I'm an old man now, but long ago - at the dawn of the USA's environmental movement - that would the '70's - I realized and began telling people that one word would become the most powerful word in the english language - and that word is "sustainable." In a world where literally ALL resources are finite - human practices that aren't sustainable - be they agricultural, political, manufacturing, military, extractive, religious, etc - literally ALL practices and endeavors - they need to be given the heave-ho at the earliest possible moment and replaced by behaviors and practices that ARE sustainable, because only sustainable practices are compatible with the survivability of the human race. People looked at me funny for years when I started preaching this gospel, but I knew there was no way around the truth of it, so never stopped spreading it. While I despair at what it's taken for people to FINALLY start to see this as inescapable, I'm glad to have lived long enough to see the widespread dawning of a wider realization and acceptance of the concept. Hey - if it's so obvious a 17 year old kid thumbing through the Whole Earth Catalogue can figure it out - there must be something to it - no?
Thank you for your thoughtful comment and being one of the voices that early on called out the unsustainability of our behavior. Things have been lush for the "developed" world from oil, but how should developed be defined? As a measure of the toys we can make or the depth of our thinking? At this moment of full, open assault on our social safety nets, and environmental regulation, hopefully an opportunity is presented to educate those who don't yet see our future inexorably connected to the health of the planet. Keep educating, Bob. It's going to take many voices to alter the future.
Deeply grateful for this deep dive into the macro vision of degrowth: what it would take for society to embrace the concept as governance policy. I embrace degrowth, but writing about it is outside of my lane, so I grateful someone is prepared to thoughtfully lay it out.
I recently dipped into degrowth at the individual and village/community level, which is where, in my climate collapse realism space, I believe the shift can still happen.
Yet, while I deeply wish society would voluntarily move in this direction, I can't see it happenin. But that does not negate the deep importance about dialogue in this space.
Geoffrey - thank you for this article. Can you or another reader point me in the direction of more info regarding the depopulation plan of the oliogarchs? Appreciate it, Lesley
Lesley, the depopulation plan is largely hidden, more to be discerned in the totality of policies undermining the health of the planet, our bodies, and minds. One can see it in our for-profit healthcare system which denies critical treatment, and endlessly leaking oil and methane leaking pipeline systems crisscrossing the world. One can see it in the mines of the Congo and devastation of the Amazon Rainforest to raise fast food beef. There’s a synergy going on here at the least, and possibly a coordinated plot. Absolute direct evidence is hard to come by, but the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. I wrote about it a few years ago. If you run across something directly damning, I want to hear about it. https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/circumstantial-evidence
Lesley, I'll look forward to Geoffrey's eventual answer but I'll propose that there is no master plan as no one is really in control of a system that will collapse (quickly or over time who knows?) of it's own exhaustion. Check out Overshoot by William R. Catton Jr. So according to an ecologist Adam Fenech most people during the great correction will die of opportunistic disease after months of malnutrition (his research was based on historic famines). So bunkering with a huge supply of food is possible for billionaires although whether these are impenetrable will remain an open question.
Hiya, I don't see the depopulation plan as involving for profit healthcare or toxins in the environment. These methods of not preventing or actively causing disease are not to kill us, particularly in the West, they are to sell more products, they want us fat, sick and on drugs.
The way the (white) elites will kill 2/3rds of the planet, and make sure that they are mostly black and brown people is with climate change itself. Food insecurity and starvation will dramatically increase and affect the whole of Africa and West Asia (formerly called the Middle East) and billions will die, easily starting by 2030.
The US will annexe Canada and Mexico. The border to the south will be the easily controlled Panama canal, already bought by BlackRock. These US special interests will rule over fascist Fortress America while chaos ensues in the rest of the world.
Thank you for all of the insightful information about regrowth. The metric to replace GDP establishes a balance to measure sustainability. The question is, how do we support its adoption?
We support its adoption with nothing short of taking personal risk to the best of our ability. Reasonableness stopped working long ago and brought us here.
