I started reading this with a reaction of "Yes, yes yes! Yes yes!" (sounding even to myself like a barking dog). Envisioning and talking about an alternative path has been sadly neglected, And that's a key reason we're in the place we're in. And he was right about everything!
But then it bogged down--first, with a disagreement with you, then with the long analysis of whether Marx would endorse all this. That's the trouble with commies, they're often fundamentalists just like neoliberals and religious fundamentalists. I don't care whether Marx really espoused an ecologically informed worldview later in life; as far as I'm concerned a Marxist's need to square his thinking with the Sacred Writings of Karl Marx is an unnecessary limitation--though it doesn't seem to have harmed Saito's lucidity.
My disagreement with you is on the feasibility of decoupling. You state that Americans' average income has increased 10% while we decreased emissions 30%. I suspect both numbers are fudged. The first is probably a mean rather than a median. Average incomes increased 10% because the incomes of the top 1% zoomed upward enormously while the bottom 90% remained more or less the same. And their wealth is largely financialized, meaning basically imaginary, based on the coupling of ones and zeroes and not the production or provision of anything. As for the claim that US emissions have reduced, that's based on what? Actual measurements? I think it's based on the claims by the government, informed by pressure from polluters: so for example they measure emissions from gas-fired power plants by counting the number of these, taking into account their capacity and what percentage of the time they're operating, then using an average emissions rate supplied by industry; and I know in calculating leakage they use a very optimistic, disproven number. In any case, as Tom Murphy in Do the Math showed, even with absolute decoupling, the heat loss from continued growth will have our oceans boiling in 400 years. It isn't possible, full stop.
Always good to hear from you, Mary, even if often challenging. If you go to the link, you will find that the decoupling data span many countries. If they’re all lying, we’re in even bigger trouble. There is an emissions reporting protocol that I believe is honestly conducted. It is the basis for national emissions reductions commitments. Yes, there are problem in gas leakage stats, but the weight of data points to a decline in emissions across many countries. It is true global monitoring shows methane emissions rising, but the chemical signature seems to indicate more from natural than fossil sources. Since this reflects feedbacks, in itself not good news. In the U.S., the EPA has managed the process. I hope we will continue to see good reporting with everything that is going on with Trump. In terms of income, I don’t doubt the lion’s share went to the upper 1% and 10%. It still reflects economic growth, and that is the important point. How real is it? Again, the data spans many economies, not all as financialized as the U.S. If you read my piece carefully, you will see I conclude the issue is not whether decoupling is possible. Even Saito seems to concede a partial decoupling is. But the question is whether it will be enough to turn around the climate crisis or the other ecological overshoots, and I conclude the answer appears to be that it won’t. So we need to consider the deeper systemic changes to slow down the economy that Saito puts forth.
In terms of political fundamentalism, that seems pervasive in all quarters, maybe even more nowadays in our fragmented society. Green thinkers no less than any other trend. Marx is one of the great social thinkers of all time, who founded a whole school of thought based on his original insights, and Saito is a self-described Marx scholar. Uncovering the ecological Marx is important work, for Marxists and the general left tradition where his influence is widespread. I understand his follow-up work, “Marx in the Anthropocene,” covers Marxist resistance to his ecological thinking. So Saito is partly talking to his own. For my part, I think it is fascinating that Marx in his later days looked to cultures and societies that inspire ecological approaches such as steady-state economics and bioregionalism. You will see in my second piece how resonant Saito’s practical pathway to degrowth communism is with the approaches I’ve been advocating under the rubric of building the future in place.
So, not only the US but many other countries are achieving decoupling, growing their economies (or at least the putative wealth of their billionaires) while reducing emissions significantly, thanks, I presume, to energy efficiency gains (never mind the Jevons Paradox). Then how come the global emissions keep rising every year, and rising faster than ever? Are we just gonna blame China? Aside from the self-reporting issue, countries are allowed to exempt shipping and the military from their reporting--significant emissions for most but in the case of the US, the military is gargantuan and keeps growing. A fair amount of that spending is vaporware which doesn't emit much, but there are still the 800 global bases, the domestic ones, the MIC, the Pentagon, and the endless wars. On the other side, there is a thing not mentioned, hich is that installing large amounts of solar and wind power costs in terms of energy and emissions--but then that investment pays off in the future...assuming someday we actually replace fossil fuels with renewables, which we have not yet begun to do.
Sorry for the slow reply. Had distractions over the weekend.
