- Harold Fjord
- Jan 3, 2004
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No.
The rules based international order will save me.
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May 6, 2024 13:55
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- mags
- May 30, 2008
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I am a congenital optimist.
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HAVE YOU HEARD OF ECOFASCISM MY DUDE
this is the ecofascism thread
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May 6, 2024 13:56
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- Zodium
- Jun 19, 2004
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i celebrate fascism in all its forms
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May 6, 2024 13:58
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- Car Hater
- May 7, 2007
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wolf. bike.
Wolf. Bike.
Wolf! Bike!
WolfBike!
WolfBike!
ARROOOOOO!
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If we do a heckin ecofascism do I still have to go to work
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May 6, 2024 14:04
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- mags
- May 30, 2008
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I am a congenital optimist.
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If we do a heckin ecofascism do I still have to go to work
yes but if your car is too dark in color you’ll be tried and executed for crimes against albedo
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May 6, 2024 14:11
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- Zodium
- Jun 19, 2004
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sitting in the lotus position under a mountaintop waterfall, levitating, radiating, holding and rotating every form of fascism in my mind; ecological, italian, thermodynamic, folding each facet into a unified whole. I am enlightened.
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May 6, 2024 14:42
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- SixteenShells
- Sep 30, 2021
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is there a cybernetic fascism too
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May 6, 2024 14:54
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- Truga
- May 4, 2014
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Lipstick Apathy
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yeah, that's google
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May 6, 2024 14:56
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- Zodium
- Jun 19, 2004
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is there a cybernetic fascism too
there is, and it's one of the best forms.
get out
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May 6, 2024 15:13
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- The Protagonist
- Jun 29, 2009
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The average is 5.5? I thought it was 4. This is very unsettling.
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What about ecototalitarianism
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May 6, 2024 15:37
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- Truga
- May 4, 2014
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Lipstick Apathy
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that's just my appetite
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May 6, 2024 15:38
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- Perry Mason Jar
- Feb 24, 2006
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"Della? Take a lid"
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*frowns*
*looks at amazon rainforest*
*looks down at phone*
*looks back at amazon rainforest*
*does the "sorry! what are ya gonna do though haha" gesture*
humanity as it actively destroys the only planet it can live on: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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May 6, 2024 15:55
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- SA Forums Poster
- Oct 13, 2018
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You have to PAY to post on that forum?!?
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we’ve always been at war with ecosia
I read this book for the first time a month ago, I appreciated this post.
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May 6, 2024 15:58
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- TeenageArchipelago
- Jul 23, 2013
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https://nypost.com/2024/05/06/us-news/china-hijacking-us-climate-change-agenda-heritage-study-claims/
quote:As the US squabbles internally over how to tackle the long-term challenges posed by climate change, China is maneuvering to reap the rewards and exploit the environmental agenda, a new report from the Heritage Foundation claims.
“Proponents of the radical climate change agenda are largely not considering China’s harmful role in it. The more the United States pushes for green energies, the more it becomes reliant on China — our top adversary,” the authors of the study said in a statement.
The report, titled “Chinese Handcuffs: How China Exploits America’s Climate Agenda,” was written by Erin Walsh, a senior research fellow for international affairs at Heritage’s Asian Studies Center; and Andrew Harding, a research assistant in the Asian Studies Center.
The authors surmised that China’s foray into green energy is a bid to address fundamental geopolitical and economic weaknesses with respect to its energy sector and to strengthen its international position overall.
“America is an energy superpower, one of the world’s three largest energy producers. Comparatively, China is net energy vulnerable, the world’s largest energy importer,” they wrote.
“Over the past five years, however, the PRC [People’s Republic of China] has been executing a plan to reverse these roles by dominating the so-called green movement.”
Given serious long-term concerns about the repercussions of climate change, the authors fret that left-leaning politicians may be tempted to overlook the national security threats posed by Beijing in their pursuit of a green energy renaissance.
“For the political Left, the imperative to mitigate any effects of climate change necessitates both cheap and subsidized Chinese-manufactured infrastructure in the form of solar panels, wind turbines, grid storage, and electric vehicle (EV) batteries,” they wrote.
