Text version: https://vladbunea.substack.com/p/128-undoing-capitalism-part-4-growth

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/post/1229315

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/post/1229313

Professor Jason Hickel argues that the mindless pursuit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth isn’t just a bad thing, but is leading humanity to catastrophe

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/41081115

Archived

Between 2019 and 2024, the residents of a small village in Kazakhstan named after Shegen Kodamanov in the southern Kyzylorda province fought against a Chinese cement plant located on the outskirts of their village. Tired of dealing with pollution from the plant and worried about the community's health, the villagers took the matter into their own hands and filed a formal complaint in court in 2021.

Their ultimate goal was to receive compensation and shut down or relocate the Gezhouba Shieli cement plant.

They won the battle but lost the war. The district and provincial courts sided with the villagers, overturning the local authorities’ assessment that did not detect pollution from the plant and ruling that the plant was built too close to the residential area in violation of the relevant legal framework.

Everything was going in the villagers’ favor until the Kazakh government intervened and amended the regulations governing the mandatory distance between hazardous plants and residential areas. This loophole allowed the plant to remain operational at its current location and continue polluting the area without facing legal consequences.

One of the 55 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects

Kazakhstan is a key partner in China’s multinational mega-infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Kazakh-Chinese bilateral cooperation extends far beyond cement and covers a wide range of industries, including energy, agriculture, machinery, mining, and others.

[...]

A powerful essay on why capitalism must end.
TL;DR: the increasing wealth inequality which mainly originates in past slavery is still the continuation thereof, even though that form of public slavery has now "ended".

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/39828830

Italy's competition authority (AGCM) imposed a 1 million euro ($1.16 million) fine on China-founded online fast fashion retailer Shein on Monday for misleading customers about the environmental impact of its products.

It is Shein's second financial sanction by a European competition authority in little more than a month, after France fined the company 40 million euros on July 3 over fake discounts and misleading environmental claims.

[...]

AGCM said the environmental sustainability and social responsibility messages on Shein's website "were sometimes vague, generic, and/or overly emphatic, and in other cases omitted and misleading."

Shein's claims on circular system design and product recyclability "were found to be false or at the very least confusing", and the green credentials of its 'evoluSHEIN by design' collection were overstated, the regulator said.

[...]

AGCM said consumers could be misled to think that the collection was made with materials that are fully recyclable, "a fact that, considering the fibres used and currently existing recycling systems, is untrue".

[...]

The Italian regulator said its overall assessment was influenced by an "increased duty of care" falling on Shein, "because it operates in a highly polluting sector and with highly polluting methods".

An ideas-packed piece from a specialist blog that should be better known.

About halfway through the interviewer asks

You write that “different currents within critical ecology and ecosocialism give very different answers to what should be the central coordinates guiding the organisation of post-capitalist societies.” What are these main currents?

I thought the whole interview, and particularly the response to this question, might be interesting to some folks here.

In a small town in Sweden, the local authority is carrying out an unusual experiment.

In 2021 one of the team had been reading an article about the concept of doughnut economics – a circular way of thinking about the way we use resources – and he brought it up. “I just mentioned it casually at a meeting, as a tool to evaluate our new quality of life programme, and it grew from there,” says Stefan Persson, Tomelilla’s organisational development manager.

The concept, developed by British economist Kate Raworth is fairly straightforward. The outer ring or ecological ceiling of the doughnut consists of the nine planetary boundaries. The inner ring forms a social foundation of life’s essentials, and the “dough” in between corresponds to a safe and just space for humanity, which meets the needs of people and planet.

Putting the schema into action is challenging, but doughnut economics is being used in Tomelilla, in Sweden’s southern Skåne region, in several ways. It has been integrated into financial planning and decision support, so that rather than building a new ice rink, the plan is now to revamp an existing building.

The local government produces an annual portrait of how well it is doing at meeting doughnut economics targets. The best results in the latest diagram were on air quality, housing and social equality. Air quality in the area was good to begin with, but in order to keep improving it, young people at lower and upper secondary school have been given a free travel card for public transport. It is hoped the measure will also improve social equality in terms of access to education and health.

The people of Tomelilla welcome the challenge and are extremely proud of the way their town is forging a path. As Jonna Olsson, one of the staff at the council says: “Doughnut economics is a really interesting way to work with sustainability. It feels cool to be a cog in international change.”

https://archive.ph/4AAxh

by "Garys Economics"

tl.dw. the rich are buying it all

Outlines of an industrial policy programme in the current European politico-economical landscape, for those who take a sustainable ecosocial transformation seriously.

No mainstream sustainability wishful thinking - but real analysis with depth, power, politics and ingenuity.

What Bärnthaler, Mang and Hickel set out to do in their new article is remarkable. And in my judgement the result is exceptionally interesting and inspiring.

the EU’s industrial policy is internally contradictory and structurally incapable of achieving its stated objectives. It seeks to ensure resilience, yet fails to strengthen the foundational non-market institutions essential for economic and social stability. It pursues strategic autonomy, yet deepens resource dependencies and fuels eco-imperialist tensions. It aims for sustainability, yet remains dependent on profit-driven private sector strategies that delay the necessary phase-out of unsustainable industries.

To address these dysfunctionalities, we [...] propose a reconceptualized framework for industrial policy – [...] Foundational Liveability (strengthening the provisioning of essential goods and services), Peaceful Planetary Co-Existence (mitigating extractivist pressures and geopolitical conflicts through a multipolar, regionalized approach), and Democratically Coordinated Sustainability (shifting from market-driven green growth to deliberate, democratically planned economic transformation)

a Foundational Economy Strategy to gradually reclaim public control over essential services, strengthening their resilience and accessibility through decommodification; a Sufficiency Strategy to systematically reduce Europe’s material footprint and resource dependence [...] and Green Economic Planning, a form of state-led decarbonization that moves beyond passive market incentives while accommodating compromises with specific capital factions to drive structural transformation.