Okay, so even though western economies have been decarbonizing, reducing the carbon intensity per unit of economic production, they are still emitting greenhouse gases. That is adding to the cumulative total. And most of the growth since 2015 has indeed come from China, but it looks to be peaking between now and 2030. All of this is obviously not enough, as the figure I quoted about 2024 being the record CO2 increase year shows.
Military emissions are around 5.5% of the world total, and their omission from national accounts is a gap. Shipping is around 2%. Still, these figures are not large enough to cancel out the overall trend.
I have supplied you with reputable sources on the energy payback time of renewables in previous exchanges. Solar and wind generate energy for decades. They pay back their energy debt in 1-4 years typically, wind sometimes less than a year. The remainder of the time, they are generating carbon-free energy. So far they have only covered growing energy demand on a global scale, so they substitute for what would be fossil generation, though in Europe and the U.S. they are replacing coal.
But are we really having much of an argument? If decoupling is happening but not enough, or it is not happening at all, I think we both agree that a shift away from emphasizing economic growth is needed. So Saito’s basic point is taken.
Yes. And while I don't think an energy transition in the sense of completely replacing fossil fuels and maybe nuclear energy with renewables, at present scale (let alone with growth built in) is possible, I DO think we should be adding solar and wind and microhydro power faster than we are--not because it can or will replace the toxic sources but to make an easier transition possible for our children--they'll live in a world ravaged by pollution and climate change and the resulting conflicts--it would help if they at least have access to some advanced power sources.
Here I mention that my household, on a ridge in WV, has a n off-grid electric system, that works just fine--it's about 1.5 KW. We use about 2 kwh/day, 10% of the US average. So I know massive savings are possible without "living in a cave eating roots and berries."
It's fine to see these thoughts reframed and circulating again. It would be hard to say when such ideas were first proposed, but reading the earliest accounts of Jesus (before the myth building re workings) the principles of a simple and shared way of life, without economic oppression, are plainly favored. Since we can see just from that example that two millennia is not enough time to make such a world possible, and acknowledging the rapid closing out of civilization as it now exists, it would seem a bit too late to rework human behavior.
But that is no excuse to abandon such efforts. If we sincerely live by our beliefs we can still make them real for the time we have left, for us and those we care about.
We are being driven by the civilizational crisis now upon us to consider the most profound changes as reflected in all our wisdom traditions. In a way not seen in less pressing times. They may be the only way we will survive.
Fascinating stuff, and encouraging. I tend to start out from a position of great cynicism: e.g. in spite of the fact that wage labor--exploitative, and designed to preserve horrible inequalities in wealth, power, and dignity--is a form of slavery (and getting worse, as employers who are basically tyrants claim and are given the right to practice intrusive surveillance on workers, and to make unreasonable demands of many kinds), nevertheless lots of workers/employés seem to accept that their identities and sense of self-worth are bound to their jobs, and so can't break through to even so much as complaining, let alone rebelling. And then there's consumerism, which is closely related to the way Americans think about their jobs, themselves and their place in society, and which of course ends up being a justification for maintaining an economy of growth.
So a lot of radical conversion would need to take place before things get better, of the sort that it would be unreasonable to expect could come at all easily. But the ideas behind degrowth communism really might offer a way. We should have special confidence in the idea that new supportive community structures, organized with intelligence and compassion, can be the way forward.
I’ll be digging into this more in the second part. What are the practical pathways to such a radical change? Creating supportive community structures in the places where we live is key.
From a utilitarian perspective, doesn't de-growth inherently mean de-population? From that vantage point, why try to get people to reduce consumption, vs reducing the population?
There are obviously unethical population decreases by things like genocide and reproduction restrictions/forced sterilization.
But also policy based ethical options like encouraging a higher standard of living that leads to a lower birth rate.
Essentially, it seems like on a long enough timeline this issue takes care of itself. Either by everyone having a higher standard of living and access to family planning or by chaos taking hold and enough people die.
At a high level we need to progress to the next level where humanity's population shrinks naturally or chaotically devolve to what was supportable in the past.
This recent study refutes the population argument and focuses it on consumption. The top 10% of the world, that is the 800 million or so mostly in wealthy countries, is responsible for two/thirds of global heating. The top 1% is responsible for one-fifth. As Saito writes, it is our Imperial Way of Life that is at the root of this, for which the Global South is being plundered. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02325-x
I loved the term "common-ism". Thanks for sharing!
FWIW I restacked this with my opinion that this is where we need to go.
Thank you for this. I don't have a good understanding of Marx. I intend to buy Saito's book and read it as soon as I can.