China now dominates 80% of the solar supply chain, including producing around 95% of the solar panels being purchased in the European Union. It also controls 40 to 50% of the global supply of rare earth elements, which are essential for the production of a wide range of green energy technology.
The paper cited China’s decision in December 2023 to ban exports of technology needed to produce rare earth magnets as an example of Beijing’s leverage.
“The current worsening threat environment should mean that the US no longer relies on any foreign adversary, especially China, for critical energy resources or supply chains,” Walsh and Harding wrote.
The authors also stressed how Beijing is “flooding the market with below-market-cost products” to thrash foreign competition from the US and elsewhere.
Further buoying this is “regulatory developments” emerging in the US even as forced labor flourishes in China. One example cited is how Xinjiang, home to the Uyghurs and a plethora of human rights concerns, was responsible for 54% of polysilicon production in China.
During 2023, clean energy investment in China jumped 40% year-on-year, mostly due to bets on research and development as well as manufacturing, according to the study.
In public, Chinese leadership has talked a big game when it comes to reducing carbon emissions.
“Humankind can no longer afford to ignore the repeated warnings of nature and go down the beaten path of extracting resources without investing in conservation, pursuing development at the expense of protection, and exploiting resources without restoration,” Chinese leader Xi Jinping said in an address to the United Nations in September 2020.
In 2015, Beijing agreed to the Paris Climate Accord, which seeks a net-zero carbon output by 2050.
However, the authors were skeptical of China’s sincerity in combating the crisis.
They highlighted remarks Xi gave in 2022 to the 20th Party Congress in which he “stated that China will not stop using fossil fuels until it is confident that clean energy can reliably replace them.”
“The CCP’s climate policy is part of this overall agenda to hasten the rise of China and the decline of the United States. If America loses the ability to harness the natural resources it has, … [then it] seriously risks becoming dependent on China for energy while the CCP continues to abuse the environment,” they said.
China, which is the most populous nation in the world, by far emits the most CO2 — more than double that of the US, according to the most recent data from the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research.
The report’s authors called for the US to significantly recalibrate its policy toward combating climate change.
This includes prioritizing US energy independence, pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, investigating revenue streams from environmentalist groups in the US, ramping up scrutiny of Chinese firms investing in the US, and becoming more skeptical of Chinese cooperation on climate change.
“The U.S. is actively contributing to China’s dominance over the green energy domain while failing to exploit the challenges China has in this sector,” the study said.
“[China’s] dominance is not inevitable — but the U.S. must act now to prevent it, and to free itself from its self-imposed Chinese handcuffs.”
good to know that China is going green, but evilly. The Heritage Foundation would know. Particularly like the solution being pulling out of the Paris accord and doubling down on oil extraction
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May 6, 2024 17:15
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- Hubbert
- Mar 25, 2007
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At a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
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On the topic of degrowth, is there any way to make it so that other people have to do but I'm not affected? I kinda wanna continue having little treats like bananas and it would be really handy if someone else somewhere perished into destitution to make that happen. Thanks 🙏
Reminded me of this book review interview ...
Transcending the ‘imperial mode of living’
An interview with political scientist Ulrich Brand
James Wilt / June 24, 2022
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The ‘Imperial Mode of Living’ implies that “people’s everyday practices, including individual and societal orientations, as well as identities, rely heavily on the unlimited appropriation of resources.” Photo from Flickr
In a giant overcorrection from the anti-consumerism era of No Logo and Adbusters, much of the “climate left” in the Global North now tends to dismiss any critique of resource-intensive consumption—driving and flying, factory farmed meat, smartphones—as reactionary, if not even “Thatcherite” or “Malthusian.” Focusing on consumption, the argument goes, distracts from immense capitalist power and profits, blaming the increasingly immiserated working class for conditions that we have no control over. This conclusion has been widely memeified: think of “no ethical consumption under capitalism,” the “Mister Gotcha” comic, or the (misleading) claim that a mere 100 corporations are “responsible” for 71 percent of emissions.
