Upstream - [TEASER] Degrowth vs Eco-Modernism

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello everyone welcome to another upstream patreon episode We wanted to do something a little bit different in this episode instead of our sort of regular interview format I thought it would be interesting to actually read an article just to kind of switch things up a little bit And yeah, I don't know Maybe give you guys a sense of what I've been reading in a way that isn't the the sort of typical Q&A interview Style that we do. I was partially inspired by RevLeft Radio with this. Brett from RevLeft often reads articles on his Patreon feed and intersperses them with

Starting point is 00:00:35 some analysis. And I really, I really love that format. So I thought I would try it out here and see if it works. We also, our last Patreon episode was a reading by Nadia Zangari of her piece Palestine 2031. And I thought that episode was like really quite good and we got a lot of great feedback on it. And so yeah, Nadia's reading also inspired me to play around a little bit with this format. So, and I thought this article that I'm going to read today was especially interesting because

Starting point is 00:01:09 it's not only a really important examination of an active debate that's going on within the left, sort of in real time right now, but the debate itself is sort of co-led by two different individuals who both have been on this podcast before. Kai Herron was recently on with Jody Dean in our episode on climate Leninism. And then Matt Huber, who was a guest on our Green Transition audio documentary series. So they both have very different ideas about degrowth, Kai being an advocate of degrowth, along with past guests like Jason Hicle and Max Ayl for example. And then Matt who rejects degrowth and actually thinks that it's a barrier to our liberation. So this piece is by Kai Herron and it was published as a blog post on Verso's website on April 2nd.

Starting point is 00:02:01 And of course I'll put the link in the show notes, it's titled Forget Ecomodernism, and the subtitle is, quote, recent years have seen renewed debate on climate strategy on the left. Here, Kai Heron responds to the arguments of the proponents of a left ecomodernism and argues that it risks reactionary political consequences. So I haven't actually read the full piece yet, so I thought I'd read it here in full and maybe come in with some commentary here or there, if it feels relevant as we go along,

Starting point is 00:02:35 and just share some thoughts at the end as well. I don't know how long it's actually going to take to read the whole piece. It's fairly lengthy, not like insanely long, but it's also not just a short little blog post or anything. So this is kind of an experiment and we'll see where it goes. Feel free to leave any comments on Patreon if you love it or hate it, or if you have any thoughts on the piece itself. The cool thing about our Patreon community is that it's a bit more like, I guess you could tighten it right so like I can actually respond to pretty much every comment and and there's no trolling and like bad faith arguments and stuff like that

Starting point is 00:03:11 that just kind of makes the comment section on instagram a bit more um thorny I guess you could say so here's forget eco-modernism by kai heron for years now, eco-socialist debate has been locked into orbit around two sharply contrasting perspectives, degrowth and left-eco-modernism. The former, represented by Jason Hickle, Giorgos Callas, Stefania Barca, and others, claims that the growth-based paradigm cap's endless material and energetic throughputs, the use of gross domestic product, or GDP, as the measure of a healthy society, and an ideology of progress determined in accordance with capital's priorities, is a barrier to a post-capitalist future.

Starting point is 00:03:59 To disentangle our collective reproduction from capital, radical versions of degrowth have called for reductions in material and energetic throughputs in the imperial core, ecological and climate reparations, technology transfers to support global green transition, global development convergence, and reductions in personal consumption for heavy consumers. These features are combined with a call for the expansion of green industry and energy, common ownership of the means of production, reduced working weeks, and democratic planning.

Starting point is 00:04:34 The vision for degrowth requires revolutionary transformation in how we live our lives. Rather than mediating the pursuit of human and non-human needs through the profit motive, degrowth focuses on the need for democratically planned production to directly deliver what everyone and everything needs to survive and flourish. All of this, degrowth-ers argue, is not just desirable, but essential to provide a secure ecological niche for human and non-human life. As Koh-Hei Saito puts it in Slow Down, How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth, it's degrowth or barbarism. Just as an aside, the degrowth movement is incredibly diverse and it's not just like

Starting point is 00:05:19 one specific agreed upon group of principles. There are people like Kate Rayworth who call themselves growth agnostic. And the idea isn't that we necessarily have to stop all growth across every single sector internationally. The idea is to get ourselves into a place where we're not growing our economies for growth's sake, and we're actually reducing growth in ways that increase our well-being. And there are places on the planet right now that still need a certain degree of development and a certain degree of growth in order to reach certain living standards, not necessarily emulating the high consumption living standards of us in the West,

Starting point is 00:06:05 but having basic needs met which currently aren't met and would need a certain degree of growth in order to get there. Okay, back to the text. Left ecomodernism, on the other hand, is usually represented by Matthew Huber, Lee Phillips, and proponents of a growth-based Green New Deal, such as Robert Paulin. For left-ecomodernists, as opposed to reactionary ecomodernists or capitalists, degrowth is both unnecessary and politically poisonous. It's unnecessary because technological advances in hydrogen fuel, carbon capture and storage, nuclear energy, and renewable energy systems mean that a high consumption lifestyle for all is possible, providing capitalism is abolished and workers take control of the means of production.

