[sershe]

A good summary on Hickel: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/against-hickelism

"Very few people know how to build/grow anything end to end. Consumerism appears to be the only way to live in the West right now (with it, a shared feeling of powerlessness)." I recommend you read the Unabomber manifesto. It's much the same sentiment. And I don't mean it in a reductio ad hitlerum type of way. I've read the thing and hey, the motivational part of it is reasonable. It's not wrong. It makes sense. However, the conclusion I draw is that we need to acquiesce to the fact that complex, (seemingly?) fragile systems built on increasing specialization make us uncomfortable, and do them anyway; in practice, they work much better.

"degrowth seems like our only way out" Degrowth is not a way out. We know very well how humanity functions in the low-growth conditions; when the pie is fixed or growing only slowly, whatever it is, one's only way to improve one's lot is at the expense of someone else. That doesn't tend towards communitarian utopia - that tends towards things like feudalism - the way to improve your lot is to get more land, and you will never give up the land you have voluntarily because there's no growth, so there's nothing better to be had in exchange. So the only way to get more productive assets is to take them from someone.

"Is believing technology will save us from climate collapse really that, a belief? Believing this would mean society should keep doing its thing for a tiny tiny chance of getting a free "get out of jail" card (i.e. decoupling is not a fable after all)." Is believing in "climate collapse" really that, a belief? "The largest impact of climate change is that it could wipe off up to 18% of GDP off the worldwide economy by 2050 if global temperatures rise by 3.2°C, the Swiss Re Institute warns." IFCC numbers are even lower although the ones I could find claim they might be an understatement. World GDP has recently been growing by 2.5-3.3% a year. So, if it went down 18% from current values, we'd be all the way back to the apocalyptic hellscape of about 2015.