I love it - it makes me want to finally read the book (after abandoning it for a long time since I got it) 😁
A quick read, and fairly well written.
I started reading this with a reaction of "Yes, yes yes! Yes yes!" (sounding even to myself like a barking dog). Envisioning and talking about an alternative path has been sadly neglected, And that's a key reason we're in the place we're in. And he was right about everything!
But then it bogged down--first, with a disagreement with you, then with the long analysis of whether Marx would endorse all this. That's the trouble with commies, they're often fundamentalists just like neoliberals and religious fundamentalists. I don't care whether Marx really espoused an ecologically informed worldview later in life; as far as I'm concerned a Marxist's need to square his thinking with the Sacred Writings of Karl Marx is an unnecessary limitation--though it doesn't seem to have harmed Saito's lucidity.
My disagreement with you is on the feasibility of decoupling. You state that Americans' average income has increased 10% while we decreased emissions 30%. I suspect both numbers are fudged. The first is probably a mean rather than a median. Average incomes increased 10% because the incomes of the top 1% zoomed upward enormously while the bottom 90% remained more or less the same. And their wealth is largely financialized, meaning basically imaginary, based on the coupling of ones and zeroes and not the production or provision of anything. As for the claim that US emissions have reduced, that's based on what? Actual measurements? I think it's based on the claims by the government, informed by pressure from polluters: so for example they measure emissions from gas-fired power plants by counting the number of these, taking into account their capacity and what percentage of the time they're operating, then using an average emissions rate supplied by industry; and I know in calculating leakage they use a very optimistic, disproven number. In any case, as Tom Murphy in Do the Math showed, even with absolute decoupling, the heat loss from continued growth will have our oceans boiling in 400 years. It isn't possible, full stop.
Always good to hear from you, Mary, even if often challenging. If you go to the link, you will find that the decoupling data span many countries. If they’re all lying, we’re in even bigger trouble. There is an emissions reporting protocol that I believe is honestly conducted. It is the basis for national emissions reductions commitments. Yes, there are problem in gas leakage stats, but the weight of data points to a decline in emissions across many countries. It is true global monitoring shows methane emissions rising, but the chemical signature seems to indicate more from natural than fossil sources. Since this reflects feedbacks, in itself not good news. In the U.S., the EPA has managed the process. I hope we will continue to see good reporting with everything that is going on with Trump. In terms of income, I don’t doubt the lion’s share went to the upper 1% and 10%. It still reflects economic growth, and that is the important point. How real is it? Again, the data spans many economies, not all as financialized as the U.S. If you read my piece carefully, you will see I conclude the issue is not whether decoupling is possible. Even Saito seems to concede a partial decoupling is. But the question is whether it will be enough to turn around the climate crisis or the other ecological overshoots, and I conclude the answer appears to be that it won’t. So we need to consider the deeper systemic changes to slow down the economy that Saito puts forth.
In terms of political fundamentalism, that seems pervasive in all quarters, maybe even more nowadays in our fragmented society. Green thinkers no less than any other trend. Marx is one of the great social thinkers of all time, who founded a whole school of thought based on his original insights, and Saito is a self-described Marx scholar. Uncovering the ecological Marx is important work, for Marxists and the general left tradition where his influence is widespread. I understand his follow-up work, “Marx in the Anthropocene,” covers Marxist resistance to his ecological thinking. So Saito is partly talking to his own. For my part, I think it is fascinating that Marx in his later days looked to cultures and societies that inspire ecological approaches such as steady-state economics and bioregionalism. You will see in my second piece how resonant Saito’s practical pathway to degrowth communism is with the approaches I’ve been advocating under the rubric of building the future in place.
So, not only the US but many other countries are achieving decoupling, growing their economies (or at least the putative wealth of their billionaires) while reducing emissions significantly, thanks, I presume, to energy efficiency gains (never mind the Jevons Paradox). Then how come the global emissions keep rising every year, and rising faster than ever? Are we just gonna blame China? Aside from the self-reporting issue, countries are allowed to exempt shipping and the military from their reporting--significant emissions for most but in the case of the US, the military is gargantuan and keeps growing. A fair amount of that spending is vaporware which doesn't emit much, but there are still the 800 global bases, the domestic ones, the MIC, the Pentagon, and the endless wars. On the other side, there is a thing not mentioned, hich is that installing large amounts of solar and wind power costs in terms of energy and emissions--but then that investment pays off in the future...assuming someday we actually replace fossil fuels with renewables, which we have not yet begun to do.
