• for: quote - Kevin Anderson, quote - elite positive feedback carbon inequality loop, climate crisis - societal aspirations, elites - societal aspirations, societal aspirations, key insight - societal aspirations

• quote

  • This 1% of humanity uses its awesome power to manipulate
    • societal aspirations and
    • the narratives around climate change.
  • These extend from
    • well-funded advertising to
    • pseudo-technical solutions,
    • and financialisation of carbon emissions (and increasingly, nature) to
    • labelling extreme any meaningful narrative that questions inequality and power.

• comment

• key insight - societal aspirations
  • it is the societal aspiration of the logic of capitalism and the free market that continues to create the next generation of the 1%
  • How can the luxury industry NOT BE high carbon intensity? It's an oxymoron. High carbon is baked into the definition of luxury, and it is luxury goods and services which accelerate climate breakdown.
  • The elites have a strong feeling of entitlement. They feel they DESERVE to reward themselves with a luxury lifestyle. That aspiration and reward structure multiplied by 80 million (1% of 8 billion) is a major variable driving the climate crisis

• for: climate crisis - elites, Kevin Anderson - elites, carbon emissions - elites, adjacency - elites - carbon inequality - incentives - luxury - capitalism

• title: A Habitable Earth Can No Longer Afford The Rich – And That Could Mean Me And You

• author: Kevin Anderson

• date: Nov. 29, 2023

• comment

• adjacency between
  • elites
  • capitalism
  • free market
  • incentives
  • double bind
  • wicked problem
  • inequality
  • carbon inequality
  • luxury industry
• adjacency statement
  • This article was pulled by "The Conversation" for being too controversial
  • It addresses the double-bind / wicked problems that we find ourselves in.
  • It's not just that the elites that are the highest per capita polluters, but
    • it is an indictment of the entire philosophy and worldview of capitalism and the market economy which produces winners and losers and
    • the winners reap enormous resource benefits, including being able to afford luxury items as rewards which constitute the largest ecological footprint of all
  • while at any one time, there is always a minority of the 1%, who hold the most outsized ecological footprint of all, the logic that produced that 1% also serves as the incentives for the majority of the 99%, who because of the inherent precarity created by capitalism, will fight and struggle to become part of that 1%
  • So while one generation of the 1% die off, a new generation is born and created by the incentive structure of scarcity and precarity.
  • In this sense, capitalism has its own self-reinforcing, positive feedback loop that keeps the masses of the disenfranchised aspiring to the same high resource and ecological footprint, luxury lifestyle
  • Look at the culture industry of sports, entertainment, movies, music, TV, etc. and of business in general. The leaders of these and ALL fields are celebrated as heros and they all reward themselves with an ultra-high carbon intensity, luxury lifestyle.
  • Unless we do more than simply demonize the current set of elites, and recognize the root cause and change the incentive structure itself, we will only ever deal with the symptom and not the problem, and continue to generate the next generation of elites
  • The luxury lifestyle industry is a important role-player in the self-reinforcing feedback loop

• for: Kevin Anderson, transition, climate equity, climate justice, climate justice - Kevin Anderson, carbon inequality - Kevin Anderson, life within planetary boundaries, lifestyle within planetary boundaries - elites, climate crisis - Kevin Anderson

• summary

  • Kevin offers a picture of what a world within the stable climate planetary boundary would look like for the wealthy of the planet.

• for: climate crisis - Kevin Anderson
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• for: Kevin Anderson - carbon inequality, climate crisis - carbon inequality climate crisis - carbon inequality, carbon inequality

• for: quote, quote - Kevin Anderson, quote - Kevin Anderson - Marshall plan, discussion - Johan Rockstrom / Kevin Anderson, perspectival knowing

• quote

  • Our choice to fail over the last 30 years has brought us to this position.
  • And a way out of that, a way out of the Marshall Plan, is to say we can have these negative emissions
  • I think we need to say that, okay that's one way out of it – if they work.
  • Another way out of it is the Marshall Plan.
  • And so we need to open that that dialogue up. but we've... in effect, I think the IAMs have closed that dialogue,.
  • Which is one of the reasons, going back to... It would be interesting to see other parts of the world looking at this, because, I would have a guess,
    • when we say 'that's not feasible', many people elsewhere in the world are saying 'well of course it's feasible, we've been doing... we've been living like that for years!'

• comment

  • In rebuttal to Johan's perspective on Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs),
    • Kevin is addressing the issue of perspectival knowing, and
    • its implications on what solutions we entertain as a global society.
  • The example he cites is Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) illustrates two major perspectives:
    • Johan includes NETs as he see's that without them, the transition goes from manageable to unmanageable
    • Kevin questions the inclusion of the NETs as potentially shutting down discussion about what Johan would consider an unmanageable situation
  • Kevin brings up a valid point for inclusion of other voices, especially those indigenous ones who are still institutionally marginalized not only in economic and cultural spaces, but also academic and intellectual ones.
  • The decolonization of academia takes on a concrete form here. Both the global and local south have lived under severe economic repression for centuries. Anderson's contention is that making do with less is something that billions of people have had to contend with for centuries as a social norm forced upon them by colonialist then post colonialist institutions.
  • Inclusivity of a greater diversity of voices does play an important role in shaping the future direction of humanity.
  • We should be having an open discussion about a Marshall plan and should not be afraid to go there.
    • We had it in WWII, which, while more direct threat, is not as great as the threat of climate change on all life on earth in a slightly greater time scale.
  • The global and local south has a lot to teach the global and local north. For this great transition of humanity to occur likely simultaneously requires
    • radical amounts of resource transfer from the global / local north to the global / local south,and
    • radical degrowth

Title: How Alive Is 1.5? Part One – A Small Budget, Shrinking Fast

Author: - Kevin Anderson - Dan Calverley

Key Messages - For a 50:50 chance of staying below 1.5°C, we’re using up the remaining carbon budget at around 1% every month. - Following current national emissions pledges (NDCs) to 2030 puts the temperature commitments within the Paris Agreement beyond reach. - Claims that 1.5°C is now inevitable also assign “well below 2°C” to the scrapheap. - An ‘outside chance’ of not exceeding 1.5°C remains viable, but ongoing fossil fuel use is rapidly undermining it. - The few credible pathways for an outside chance of 1.5°C are not being discussed. This is an active choice by policymakers and experts, who have largely dismissed equity-based social change.