Reading Erik Assadourian's "Path to Degrowth" piece after his visit to last week's class was a valuable exercise. I was a bit surprised at first when he quickly responded in the conversation that his outlook is not pessimistic and that "when you know you're going to die, you don't have to be pessimistic about it." It sounded blunt and apocalyptic, but after reading his article this week and reflecting on the class I see better where he is coming from. His stark view that we will have a collapse and the goal is to build a society where growth isn't at the center post-collapse was jarring for me, and I think a big part of that shock is my age. I'd like to think I am not so naive, but I haven't quite outgrown the feeling of invincibility that comes with youth. While I can logically understand my own eventual death and even the end of all things, I haven't grappled with this mortality at an emotional or philosophical level yet - for my own life or for the world. Perhaps sadly, I'm sure this will come with time.
That said, I was pleased to see that Assadourian isn't just hearkening the impending apocalypse. He has concrete ideas and examples for a degrowth strategy. The thought of editing consumer choices was a bit creepy at first but it's already happening, so we may as well not deny it as a strategy. We are already manipulated by marketing, subsidies, tax credits, and more, so if these are already embedded they may as well shape more sustainable institutions than the ones currently being upheld. Between this reading and the class talk, I tried to decide where to place Assadourian's arguments in Raskin et al's three paths of Conventional Worlds, Barbarization, and Great Transitions. I found it interesting that Raskin specified how the sub-path of eco-communalism may inherently have to pass through a form of barbarization, which actually lined up eerily well in my mind with Assadourian's points of the approaching ecological collapse and subsequent strategies for post-collapse society. Then he even mentioned eco-communities in class. Beyond this, at a higher level Assadourian seems to fit well with a Great Transition. He is certainly a system transformer, seeing the current one as broken. I think many of us can agree with the transition to a new paradigm as framed in the transition terms. "A Great Transition is galvanized by the search for a deeper basis for human happiness and fulfillment" (43). Growth is a means, not an end, and the definition of success needs an overhaul.
Moving to Wapner and Willoghby's chapter "The Poverty of Lifestyle Change," we delve further into the role of institutions and the alignment of personal choices and structural change. I appreciated their mention that individual lifestyle changes do have influence and should be supported. Their discussion on the environmental responsibility that comes with the financial benefits of such choices was unique. I hadn't thought of this angle before, and the ecological impacts of saving money in conventional financial instruments versus spending money. I'd like to see the numbers behind these comparisons, and I am now intrigued and would like to further research options for perhaps unconventional mechanisms for saving and investment. I'm more of a saver than a spender, and I do feel like I could do more than simply allocate a small part of my 403(b) from the university to the "alternative energy" fund that Fidelity offers and I that I only vaguely understand...
I'm starting to feel like individual choices are taking quite the beating here. I know it takes more than that to really make change, but if their only benefit is a nominal ideological shift what are we supposed to be doing? "Engaging leaders" and "changing institutions" are still hard to understand at a level above the individual for me. Movements are great, but aren't they collections of individuals? These are human institutions made up of individual people. Is it better for me to go to a climate march and write a letter to Congress than it is to be a vegetarian and recycle? Not that these have to be mutually exclusive, but the more I read the more I'm starting to feel paralyzed by my own futility or potential uselessness. Continuing this theme, Moore discusses ecological footprints and the case study of Vancouver with its goal to become the greenest city. While personal lifestyle choices can be significant, they are not enough to get us down to one planet living. Out of curiosity I calculated my own ecological footprint, and while I expected it to be above one planet, I was shocked to be at 3.6. I was so pleased with my car-less walking to work vegetarian recycled paper lifestyle, but apparently living in America will send you over the edge no matter what. Damn my shared one bedroom apartment with its electricity. For fun, I calculated what my footprint was as a kid growing up in Japan. I need to look deeper into how they measure these things, because despite living in a Japanese 4 bedroom detached house, riding in my mother's car to school most days, and flying long distances throughout the year, I was supposedly consuming 1.7 earths. Either someone screwed up the methodology and conversions between countries, or more likely I just don't know the vast differences in electricity generation or something between Japan and America. Japan is even listed as one of the over-consuming countries! If anything, at least this takes the readings' themes to a personal and compelling level for me. I am making the most environmentally conscious decisions at this point in my life than I ever have, and still burning through earths like nobody's business. Maybe lifestyle choices really are no match for broken systems. I guess I'll move to Ecuador.
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