Sorry for the slow reply. Had distractions over the weekend.
Okay, so even though western economies have been decarbonizing, reducing the carbon intensity per unit of economic production, they are still emitting greenhouse gases. That is adding to the cumulative total. And most of the growth since 2015 has indeed come from China, but it looks to be peaking between now and 2030. All of this is obviously not enough, as the figure I quoted about 2024 being the record CO2 increase year shows.
Military emissions are around 5.5% of the world total, and their omission from national accounts is a gap. Shipping is around 2%. Still, these figures are not large enough to cancel out the overall trend.
I have supplied you with reputable sources on the energy payback time of renewables in previous exchanges. Solar and wind generate energy for decades. They pay back their energy debt in 1-4 years typically, wind sometimes less than a year. The remainder of the time, they are generating carbon-free energy. So far they have only covered growing energy demand on a global scale, so they substitute for what would be fossil generation, though in Europe and the U.S. they are replacing coal.
But are we really having much of an argument? If decoupling is happening but not enough, or it is not happening at all, I think we both agree that a shift away from emphasizing economic growth is needed. So Saito’s basic point is taken.
Yes. And while I don't think an energy transition in the sense of completely replacing fossil fuels and maybe nuclear energy with renewables, at present scale (let alone with growth built in) is possible, I DO think we should be adding solar and wind and microhydro power faster than we are--not because it can or will replace the toxic sources but to make an easier transition possible for our children--they'll live in a world ravaged by pollution and climate change and the resulting conflicts--it would help if they at least have access to some advanced power sources.
Here I mention that my household, on a ridge in WV, has a n off-grid electric system, that works just fine--it's about 1.5 KW. We use about 2 kwh/day, 10% of the US average. So I know massive savings are possible without "living in a cave eating roots and berries."
It's fine to see these thoughts reframed and circulating again. It would be hard to say when such ideas were first proposed, but reading the earliest accounts of Jesus (before the myth building re workings) the principles of a simple and shared way of life, without economic oppression, are plainly favored. Since we can see just from that example that two millennia is not enough time to make such a world possible, and acknowledging the rapid closing out of civilization as it now exists, it would seem a bit too late to rework human behavior.
But that is no excuse to abandon such efforts. If we sincerely live by our beliefs we can still make them real for the time we have left, for us and those we care about.
We are being driven by the civilizational crisis now upon us to consider the most profound changes as reflected in all our wisdom traditions. In a way not seen in less pressing times. They may be the only way we will survive.
Fascinating stuff, and encouraging. I tend to start out from a position of great cynicism: e.g. in spite of the fact that wage labor--exploitative, and designed to preserve horrible inequalities in wealth, power, and dignity--is a form of slavery (and getting worse, as employers who are basically tyrants claim and are given the right to practice intrusive surveillance on workers, and to make unreasonable demands of many kinds), nevertheless lots of workers/employés seem to accept that their identities and sense of self-worth are bound to their jobs, and so can't break through to even so much as complaining, let alone rebelling. And then there's consumerism, which is closely related to the way Americans think about their jobs, themselves and their place in society, and which of course ends up being a justification for maintaining an economy of growth.
So a lot of radical conversion would need to take place before things get better, of the sort that it would be unreasonable to expect could come at all easily. But the ideas behind degrowth communism really might offer a way. We should have special confidence in the idea that new supportive community structures, organized with intelligence and compassion, can be the way forward.
I’ll be digging into this more in the second part. What are the practical pathways to such a radical change? Creating supportive community structures in the places where we live is key.
From a utilitarian perspective, doesn't de-growth inherently mean de-population? From that vantage point, why try to get people to reduce consumption, vs reducing the population?
There are obviously unethical population decreases by things like genocide and reproduction restrictions/forced sterilization.
But also policy based ethical options like encouraging a higher standard of living that leads to a lower birth rate.
Essentially, it seems like on a long enough timeline this issue takes care of itself. Either by everyone having a higher standard of living and access to family planning or by chaos taking hold and enough people die.
At a high level we need to progress to the next level where humanity's population shrinks naturally or chaotically devolve to what was supportable in the past.
This recent study refutes the population argument and focuses it on consumption. The top 10% of the world, that is the 800 million or so mostly in wealthy countries, is responsible for two/thirds of global heating. The top 1% is responsible for one-fifth. As Saito writes, it is our Imperial Way of Life that is at the root of this, for which the Global South is being plundered. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02325-x