“When it comes to global warming, we know that the real problem is not just fossil fuels—it is the logic of endless growth that is built into our economic system,” Jason Hickel, an economic anthropologist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, has written. Climate change can’t be dealt with using the tools of capitalism, because it is a product of capitalism. It can be dealt with only by throwing off capitalism in favor of something else—a system aimed not at growth but at “degrowth.”

“The difficult truth is that, to prevent climate and ecological catastrophe, we need to level down” is how the British environmental writer George Monbiot recently put it.”

Climate Change from A to Z
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/11/28/climate-change-from-a-to-z

If you are having paywall issues reading this, try this archive page (but the NewYorker actually allows a one-time read after email signup I think). Author: Elizabeth Kolbert.

“There are good reasons to opt for optimism. (See “narratives.”) It could be argued that the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act this past summer was possible only because so many people believed in a better future.

At the same time, there are good reasons to wonder whether optimism lies at the heart of the problem. For the last thirty years—more if you go back to 1965—we have lived as if someone, or some technology, were going to rescue us from ourselves. We are still living that way now.

“You can’t just sit around waiting for hope to come,” Greta Thunberg observed in a speech scolding E.U. politicians. “Then you’re acting like spoiled, irresponsible children. You don’t seem to understand that hope is something you have to earn.” READ MORE