Sorry, Geoff, but you lost me by criticizing depopulation, without which all of your other pie in the sky suggestions come to naught. We are currently 3,000 more numerous than were the migratory Hunter-Gatherer ancestors of ALL of us, who were ecologically balanced and self-sustaining. How can the laudable goals of "degrowth" possibly proceed without a conscious effort to reduce our numbers and the inevitable consequence of overconsumption? BTW, you may have noticed that we have a group of Anarchists in DC destroying every single environmental program ever instigated from the EPA on, led by a madman and his planet eating sponsors seeking to cover the planet with energy eating data centers pouring out AI to entertain the mob. I'm afraid that you and I do not live on the same dying planet. The 4 plus day long tornadic weather event finally coming to a conclusion is a testimony to Global Warming, and, yet, not a single word about its cause. Despair is the only conclusion that I can come to in this moment in the history of our once beautiful, bountiful earth, given the utter blindness of presenters like you.
Greeley, I called out overpopulation as one of the problems caused by our fossil fuel world. One can argue that the advent of settled agriculture was the beginning of the end as well. I touched on the anarchists in DC, and chose the LA fires rather than the more recent massive tornado event as an example of a result of our nihilistic behavior. I also mentioned the shredding of environmental governance being rolled out.
Fact: we are headed for a less populous world. Agriculture is poised to crash from disease, drought, flood, and war (Ukraine bread basket). We are on the precipice of everything crashing. I recognize that.
Degrowth should have become policy decades ago. I well-recognize the odds of it ever occurring to be infinitesimally small. However, given that we are headed for massive economic and social breakdown, what is it we should be fighting for? What if anything can avoid a breakdown to warring fiefdoms? Common purpose. That should be degrowth, as wildly imperfect as it would be given the eleventh hour nature of implementing it.
Do I think we will avoid fiefdoms and unimaginable tragedy? Highly doubtful, but at least one more time, I put the concept out there as a goal we could unite for. "Utter blindness" wasn't nice, and you have read me enough to know I am not naive. However, I get the anger, me, too. Be well.
Geoffrey Deihl is the hero we need for our times. All should subscribe to him to stay up on the edge we are on, and pay if you can. If you write on Substack do all those cross-posting and recommending tools that can get this widely seen. “There is no right or left. There is now only our common need to save what we can of an inhabitable planet. The ultra wealthy and the political sycophants doing their bidding are the common enemy.”
“The fight we must wage is far bigger than Trump, Musk, and Project 2025...These facts require us to act in aggressive unity.” How to do that is what I write about.
Oh, my Sue. I'm just a guy who has figured a few things out by learning from the work of others, scientists and historians among them. I think of people like Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, and Naomi Klein as far more heroic than I am, just one small voice in need of many others to make a loud, primal scream. Do I want my words spread further? Of course. I wish that for any writers here sounding the alarm. Thank you, Sue.
I intend to keep writing. Growing readership is tough, and my subjects are unpopular. A frustration I have is that some of the writers I read here with tens or hundreds of thousands of readers who are experts in many areas, don't address climate change, overshoot, read or boost little folk such as myself. A few months ago, an article I wrote garnered 14,000 reads and over 350 new subscribers. I thought I had possibly made a breakthrough, but have fallen back to steady, unspectacular growth.
The ways of popularity are a mystery to me, too. Maybe it’s the universe being intentional, where what needs to happen more than gaining popularity is for people like us to scheme together. I will presume you would be on tap for the invite I put out yesterday for schemers — this time not just degrowth people, that’s still being worked on for some power support, but whatever any group comes up with would have to be in light of the danger we are in. Amazing there is so much passivity about that, like the person on the beach in Thailand as the tsunami was approaching.