There’s some merit to this pushback, of course. Individualizing climate change and other environmental crises is a key strategy of capital, with the “carbon footprint” first promoted and popularized by BP as a way to diffuse the responsibility of fossil fuel producers. This reality seems only further confirmed every time we learn of a new situation of extreme capitalist waste, such as airlines running thousands of “ghost flights” during the pandemic to maintain airport slots, farmers dumping thousands of gallons of milk, or Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock. Capital is to blame, of course.
But when thinking about any kind of rapid and globally just transition, there’s an urgent need to assess the profound imbrication of resource-intensive consumption at the subjective level of conscious and unconscious desires. Countless things that are popularly understood and strived for as key components of a “good life” fundamentally depend on the ever-deepening immiseration of poor, colonized, and racialized peoples, especially in the Global South. Continued access to these material benefits has helped shore up capitalism and stabilize or displace its many crises and contradictions—until very recently, that is—with an “unstable equilibrium of compromise” enrolling subjects as active participants in its maintenance.
One of the most vital recent texts exploring this trend is The Imperial Mode of Living by German scholars Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen. In contrast to the overly simplistic notion that capital unilaterally imposes consumption upon us, Brand and Wissen emphasize a dialectical analysis in which capitalist domination “draws on the wishes and desires of the populace … becomes a part of individual identity, shapes it, and thereby becomes all the more effective.” Canadian Dimension spoke with Brand, professor for international politics at the University of Vienna, about the imperial mode of living, the dynamic nature of hegemony, and potential alternatives.
German political scientist Ulrich Brand. Photo by Lisa Bolyos/Wikimedia Commons.
Canadian Dimension (CD): What is the imperial mode of living? Why is it a mode of living, rather than a lifestyle or way of life?
Ulrich Brand(UB): The context when we started to work on it was the economic crisis of 2007-2008, where the climate crisis and the ecological crisis had a lot of attention but the specific crisis policies were old-school: supporting the car industry and not really pushing the mobility transition. We asked ourselves: why is the continuity so strong?
We said, OK, there are obviously structures coming from critical theory and Marxism. It’s the mode of production. But what is the other side of the coin? There, we proposed the term “imperial mode of living” or “mode of living” in the sense that it has its own dynamics. We have to think about the mode of production, of course, which is class-based, power-based, globalization-oriented. But the mode of living is that people make sense or have material practices as everyday life.
It’s not a thing of choice, like “I want to have this living room or that car.” But people, with all their differences, are inscribed in a mode of living and mode of production that constantly refers to an elsewhere: to cheap labour and nature. The products and the commodities that people are consuming don’t indicate the conditions under which they were produced. In the smartphone, in the car, in the plane, in the industrially produced food there is this elsewhere—this exploitative relationship—inscribed.
CD: A central claim about the imperial mode of living is that it is exclusive, with contradictions only heightening as more people fight for access to it or refuse to continue bearing its costs. What is it about the imperial mode of living that makes it inherently exclusive and something that can’t be universalized?
UB: “Everyday life” is not a moralizing category, it’s a structural category. To understand this deeply embedded, unsustainable mode of living and mode of production, we necessarily need the other side of the coin: we need the destruction of land to exploit oil and gas—and now even worse with fracking. We need the workers in Bangladesh for the production of textiles. We need the workers in China for the production of cellphones. Against the economic orthodoxy that if there are high enough growth rates, there will be the famous trickle down effect and everybody will be better off along income and class dimensions, we argue, no: we need this other side of the coin.
However, coming from critical theory, we want to highlight dialectical thinking. It’s on the one hand exclusive but it’s also attractive. Even the exploited people, when they have a higher income and better status: they want to be integrated. They want to live the imperial mode of living. We see this with this enormous growth of meat consumption and cars in China. It’s attractive and exclusive. We want to understand and underline this and the invisibility of the preconditions: how nature is appropriated and destroyed, how other people and their workforce is appropriated.
CD: How are the benefits of the imperial mode of living further differentiated through various intersections of gender, race, and socioeconomic status?
