Less Is More" first makes it crystal clear how and why capitalism is failing, and then succeeds in doing something that most books do not… something that is very hard to accomplish. Daar wringt het schoentje toch wat: directe democratie is allemaal goed en wel, maar in deze gepolariseerde maatschappij waar macht vaak corrupt is kan ik me niet voorstellen dat deze noodzakelijke snelle en wereldwijde overgang zonder slag of stoot zou kunnen gebeuren, of zonder dat totalitaire leiders zich hier en daar in het machtsvacuüm wringen. Our governments, our companies and our economies all run on the assumption that GDP growth is a good thing. I think it’s important to foster our social imaginations, yes, but his solutions felt reformist and idealistic. i) Technocratic climate “solutions”: “decoupling” myth of more efficient processes meaning we can “dematerialize” economic growth vs.

He describes the history of capitalism and how it got us to where we are with many advances in technology but with a very dark side. A system that has taught us to assign value to a thing not based on utility, but based on how hard it is to get, on scarcity, on how it makes people look at us, on how much we can get for it when we sell it. He assumes that we must and will switch to renewable energy, and this is probably better than using fossil fuels, but is it enough? A manifesto for the future of the planet packed with scholarship, yet as easy to read as a beach novel, a perfect antidote to doomscrolling.We need to evolve beyond the dogmas of capitalism to a new system that is fit for the twenty-first century. Hickel derides Plato, but Plato actually addresses both population and food limits much more directly than does Less is More.

Even when Pollin considers “degrowth” of GDP, his progressive reformism barely registers as he compares this with economic crises which also “degrow” GDP! Growth is at the center of our economy and our way of life and arguably has been the source of prosperity and wellbeing for many people.Dat zei ik een jaar geleden ook over “De Meeste Mensen Deugen” van Rutger Bregman, en ik zie inderdaad parallellen tussen deze twee belangrijke werken. Eindelijk is een goed onderbouwd boek verschenen waarin aangetoond wordt dat de hardnekkige economische dogma’s van deze tijd, die door links en rechts algemeen aangenomen worden, helemaal geen goddelijke natuurwetten zijn.

Less is More calmly dismantles the central myths of capitalism, exposing its destructive madness for all to see. This is a problem, because taller ice cliffs can't support their own weight: once they're exposed they begin to buckle, one after the other, in a domino effect, like skyscrapers collapsing. There is a massive amount of cherry-picking and in some instances manipulation of the wording to assign blame.And it was surprising that most of the shocking information in the introduction was already known to me from various documentaries on the topic. It makes a well argued challenge to the claimed impact of technical approaches to climate change such as green new deals and alternative green generation of energy. In the past, most climate models have assumed that even if global warming locks in the total melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet, the process of disintegration will stretch out over a couple of centuries. He serves on the Statistical Advisory Panel for the UN Human Development Report 2020, the advisory board of the Green New Deal for Europe, and on the Harvard-Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice. For there's the nubThat makes a dread of so much hope;For who would bear the poisons and foul stench of "growth",The oppressor's wrong, the proud industrialist's contumely,The pangs of Gaia's wounds, the law's delay,The insolence of office, and the spurnsThat Nature so unworthily takes,When we ourselves might Earth-love makeWith a bare choice?