#Finite Ecology

[exhaled-spirals]

« To mention the global loss of biodiversity, that is to say, the disappearance of life on our planet, as one of our problems, along with air pollution or ocean acidification, is absurd—like a doctor listing the death of his patient as one symptom among others.

The ecological catastrophe cannot be reduced to the climate crisis. We must think about the disappearance of life in a global way. About two-thirds of insects, wild mammals and trees disappeared in a few years, a few decades and a few millennia, respectively. This mass extinction is not mainly caused by rising temperatures, but by the devastation of natural habitats.

Suppose we managed to invent clean and unlimited energy. This technological feat would be feted by the vast majority of scientists, synonymous in their eyes with a drastic reduction in CO2 emissions. In my opinion, it would lead to an even worse disaster. I am deeply convinced that, given the current state of our appetites and values, this energy would be used to intensify our gigantic project of systemic destruction of planetary life. Isn't that what we've set out to do—replace forests with supermarket parking lots, turn the planet into a landfill? What if, to cap it all, energy was free?

[...C]limate change has emerged as our most important ecological battle [...] because it is one that can perpetuate the delusional idea that we are faced with an engineering problem, in need of technological solutions. At the heart of current political and economic thought lies the idea that an ideal world would be a world in which we could continue to live in the same way, with fewer negative externalities. This is insane on several levels. Firstly because it is impossible. We can't have infinite growth in a finite world. We won't. But also, and more importantly, it is not desirable. Even if it were sustainable, the reality we construct is hell. [...]

It is often said that our Western world is desacralised. In reality, our civilisation treats the technosphere with almost devout reverence. And that's worse. We perceive the totality of reality through the prism of a hegemonic science, convinced that it “says” the only truth.

The problem is that technology is based on a very strange principle, so deeply ingrained in us that it remains unexpressed: no brakes are acceptable, what can be done must be done. We don't even bother to seriously and collectively debate the advisability of such "advances". We are under a spell. And we are avoiding the essential question: is this world in the making, standardised and computed, overbuilt and predictable, stripped of stars and birds, desirable?

To confine science to the search for "solutions" so we can continue down the same path is to lack both imagination and ambition. Because the “problem” we face doesn't seem to me, at this point, to be understood. No hope is possible if we don't start by questioning our assumptions, our values, our appetites, our symbols... [...] Let's stop pretending that the numerous and diverse human societies that have populated this planet did not exist. Certainly, some of them have taken the wrong route. But ours is the first to forge ahead towards guaranteed failure. »

— Aurélien Barrau, particle physicist and philosopher, in an interview in Télérama about his book L'Hypothèse K

[kumerish]

really love blind alley, i have an odd question though: do you have a pronouns guide for the kids or are you just leaving them up for reader interpretation? (other than red who has already been asked about)

Thank you!

A: Not an odd question. I think about this a lot too. I've spent a really long time trying to order my thoughts on this in a coherent way.

I am intentional when I use pronouns. When we know, that means it's part of how a character conceives of themself. The reverse is also true. I feel a bit at odds with myself here though; despite previously making a post about the importance of ambiguity and interpretation in my storytelling, this is one area where I'd prefer people just accept that lack of certainty instead of theorizing.

I want us to be able to conceive of them as people and characters without categorizing them. Unfortunately, I can't force anyone to do this without being extremely didactic or overt and I find that sort of writing to be boring and easy to dismiss. People always misgender my characters. It doesn't upset me but it does make me feel like I am failing to get across my intentions. As with all art, you can't force someone to read and engage with it how you intend. Maybe I am just not conceptualizing this properly and there's a better way to do it. However, I am not comfortable imagining readers theorizing on a characters gender because that makes it feel like something withheld for some grand reveal. Gender just doesn't matter to some of these characters and within my own relationship to them; I would like that to be the case for my readers too.

This isn't to be dismissive of gender/sexuality and how strongly this can inform ones identity. However, and maybe it's naive of me but, I'd love to live in a world where gender and sexual orientation do not always factor in to our ability to relate to each other. Writing this way feels like putting to practice something important to me.

This desire to be comfortable with not knowing is partly in response to my general frustration with our inclination to constantly categorize people, ideas, and processes. I believe this inclination does endless harm. We want things to be finite, fixed, and known but when reading about biology, philosophy, and ecology, it's clear there are no fixed or singular points. It's all process, flux, and in between; that's where we live. That's also where cartoons live.

Blind Alley doesn't exist. There is no way for anyone to confirm anything about it. It is all relational cartoon abstraction; it is only what I draw and say and what you take from that. My hope is that, while an individual may have an interpretation of what I've written, a reader will also consider why it is written that way. I'm not certain how to force readers to sit with not knowing things - it's clear we all want answers but, philosophically and artistically, I think that getting comfortable with not needing to know is an expansive thing.

I'm also aware I am writing a comic strip; people engage with them in a certain frame of mind. I shouldn't overstate any of this because I am incredibly aware that I am writing a dumb comic strip with fart jokes and stupid gags. I unfortunately put a lot of pretentious thought into this.