UB: This is a very important point. We argue as a structural category, everybody is pulled into the imperial mode of living. We need to live the imperial mode of living. But there are differences because of exploitation within the Global North: there are migrant workers and poor working conditions for many, many people.
These inequalities exist mainly along income: it’s not so much the “ecological consciousness” but the income that produces the so-called ecological footprint or how we are integrated in the imperial mode of living. It’s also public infrastructure that’s produced with materials from the Global South. So we argue that it depends along race and gender because it’s part of the social division of labour. People of colour are usually more exploited: they have fewer chances for a career and good education so they’re stuck to a position within the social division of labour and usually gain less. It’s the same with the gender division of labour: there is a gender pay gap and very different opportunities for careers.
Besides the socialization and social division of labour, we also have consumption patterns that are very different. For example: the use of cars and who gets the larger car, in what Cara Daggett calls “petro-masculinity.” Even with electric cars: the huge Tesla car, almost looking like a tank. So it’s the division of labour and it’s the pattern of accepted consumption that has to do with status and masculinity. But again, it’s this ambiguous integration into society. A woman who earns more money and is part of the upper middle class or elite is very differently inscribed and attached to the imperial mode of living than a poor woman.
We argue that inequality is a precondition of the imperial mode of living and it’s a consequence. The imperial mode of living can be realized because we have this huge inequality, the exclusive character, the class and gender and race-based character. But the effect is also stabilizing social inequality. When we look at the Global North and South relation it’s even stronger.
CD: Another key aspect of the argument concerns the Gramscian theory of hegemony. Crucially, this often plays out at the level of unconscious desires, habits, and anxieties. How does a theory of hegemony help us understand the imperial mode of living and its lasting power, especially as it pertains to these unconscious desires?
UB: Let’s start briefly with the split within the Gramscian use of the concept of hegemony. Usually, of course, it’s domination by consent: it’s the specific form of domination that was the great invention of Gramsci with class domination not just power and coercion but also the fabrication of consent. At least within Western Europe, there is the notion of hegemony and of civil society which was very much attached to “the public,” which is close to Jürgen Habermas and his theory. So “the public” is the form of contestation: it’s the form where the consent is produced.
We, coming from Marxism or historical materialism, argue no: hegemony is practiced in the everyday, consciously or unconsciously. So we have to think not only about the huge public debates: “How’s the energy transition working?” and so on. We have to look in a finer sense about how people make their living and what is attractive in it. Even Gramsci distinguished between active consent and passive consent. He said the active consent is usually the upper middle classes thinking: “This is great, we want to maintain our life.” The passive consent is: “I don’t have an alternative. I don’t want to be exploited or I don’t want to have a boring life but I don’t have any alternatives.” This is passive consent.
Our point is close, if you like, to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus: that this form of living—of desires—is corporealized. It’s part of our subjectivities and part of our body, our wish to have more. This is when it comes to the politicization or the critique of the imperial mode of living. It’s not only the great public debate and hegemony. Of course, we need protest movement, we need this debate. But it’s not enough. Those protest movements and debates should look also at what are the preconditions of people and of their living? It broadens the political perspective of alternatives quite a lot when we have this take of the Gramscian notion of hegemony.
[...]
Hubbert has issued a correction as of 18:09 on May 6, 2024
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May 6, 2024 18:03
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- 050624_2
- May 6, 2024
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Somebody has issued a correction as of 18:11 on May 6, 2024
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May 6, 2024 18:06
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- Communist Cop
- Jun 29, 2023
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Excited for the Ministry for the Future
https://twitter.com/PGDynes/status/1787489440136364335?t=IYUY3qrrmNYKkGtFXk8LJg&s=19
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May 6, 2024 19:55
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- uguu
- Mar 9, 2014
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Is China cheating again by looking more than one quarter/election cycle into the future?
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May 6, 2024 20:07
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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May 26, 2024 17:04
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- mags
- May 30, 2008
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I am a congenital optimist.
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it's fine dude c'mon that's the temperature at 2m like nobody is that tall
slender man erasure
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May 6, 2024 20:26
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May 6, 2024 09:38
