[TEASER] Degrowth vs Eco-Modernism

Upstream

Politics, Society & Culture, News

4.9 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2024

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You can listen to the full episode "Degrowth vs Eco-Modernism" by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber, not only will you get access to at least one bonus episode a month, usually two or three, as well as early access to certain episodes and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers, depending on which tier you subscribe to, but you’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you.

Debates on the left can often seem overly dramatized or indulgent—the result of too much time spent in online rabbit holes or needlessly arguing over manufactured controversies. But this is not always the case. There are many important debates among the left and many internal contradictions which are not compatible—what dialectical materialists would refer to as antagonistic contradictions. In this episode, we're going to explore one of these seemingly irreconcilable differences.

Degrowth is an umbrella term used to describe a wide variety of tendencies on the left which broadly proclaim the need to end or at least curtail economic growth. Degrowth thinkers include past guests like Max Ajl, Kai Heron, and Jason Hickel. Alternatively, left eco-modernism is a tendency on the left that argues the opposite: growth is not only necessary, but the assertion that we must end or curtail growth actually presents a barrier to our liberation. Left eco-modernists include past guests like Matt Huber.

In this episode, we're doing something a bit different. We're going to explore the antagonism between these two broad tendencies by reading an article and interspersing it with our own real-time analysis. The article is a piece by Kai Heron published by Verso titled "Forget Eco-Modernism: Recent years have seen renewed debate on climate strategy on the left. Here, Kai Heron responds to the arguments of the proponents of a left ecomodernism, and argues that it risks reactionary political consequences."

Join Robert as he presents the text, unpacks its arguments and analyzes them in real time, and brings in commentary and thoughts on a wide variety of topics related to degrowth, climate change, Marxism, and much more.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone. Welcome to another upstream Patreon episode.
0:04.0	We wanted to do something a little bit different in this episode instead of our sort of regular
0:10.6	interview format. I thought it would be interesting to actually read an article.
0:14.7	Just to kind of switch things up a little bit and yeah I don't know maybe give you guys a sense of what I've been reading
0:20.7	in a way that isn't the sort of typical Q&A interview style that we do.
0:25.8	I was partially inspired by Rev Left radio with this.
0:29.8	Brett from Rev Left often reads articles on his Patreon feed and interspersedes them with some analysis and I really I really love that format so I thought I would try it out here and see if it works.
0:42.8	We also, our last Patreon episode was a reading by Nautia Zangari of her peace, Palestine 2031,
0:51.2	and I thought that episode was like really quite good and we got a lot of great feedback on it
0:57.2	And so yeah Nautia's reading also inspired me to you know play around a little bit with this format.
1:03.8	And I thought this article that I'm going to read today was especially interesting because
1:09.0	it's not only a really important examination of an active debate that's going on within the left, sort of in real time right now.
1:16.7	But the debate itself is sort of co-led by two different individuals who both have been on this podcast before
1:24.0	Kai Heron was recently on with Jody Dean in our episode on Climate Lanonism and
1:30.2	then Matt Huber who was a guest on our Green Transition Audio documentary series.
1:36.0	So they both have very different ideas about de-growth. Kai being an advocate of de-growth along with past guests like Jason Hickle and Max Isle for example
1:47.6	and then Matt who rejects de-growth and actually thinks that it's a barrier to our liberation.
1:53.6	So this piece is by Kai Heron, and it was published as a blog post on Verso's website on April 2nd,
2:01.7	and of course I'll put the link in the show notes it's titled forget eco-modernism and
2:06.7	the the sort of the subtitle is quote recent years have seen renewed debate on climate strategy on the left.
2:14.4	Here, Cayhara in response to the arguments of the proponents of a left eco-modernism
2:20.4	and argues that it risks reactionary political consequences.
	...

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