Starting point is 00:06:53 It's politically poisonous because, as Cale Brooks writes in Damage magazine, degrowth is a, quote, politics of less that cannot rally support among workers who are already struggling to make ends meet. For left eco-modernists, the climate crisis is irresolvable under capitalism not because of growth, but because the law of value dictates investment decisions. If something isn't profitable, it isn't pursued. Under socialism, all kinds of technologies and ecological projects that are currently off the table would become possible. The high fixed capital costs of nuclear power, for example, deters investment by private capital,

Starting point is 00:07:35 but a worker state freed from the profit motive could invest the time and labor needed to make mass nuclear energy a reality and drive down emissions. So just as a quick aside here, personally I don't think it's at all guaranteed that simply having workers own the means of production would lead to an investment in green technology. I think that the mass of workers, especially in the West, don't necessarily have that kind of consciousness. I don't think that's a given and I think it's perfectly possible that by simply seizing the means of production and not including degrowth, not including decolonization, not including a whole bunch of other

Starting point is 00:08:20 elements of capitalism which have to be abolished and rebuilt. I don't think it is at all guaranteed that we would switch to this kind of sustainable, ecological green economy simply by vesting power in the working masses of the West. I just don't think that's a possibility. I also don't think it's possible to consume in the same way as we do in the West without having super exploitation of the global South and without destroying the environment and destroying the climate. A few months ago, there was this debate on Twitter as to whether there would be bananas

Starting point is 00:08:58 available in the United States under communism. And the whole idea behind that debate was the amount of exploitation, both of workers in the global south as well as the environment that bananas entail, would be something that would be unheard of under communism. And I mean, putting aside the arguments that rest around like technological advances or greenhouses or the ability to grow fruits and vegetables in climates that they wouldn't like naturally appear in. I do think that we would have to give up certain things. Like whether we would have to give up bananas or not, that's kind of a technical question,

Starting point is 00:09:33 but we would have to give up a lot of things in order to live sustainably. But the upside to that is like our lifestyles are based on certain forms of consumption that simply don't bring us happiness. Yeah, like, you know, indoor plumbing and electricity, even with electricity, like the amount of electricity that we use in our houses is insane. And I think we could get by with a lot less and actually have much more rich lives.

Starting point is 00:09:59 I think things like public transportation, things like walking, if you can imagine bike infrastructure in the U S where we had like beautiful green bike thoroughfares, the amount of pollution and the energy that goes into creating individual cars for each individual person so that you get to what commute to your shitty fucking job every day for like, for some people, like two, three hours a day. And that's what we mean when we talk about the richness that can come with less, right? Like public transportation, a lot of people would think about having to use public transportation to get to and from work as a huge hassle,

Starting point is 00:10:40 but that's because there's no infrastructure for it in the U S it's cause public transportation, even the best public transportation possible in the United States is trash compared to what we could actually have if we invested in it and trash in terms of the lifestyle that it necessitates. And I mean, not to get too extreme, but even something as extreme as electricity and lighting, like how much energy goes into needless lighting in our houses and in the strip malls.

Starting point is 00:11:11 I'm actually reminded of like a really beautiful quote from Edward Abbey. Actually, hold on, let me pull it up because I think it's actually worth reading here. Okay, so this is from the novel The Monkey Ranch Gang. All this fantastic effort, giant machines, road networks, strip mines, conveyor belts, pipelines, slurry lines, loading towers, railway and electric train, hundred million dollar coal burning power plants, ten thousand miles

Starting point is 00:11:45 of high tension towers and high voltage power lines, the devastation of the landscape, the poisoning of the last big clean air reservoir in the 48 contiguous United States, the exhaustion of precious water supplies, all that ball breaking labor and all that back breaking expense and all that heart heartbreaking insult to land and sky and human heart. For what? Why, to light the lamps of Phoenix suburbs not yet built, to run the air conditioners of San Diego and Los Angeles, to illuminate shopping center parking lots at two in the morning, to power aluminum plants, magnesium plants, vinyl chloride factories, and copper smelters to charge the neon tubing that makes the meaning, all the meaning there is, of

Starting point is 00:12:31 Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Tucson, Salt Lake City, the amalgamated metropolis of Southern California, to keep alive that phosphorescent, putrefying glory, all the glory there is left, called Downtown, Nighttime, Wonderville, USA. That was a clip from our Patreon episode, Degrowth vs. Eco-Modernism. You can listen to the full episode by becoming an Upstream Patreon subscriber. As a Patreon subscriber, not only will you get access to at least one bonus episode a month, usually two or three, as well as early access to certain episodes and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers, depending on which tier

Starting point is 00:13:16 you subscribe to, but you'll also be helping to keep upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at patreon.com forward slash upstream podcast or at upstreampodcast.org forward slash support. Thank you.

Upstream - [TEASER] Degrowth vs Eco-Modernism

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