I'm an old man now, but long ago - at the dawn of the USA's environmental movement - that would the '70's - I realized and began telling people that one word would become the most powerful word in the english language - and that word is "sustainable." In a world where literally ALL resources are finite - human practices that aren't sustainable - be they agricultural, political, manufacturing, military, extractive, religious, etc - literally ALL practices and endeavors - they need to be given the heave-ho at the earliest possible moment and replaced by behaviors and practices that ARE sustainable, because only sustainable practices are compatible with the survivability of the human race. People looked at me funny for years when I started preaching this gospel, but I knew there was no way around the truth of it, so never stopped spreading it. While I despair at what it's taken for people to FINALLY start to see this as inescapable, I'm glad to have lived long enough to see the widespread dawning of a wider realization and acceptance of the concept. Hey - if it's so obvious a 17 year old kid thumbing through the Whole Earth Catalogue can figure it out - there must be something to it - no?
Thank you for your thoughtful comment and being one of the voices that early on called out the unsustainability of our behavior. Things have been lush for the "developed" world from oil, but how should developed be defined? As a measure of the toys we can make or the depth of our thinking? At this moment of full, open assault on our social safety nets, and environmental regulation, hopefully an opportunity is presented to educate those who don't yet see our future inexorably connected to the health of the planet. Keep educating, Bob. It's going to take many voices to alter the future.
Thank YOU for the insightful essay that inspired me to add my two cents...
So good, Geoffrey, thank you for this.
Thank you, Jane. It’s what I feel I must do. Knowledge is responsibility.
Deeply grateful for this deep dive into the macro vision of degrowth: what it would take for society to embrace the concept as governance policy. I embrace degrowth, but writing about it is outside of my lane, so I grateful someone is prepared to thoughtfully lay it out.
I recently dipped into degrowth at the individual and village/community level, which is where, in my climate collapse realism space, I believe the shift can still happen.
Yet, while I deeply wish society would voluntarily move in this direction, I can't see it happenin. But that does not negate the deep importance about dialogue in this space.
Gratitude.
Geoffrey - thank you for this article. Can you or another reader point me in the direction of more info regarding the depopulation plan of the oliogarchs? Appreciate it, Lesley
Lesley, the depopulation plan is largely hidden, more to be discerned in the totality of policies undermining the health of the planet, our bodies, and minds. One can see it in our for-profit healthcare system which denies critical treatment, and endlessly leaking oil and methane leaking pipeline systems crisscrossing the world. One can see it in the mines of the Congo and devastation of the Amazon Rainforest to raise fast food beef. There’s a synergy going on here at the least, and possibly a coordinated plot. Absolute direct evidence is hard to come by, but the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. I wrote about it a few years ago. If you run across something directly damning, I want to hear about it. https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/circumstantial-evidence
Lesley, I'll look forward to Geoffrey's eventual answer but I'll propose that there is no master plan as no one is really in control of a system that will collapse (quickly or over time who knows?) of it's own exhaustion. Check out Overshoot by William R. Catton Jr. So according to an ecologist Adam Fenech most people during the great correction will die of opportunistic disease after months of malnutrition (his research was based on historic famines). So bunkering with a huge supply of food is possible for billionaires although whether these are impenetrable will remain an open question.
Hiya, I don't see the depopulation plan as involving for profit healthcare or toxins in the environment. These methods of not preventing or actively causing disease are not to kill us, particularly in the West, they are to sell more products, they want us fat, sick and on drugs.
The way the (white) elites will kill 2/3rds of the planet, and make sure that they are mostly black and brown people is with climate change itself. Food insecurity and starvation will dramatically increase and affect the whole of Africa and West Asia (formerly called the Middle East) and billions will die, easily starting by 2030.
The US will annexe Canada and Mexico. The border to the south will be the easily controlled Panama canal, already bought by BlackRock. These US special interests will rule over fascist Fortress America while chaos ensues in the rest of the world.
https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/the-crisis-report-104
Thank you for all of the insightful information about regrowth. The metric to replace GDP establishes a balance to measure sustainability. The question is, how do we support its adoption?
