Energy - "Degrowth is impossible" (Bertrand Piccard)

[Petrus]

The term decrease is not a problem for me personally because it describes the inevitable reduction in economic activity. I like to call a spade a spade, regardless of the opinion of the media or society in general. I also hate the wording and other newspeak formulations. But maybe another term will allow better adhesion ... before being demonized in turn.
How long will we be able to shake the mirage of growth? I think a lot of people have understood that this is only smoke. The victory of Hamon, who challenged this dogma during the primary of the PS pleasantly surprised me, I did not expect his victory with such a media target on his forehead.

[Ahmed]

Sen-no-sen, you write:

Insofar as none of the candidates speak of economic decline, I do not think there is any possible recovery.

This is what I specified at the presidential level, but degrowth has become an important theme for far-right intellectuals, which could later be recycled as a justification for austerity policies (even if the ambiguity is that the "belt tightening" has the official objective of restarting growth ... [inequalities?]).

Pétrus, you write:

The term decrease is not a problem for me personally because it describes the inevitable reduction in economic activity.

This is what is open to criticism in this formula: this purely negative side which does not allow us to glimpse the interest there would be in renouncing this fatal path.
One of the big problems of decay or effective sobriety is that it seems possible to have a possibility of individual action, without waiting for a more global evolution. However, I strongly doubt that taking only cold showers (brrr!) Changes much, even if certain actions are fully justified from an ethical point of view. In terms of efficiency, a spoonful of sobriety in a waste tanker truck will not change the situation ... Many are already involuntarily depriving themselves, since they have no choice, so that others consume in their place .
An illusion which results from it is that it will be enough to explain the arguments which justify this sobriety so that, little by little, everyone ends up rallying to this vision ... Difficult to imagine while the essential of social contestation concerns first of all the distribution of the fruits of production and if sensitivities to the ecological question are not absent from the public debate, on the one hand they have no priority and on the other hand they are based only on incomplete analyzes and too partial to constitute a usable tool.

[sen-no-sen]

Sen-no-sen, you write:

Insofar as none of the candidates speak of economic decline, I do not think there is any possible recovery.

This is what I specified at the presidential level, but degrowth has become an important theme for far-right intellectuals, which could later be recycled as a justification for austerity policies (even if the ambiguity is that the "belt tightening" has the official objective of restarting growth ... [inequalities?]).

That the decrease formerly carried by the extreme left is now it by the extreme right is only to put in relation with the thermodynamic processes in play.
In the 70s French society was expanding, so logically left movements called "progressive" which mainly defended the idea of ​​degrowth.
Nowadays logic is in retreat (hence the election of Trump,the Brexit etc ...), and it is therefore naturally sovereignist or populist conservative movements which have taken hold of the concept.
But that does not call into question the idea of ​​decrease in itself.

I obviously see what you mean when you talk about recovery, in fact after a few unsuccessful attempts at revival, we could have political currents that encourage us to "happy recession"while the same people continue to binge (which seems to me to be the goal of universal income)."Tell us what you need, we'll explain how to do without it"...Coluche

However it is essential to slow down the flow of energies which cross our society without what we run towards collapse *, now all the difficulty will consist in reprogramming the brains to make accept a certain number of mutations.
These will not be a recession, since a shift towards an optimized society could make it possible to increase the standard of living of its inhabitants (in particular by restoring the balance between town and countryside).


* I am optimistic by saying this because it is now clear that the shift to a new society will be post collapse, it is now very (too?) Late to avoid the worst ...

[Ahmed]

You write:

... now all the difficulty will consist in reprogramming the brains to make accept a certain number of mutations.

Certainly! The question is this: who will reprogram brains and to what end?

[sen-no-sen]

You write:

... now all the difficulty will consist in reprogramming the brains to make accept a certain number of mutations.

Certainly! The question is this: who will reprogram brains and to what end?

The events...

[Ahmed]

It is your formulation that prompted me to ask this question: you talk about "getting mutations accepted", not accessing mutations that have become desirable ...
In addition, events are meaningless in the absence of decryption software; where could it come from in this nothingness of political thought?

