From the Guardian: by Jason Hickel
“…. extreme events [are] becoming more commonplace, few deny climate change any longer. … a consensus is crystallising … fossil fuels are killing us. We need to switch to clean energy…fast.
… But … As important as clean energy might be, the science is clear: it won’t save us from climate change…
Why? Because the burning of fossil fuels only accounts for about 70% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The remaining 30% comes from….Deforestation …. industrial agriculture…. industrial livestock farming … Industrial production of cement, steel, and plastic forms …and … landfills…
… the problem is not just the type of energy … it’s what we’re doing with it. …[we] raze forests, build more meat farms, expand industrial agriculture, produce more cement, and fill more landfill sites…
We will do these things because our economic system demands endless compound growth…we have not thought to question this.
… the basic logic of our economic operating system…[is] … the broader imperative of GDP growth.…[it] demands ever-increasing levels of extraction, production and consumption.
Clean energy, important as it is, won’t save us from this nightmare ….rethinking our economic system might. GDP growth has been sold to us as the only way to create a better world.
But we now have robust evidence that it doesn’t make us any happier, it doesn’t reduce poverty, and its “externalities” produce all sorts of social ills: debt, overwork, inequality, and climate change.
We need to abandon GDP growth as our primary measure of progress, … immediately – as part and parcel of the climate agreement that will be ratified in Morocco later this year.
It’s time to pour our creative power into imagining a new global economy – one that maximises human wellbeing while actively shrinking our ecological footprint.
This is not an impossible task. A number of countries have already managed to achieve high levels of human development with very low levels of consumption…”