#growth
China-3, USA-0 ~ Beijing inflicts a severe economic defeat on America
There is no mystery regarding the reasons for this #US #failure. Paradoxically, the world’s supposed “number one #capitalist #economy” is now actually creating very little #capital. Instead, the US has become an economy overwhelmingly dominated by #consumption. New figures show that on #trade, #economic #growth and #inflation, #China’s comprehensively come out on top and #US #sanctions have #failed miserably.
U.S. residential solar trends, 2021
In 2021, residential solar reached several milestones and extreme weather raised customer interest in home energy storage systems.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/12/14/u-s-residential-solar-trends-2021/
#back, #pv, #looking, #covid-19, #renewable, #energy, #residential, #growth, #solar
https://www.bitchute.com/video/bIMPBre9myEK/
Z. P. G...Zero #Population #Growth.... #propaganda
inject some poison in everyone ?
Going underground – E1061
https://www.rt.com/shows/going-underground/537311-us-policy-towards-afghanistan/
In the second half of the show Prof. Tim Jackson, author of ‘Post-Growth: Life After Capitalism’, discusses why the GDP metric is deeply flawed in measuring the health and quality of an economy and society, the trend of decline of economic growth in Western economies such as the UK, his arguments for a radically different labour culture in which production is slowed down and lessened, the myth of ‘more is better’ that the obsession with GDP has created, the negative social impacts stemming from governments’ plans for constant economic growth, Boris Johnson’s comments that capitalism has been key in the UK’s coronavirus response and vaccine rollout, and much more!
#GoingUnderground #GDP #growth #capitalism #economics #economy #climatechange
What a peaceful build-up that evades ecological breakdown could look like
'To prevent #ecological #collapse and #create more #peaceful and #sustainable ways to #exist on this #planet, we can’t continue to make #growth and the #exploitation of #finite #resources the #center of our endeavors.'
#ninakoevoets #ecology #earth #economics #pandemic #poverty #climate #change #crisis #environment #awareness #global #nature #conflict #resolution #international #local #cultural #transformation #empathy #collaboration #compassion #interbeing #interdependence
‘Green growth’ doesn’t exist – less of everything is the only way to avert catastrophe
George Monbiot (The Guardian)
It is simply not possible to carry on at the current level of economic activity without destroying the environment.
There is a box labelled “climate”, in which politicians discuss the climate crisis. There is a box named “biodiversity”, in which they discuss the biodiversity crisis. There are other boxes, such as pollution, deforestation, overfishing and soil loss, gathering dust in our planet’s lost property department. (...)
Nature recognises no such divisions. As Earth systems are assaulted by everything at once, each source of stress compounds the others.
Take the situation of the North Atlantic right whale, whose population recovered a little when whaling ceased, but is now slumping again: fewer than 95 females of breeding age remain. (...)
Studies of bees show that when pesticides are combined, their effects are synergistic: in other words, the damage they each cause isn’t added, but multiplied. When pesticides are combined with fungicides and herbicides, the effects are multiplied again. (...)
When rainforests are fragmented by timber cutting and cattle ranching, and ravaged by imported tree diseases, they become more vulnerable to the droughts and fires caused by climate breakdown.
What would we see if we broke down our conceptual barriers? We would see a full-spectrum assault on the living world. Scarcely anywhere is now safe from this sustained assault. A recent scientific paper estimates that only 3% of the Earth’s land surface should now be considered “ecologically intact”.
The various impacts have a common cause: the sheer volume of economic activity. (...)
When we box up this predicament, our efforts to solve one aspect of the crisis exacerbate another. For example, if we were to build sufficient direct air capture machines to make a major difference to atmospheric carbon concentrations, this would demand a massive new wave of mining and processing for the steel and concrete. (...)
Or look at the materials required for the electronics revolution that will, apparently, save us from climate breakdown. Already, mining and processing the minerals required for magnets and batteries is laying waste to habitats and causing new pollution crises. Now, as Jonathan Watts’s terrifying article in the Guardian this week shows, companies are using the climate crisis as justification for extracting minerals from the deep ocean floor, long before we have any idea of what the impacts might be. (...)
But there is no such thing as green growth. Growth is wiping the green from the Earth.
We have no hope of emerging from this full-spectrum crisis unless we dramatically reduce economic activity. (...) Sustaining our life-support systems means doing less of almost everything. But this notion – that should be central to a new, environmental ethics – is secular blasphemy.
‘Combined impacts are laying waste to entire living systems.’ A dead North Atlantic right whale washed up on a beach in New Brunswick, Canada. Photograph: Nathan Klima/Boston Globe/Getty Images.
Tags: #environment #climate #climate_change #climate_crisis #co2 #pollution #global_warming #economy #growth #green_growth #deforestation #overfishinh #soil_loss #biodiversity #whales #insects #bees #agriculture #fertilizers #fungicides #herbicides #caterpillars #moths #coral_reef #coral_bleeching #rainforest #timber_cutting #cattle_racnhing #trees #mining #deep_sea_mining #ocean_levels #floods #sea_levels
Marianne Williamson, Peter Joseph ~ The Zeitgeist of this Moment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DacbQDV3o-s
https://mariannewilliamson.substack.com/p/the-zeitgeist-of-this-moment
' #Williamson and #Joseph discuss the #economic and #social #systems prevailing in the #world today and what is needed to #heal #society, and some ideas from his #book, The New HumanRights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression.'
#mariannewilliamson #peterjoseph #zeitgeist #conversation #transcript #capitalism #neoliberalism #oppression #socioeconomics #free-market #growth #consumption #economy #ethics #morality #ecosystems #ecological #balance #humanity #compassion #cultural #equity #efficiency #harmony #demarketize #movement #humanrights
Finding solutions to climate change is not as easy as you may think.