We support its adoption with nothing short of taking personal risk to the best of our ability. Reasonableness stopped working long ago and brought us here.
Sorry, Geoff, but you lost me by criticizing depopulation, without which all of your other pie in the sky suggestions come to naught. We are currently 3,000 more numerous than were the migratory Hunter-Gatherer ancestors of ALL of us, who were ecologically balanced and self-sustaining. How can the laudable goals of "degrowth" possibly proceed without a conscious effort to reduce our numbers and the inevitable consequence of overconsumption? BTW, you may have noticed that we have a group of Anarchists in DC destroying every single environmental program ever instigated from the EPA on, led by a madman and his planet eating sponsors seeking to cover the planet with energy eating data centers pouring out AI to entertain the mob. I'm afraid that you and I do not live on the same dying planet. The 4 plus day long tornadic weather event finally coming to a conclusion is a testimony to Global Warming, and, yet, not a single word about its cause. Despair is the only conclusion that I can come to in this moment in the history of our once beautiful, bountiful earth, given the utter blindness of presenters like you.
Greeley, I called out overpopulation as one of the problems caused by our fossil fuel world. One can argue that the advent of settled agriculture was the beginning of the end as well. I touched on the anarchists in DC, and chose the LA fires rather than the more recent massive tornado event as an example of a result of our nihilistic behavior. I also mentioned the shredding of environmental governance being rolled out.
Fact: we are headed for a less populous world. Agriculture is poised to crash from disease, drought, flood, and war (Ukraine bread basket). We are on the precipice of everything crashing. I recognize that.
Degrowth should have become policy decades ago. I well-recognize the odds of it ever occurring to be infinitesimally small. However, given that we are headed for massive economic and social breakdown, what is it we should be fighting for? What if anything can avoid a breakdown to warring fiefdoms? Common purpose. That should be degrowth, as wildly imperfect as it would be given the eleventh hour nature of implementing it.
Do I think we will avoid fiefdoms and unimaginable tragedy? Highly doubtful, but at least one more time, I put the concept out there as a goal we could unite for. "Utter blindness" wasn't nice, and you have read me enough to know I am not naive. However, I get the anger, me, too. Be well.
Geoffrey Deihl is the hero we need for our times. All should subscribe to him to stay up on the edge we are on, and pay if you can. If you write on Substack do all those cross-posting and recommending tools that can get this widely seen. “There is no right or left. There is now only our common need to save what we can of an inhabitable planet. The ultra wealthy and the political sycophants doing their bidding are the common enemy.”
“The fight we must wage is far bigger than Trump, Musk, and Project 2025...These facts require us to act in aggressive unity.” How to do that is what I write about.
Oh, my Sue. I'm just a guy who has figured a few things out by learning from the work of others, scientists and historians among them. I think of people like Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, and Naomi Klein as far more heroic than I am, just one small voice in need of many others to make a loud, primal scream. Do I want my words spread further? Of course. I wish that for any writers here sounding the alarm. Thank you, Sue.
It’s your turn. Transcend all modesty. We need you.
I intend to keep writing. Growing readership is tough, and my subjects are unpopular. A frustration I have is that some of the writers I read here with tens or hundreds of thousands of readers who are experts in many areas, don't address climate change, overshoot, read or boost little folk such as myself. A few months ago, an article I wrote garnered 14,000 reads and over 350 new subscribers. I thought I had possibly made a breakthrough, but have fallen back to steady, unspectacular growth.
I guess I don't know what the secret sauce is.
The ways of popularity are a mystery to me, too. Maybe it’s the universe being intentional, where what needs to happen more than gaining popularity is for people like us to scheme together. I will presume you would be on tap for the invite I put out yesterday for schemers — this time not just degrowth people, that’s still being worked on for some power support, but whatever any group comes up with would have to be in light of the danger we are in. Amazing there is so much passivity about that, like the person on the beach in Thailand as the tsunami was approaching.