[sen-no-sen]

It is your formulation that prompted me to ask this question: you talk about "getting mutations accepted", not accessing mutations that have become desirable ...
In addition, events are meaningless in the absence of decryption software; where could it come from in this nothingness of political thought?

In the measure where the wishes of the greatest numbers are essentially inspired by the ambient economism, I would carry a certain doubt on the concept of desirable mutations.
Only events (not very sympathetic) will allow, perhaps, to deviate from the trajectory taken and to orient society towards more promising horizons, there is no shortage of ideas.

[Petrus]

This is what is open to criticism in this formula: this purely negative side which does not allow us to glimpse the interest there would be in renouncing this fatal path.

The negative side does not bother me, on the contrary I see an anti-system aspect. After all today growth benefits only a minority.

One of the big problems of decay or effective sobriety is that it seems possible to have a possibility of individual action, without waiting for a more global evolution. However, I strongly doubt that taking only cold showers (brrr!) Changes much, even if certain actions are fully justified from an ethical point of view. In terms of efficiency, a spoonful of sobriety in a waste tanker truck will not change the situation ...

A favorable framework is indeed needed for a chosen decrease to have an impact.
Today being decreasing is swimming against the current, it requires great strength of character, everything is done to make us consume and those who question this social norm are looked at in the wrong. I remember a broadcast on waning people where they were called selfish, because to consume is to participate in society

Even involuntary decayers are humiliated. We make them responsible for their situation, we punish them if they do not look hard enough for a job that does not exist, we force them to volunteer to receive a survival allowance ... If you do not have some strength of character this psychological torture ends up reaching you.
To make a more sober lifestyle desirable, priority should be given to suppressing its humiliations, universal income seems to me a good way of achieving this, but if you have other ideas I am interested.

[Ahmed]

Pétrus, you write:

The negative side does not bother me, on the contrary I see an anti-system aspect. After all, growth today only benefits a minority.

... but the decrease experienced applies to more and more people, which goes well in the direction of the system ... and therefore remains strategically difficult to justify.

The UK is a good way to develop a social category which continues to supply battalions of consumers and workers on the cheap: impossible to build on this a strategy which is not recoverable by the system. Any potentially "anti-system" idea will be formatted and returned because of how it works inside the system (at least as long as it includes a system-specific category, which is the case in the UK).
Many would be "buyers" of ideas or of a plan which would appropriately subvert the system, but it is one of the latter's tricks to position each person as a political consumer and to seek a solution on the "market".

[Ahmed]

I just finished reading the book by F. Nicolino which has just been released and which, I remind you, bears the title of: "What really matters". I consider it more as a popularization work (which is far from being pejorative!), In the sense that it explains very clearly and with the incisive style that we know, the essential problems in ecological matters . He does it brilliantly, combining factual data and poetry, but his initial objective is to get out of the catastrophic enumeration to propose avenues of positive action. While remaining aware of the utopian nature of his proposals, he argues that his utopias keep a realistic aspect, in the sense that they intend to oppose the lethal utopia which threatens us in such a way that there is no other choice really possible, than that of inventing a new destiny, necessarily Less bad.
He does not underestimate the forces to be overcome, but finds in history reasons to hope. It is this last point that seems to me the Achilles heel of his words: invoking the French Revolution or the Arab Spring is to be mistaken about the meaning and content of these events; it is even a powerful counter-argument, in the sense that these subversive episodes (but not too much!) happened in times or places where, what Bertrand Méheust termed "comfort pressure", made them possible.
I would be much less confident in a time and place where social control, the internalization of "voluntary servitude" has made such great progress, to the point of discouraging in advance any development of a real alternative. It is surely the great merit of the work that it explains what we have all always known, without wishing to admit it, that something else is possible, that no material obstacle stands in the way, but that we let us remain fascinated, however, by the disaster which dawns. If it emerges from it the desire to state real alternatives, this book would fully fulfill its mission and perhaps get us out of this morbid contemplation and this breakdown of imagination that goes (so well) with it.