On the dark side:
On Contact: Mainstream Environmental Movement Lies.
https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/533294-mainstream-environmental-movement-lies/
The mainstream environmental movement receives a lot of criticism for their proposed ‘green’ technical solutions to climate change.
”This is a fantasy sold to us by an environmental movement that promises we can continue to indulge in orgies of consumption and maintain the levels of waste and perpetual growth that define the industrial age.”
On the bright side:
China maintains 'artificial sun' at 120 million Celsius for over 100 seconds, setting new world record.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1224755.shtml
Medium: The Earth has 57.27 million square miles of land, we only need to convert 0.2% of it to solar.
https://medium.com/predict/why-dont-we-cover-the-sharah-in-solar-panels-3692a5bf89bd
”We can power the whole world with a relatively small amount of solar panels. The Earth has 57.27 million square miles of land, we only need to convert 0.2% of it to solar, and we can power ourselves entirely. To give some perspective, it is estimated that 1% of land is built up and human-occupied (cities and towns not farmland). In other words, if we can convert 20% of urban areas around the globe to have solar on them, then we can fully power ourselves!”
However, large-scale photovoltaic solar farms envisioned over the Sahara desert would do more harm than good:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020GL090789
”Large-scale photovoltaic solar farms envisioned over the Sahara desert can meet the world's energy demand while increasing regional rainfall and vegetation cover. However, adverse remote effects resulting from atmospheric teleconnections could offset such regional benefits. We use state-of-the-art Earth-system model simulations to evaluate the global impacts of Sahara solar farms. Our results indicate a redistribution of precipitation causing Amazon droughts and forest degradation, and global surface temperature rise and sea-ice loss, particularly over the Arctic due to increased polarward heat transport, and northward expansion of deciduous forests in the Northern Hemisphere.
#tokamak #fusion #energy #renewable #solar #windturbines #hydroelectric #lithium #EV #batteries #climatechange #ChrisHedges #OnContact #growth #consumerism #overpopulation #capitalism
Without darkness, nothing comes to birth,
As without light, nothing flowers.
May Sarton (1912-1995) Belgian-American author
“The Invocation to Kali,” Part 5, Poetry (Feb 1971)
#quotation #quote #birth #darkness #growth #life #light
More notes and sourcing on WIST: https://wist.info/sarton-may/48508/
Regenerate Earth
https://www.regenerate-earth.org/regenerate-earth-walter-jehne
'The practical drawdown of 20 billion tonnes of #carbon back into #soils annually, to #rehydrate #bio-systems and #safely #cool #climates. We have the #science and #means to make the changes. What we need urgently is the #commitment to use them.'
#regenerate #earth #walterjehne #fire #fungi #future #pedogenesis #soil #water #food #health #terrestrial #climate #balance #stability #social #equity #agriculture #carbon-sponges #nature #photosynthesis #green #growth #ecology #global #action #environment
The Limits to Growth
How many times does it have to be said that you cannot have infinite growth forever in a finite system?
But when you try to point this out to market economists, especially ones employed by banks or megacorporations, while they won't actually dare to try to deny it, they will come up with all kinds of handwaving arguments for why the global economy isn't, like, you know, REALLY a finite system. Not like finite finite. Because [and at this point my brain just starts filtering out all the bullshit and dumping it to /dev/null, so I can't actually try to cite or debunk any of the bollocks rationalization for you].
Well, a current MIT study says that the 1970s Club of Rome study was right, and we're heading for the wall with our foot firmly on the gas.
The study was published in the Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology in November 2020 and is available on the KPMG website. It concludes that the current business-as-usual trajectory of global civilization is heading toward the terminal decline of economic growth within the coming decade—and at worst, could trigger societal collapse by around 2040.
Current empirical observational data aligns most closely with two projected future scenarios, BAU2 ("Business As Usual") and CT ("Comprehensive Technology"). Both predict "a slowdown and eventual halt in growth within the next decade or so"; the difference between the two is principally that BAU2 predicts exponentially rising pollution, a crash in food production and a collapse of industrialized society, while in the CT scenario we get pollution under control, food production dips but then recovers, and industrial output declines but does not crash. I'll leave you to look around you and gauge whether you think we're realistically going to get pollution under control any time soon, as Wall Street megacorporations fight desperately for their right to keep on polluting however it suits their business model.
There is a scenario among those posited by the Club of Rome designated SW ("Stable World"), in which we learn to live within our means. Unfortunately the SW scenario is the worst fit of all to current trends and observed empirical data over the last fifty years.
There is a fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, you know. His name is GREED.
Climate change and our current banking/monetary system:
Nowadays we have FIAT currencies based on debt. Banks create money out of the thin air (actually a tiny fractional reserve is required) and then they lend it at interest. Debt impels debtors to push forward with our economic system of perpetual growth.
But wait, it gets worse, much worse. When banks create the money they create the principal of the loans, but they don’t create the money needed to repay the interests. As a result many people lose their homes, their businesses, their land. It’s like the game of the musical chairs: when the music stops, some players can’t take a seat. In the best scenario they refinance their loans as much as possible when they cannot pay, and the amount of debt grows bigger and bigger. This situation creates fear among debtors and this fear impels them to push forward with the cancerous system of perpetual growth even more, at least in nominal values (inflation is part of the outcomes).
In my opinion we need debt-free currencies and cancellation of the existing debt owed by the people at the bottom.
#ClimateChange #banking #banks #FED #ECB #depletion #FIAT #debt #growth