But of course, none of our politicians have the guts to tell us that, if emissions were to decrease at the rate they need to, the government would need to take our toys away. Instead, they promise us that we can continue to live wastefully, while they put up some wind turbines to “cancel it all out” – then tweet about it on their next social media political campaign, with lots of images of solar panels and wind turbines against beautiful blue skies with white cumulus clouds. The only change which a Green New Deal brings is that instead of our cash going to fossil fuel tycoons, it goes to the renewable industry tycoons. The “green” CO2 emitted by the manufacture, installation and construction which the Green New Deal plans would be no less harmful, and in fact no different chemically from the CO2 produced by fossil fuels. And if carried out, the last nail on the coffin of this planet.
The inconvenient message of downsizing is already being diluted, corrupted and weaponised by a new mind prison. The new buzzword to describe this economic contraction which we need is “degrowth”, which is obviously an oxymoron. It was the best which its originators could do to create an intentionally jovial synonym for shrinking, downsizing, downscaling, without actually saying it. They were hoping that this new terminology would scare people less than “contraction”. And they were right. Many of those naively and prematurely jumping on the increasingly fashionable bandwagon of degrowth don’t even realise what contraction demands of us. They are claiming they can shrink this civilisation with the same confidence that the renewable energy industrial complex claimed many decades ago that it could shrink emissions. Hmmm. Not so fast.
Yes, contraction is indeed where we should be heading. But it will never happen if we put our trust into the usual suspects: investors, businessmen, and politicians. But most of all, if we assume that degrowth will be delivered by the current society, institutions, and psychonomic appparatus. It will take, if ever attainable, much more than that. It will take a new human race, with new values. Power and capital are overwhelmingly and disproportionately concentrated among those who insist that the Earth is greening, the planet is cooling, and population is decreasing – precisely because these people have every bit of personal gain to draw from the planet’s destruction. As long as this continues to be the case, Earth is on course to become a wasteland with 100% accuracy.
George is an author, researcher, chemist, molecular biologist and food scientist. You can follow him on Twitter @99blackbaloons or enjoy his books
George Tsakraklides 
and, if you’ve never seen it, the film that accurately points out the likely behaviors mankind would demonstrate in such a scenario. Good writing as usual George. KGDownsizing (2017) ⭐ 5.8 | Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
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| | | | Downsizing (2017) ⭐ 5.8 | Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
2h 15m | R |
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I’ll look it up thanks!
It seems to me the some de-growthers are perhaps also using the term not as a euphemism but to draw attention to the growth delusion/cult being an actual problem (still news for many it seems), and therefore wanting that word in some kind of portmanteau to suggest we need the opposite.
I’ve only come across a subset of de-growthers but it seems to me they often have an unjustified optimism in the ability of Homo colossus to have an epiphany, and of the existing structures of our dystopia to help turn the hypothetical epiphany into useful and necessary action, when all they have done so far is the opposite of what is sorely needed, and they structurally can’t do anything else (although they can do distracting, greenwashing and marketing).