So, to answer your question, I only know when it matters to the type of character I am writing. I am not withholding this information so I can do some sort of reveal later; it just feels right to write characters this way.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

as a lifelong dinosaur enthusiast who moved towards interest in ecology in recent years what you said about paleontology being very holistic is very interesting to me. can you list, like, some examples of how that is? and if you think the same could be said of ecology as a field? especially if ecology n evobio share the disproving capitalistic ideology thing

all three are 100%

capitalism operates on a misunderstanding of nature and has an implicitly impossible objective

"infinite growth" in a universe with finite resources is not possible. the end.

and one thing we see throughout the fossil record, and in modern ecology, is how the limitation of resources leads to major changes, thus demonstrating that said limitation exists

furthermore, none really make money. the people who buy dinosaur crap are not that many. the fossils don't lead to profitable technologies or franchises (I'm excluding fossil fuels from this conversation, which are the Exception, but every inherently anticapitalist field has *some* Exception) and most paleontologists are ridiculously broke, and even our top paleontologists don't really get far beyond 100k in terms of salary (which is depressingly low compared to other academics in geology and biology)

it also demonstrates the interconnectedness of all life and how our history is the history of the world, not just the history of humans or even mammals

how much our evolution isn't just dependent on our genetics, but on our ecology, the things that live with us and shape us through life

disproving bioessentialism, the inherent assumption of many other destructive ideologies such as racism and transphobia

how even the rocks have importance far beyond what we give them as they are the primary recorders of our planet's history

how small humans are and how little right we have to bleed the planet dry like we're currently doing

and how, like all species that specialize too quickly and too largely, we are careening towards our own destruction in the process of the planet needing to heal.

I hope that last sentence isn't true, but the fact that we know this at all is thanks to paleontology and environmental science.

All of these fields poke back against the capitalistic, white-supremacist world. So it's hard to get into them, it's hard to stay in them, and it's hard to make a living in them.

Ftr, this is why I study paleoecology specifically, but I think paleoecology should be in common parlance as equivalent to brain surgery or rocket science bc I think I'm breaking my brain

[probablyasocialecologist]

Climate change is political but it’s “not the imaginary politics of universal consensus,” he writes in the book’s pithy prologue, nor the “anti-politics of miraculous technological salvation”. It’s also “not the end of the world”. Instead, it’s a struggle between “actually existing people over actually existing crises with actually existing differences, interests, and prospects. Climate change is about power.” Politicians in the global north rarely talk this way. They think of climate as an “on/off switch”. “‘We’re doing some climate’”, says Chaudhary, mimicking them, “‘would you prefer we do nothing?’”. But there are two large clusters of “doing something”, both of which Chaudhary examines. The first is what he calls “rightwing climate realism”. This encompasses a “broad spectrum”, from those who favour “slower climate mitigation and adaptation” to climate barbarism, but it’s ultimately about concentrating, preserving and enhancing existing political and economic power. That is why Chaudhary is insistent that, when we think of climate policies, we must pay attention to plans for borders and policing, too. He considers Joe Biden a type of rightwing climate realist. Among the US president’s most important climate policies is not just the Inflation Reduction Act but the US National Security Strategy, Chaudhary argues. “It is insanely jingoistic,” he says. It describes, for instance, out-competing China. If that’s the framework, he argues, we’re doomed, “because US-China cooperation is vital”. Ultimately, rightwing climate realists know there will be “instability” and “they are preparing for it”. That they will be successful is not only “plausible and possible, but probable,” he says. That is why the second avenue of “doing something”, composed of “the rest of us”, is so important. Chaudhary advocates for “leftwing climate realism”, which accepts the science, not because it’s a discipline “beyond impugning” but because it’s quite clear that there are ecological limits on this planet. We need a slower life, he argues; a circular economic system, where firms compete for the same amount of finite profit and the state dominates certain sectors. This will be good for the planet and for people, producing “a world relieved from social, economic, and ecological despair and exhaustion”.

[quixoticanarchy]

Ok I read a book on degrowth by jason hickel (Less is More) and I still need to read more but. preliminary thoughts:

I appreciate the quantification of by how much current resource and energy consumption overshoots sustainable limits, and the excoriation of the absurd demand for compound growth on a finite planet; and the book has a decent history of capitalism and the violence and dispossession it rests upon. There is some similar quantification for how proposed degrowth measures would affect resource consumption, though (understandably) piecemeal, so it’s unclear what the full impact of these measures would be vis-à-vis climate meltdown and ecological tipping points, or on what timeline the degrowth transition would have to occur.

Degrowth measures - resource use caps, a shorter work week, basic income, healthcare, income caps, re-localizing supply chains, killing planned obsolescence, moving to a shared rather than personal ownership model for things like vehicles, etc. - are broadly “good” and have been promoted and supported outside of a specifically degrowth context already, which speaks to their appeal but also their pitfalls. Implementing all these measures and more has to carry the explicit intention of improving human and ecological welfare, GDP be damned, and has to be tied explicitly to a commitment to reducing growth and capping profits; otherwise, the trap I see is attempting to enact some of these measures while keeping the capitalist edifice intact - which, as Hickel acknowledges, would spur a new ‘fix’ in which some other domain or market is forced open for exploitation so that growth can continue.

This is obviously at odds with degrowth and it isn’t anything degrowth advocates don’t know, but it seems naïve to envision states whose existence and operation are so inextricable from capitalism being capable of doing such reforms to the degree and with the ideological shift necessary. It would be suicide. Which I’d welcome, but just saying we need to tackle corruption and have more real democracy so that governments can serve people’s actual needs does not convince me that these policies could be sincerely and radically adopted by any state that exists today.

The book seems to walk a line between “degrowth is very radical since it would require ditching the demand for economic growth and probably most of the profit motive itself, which is a huge mindset and ideological shift - if not to socialism per se then to post-capitalism” and also “degrowth isn’t that radical/outlandish since what it takes is all these commonsense reforms that people already want anyway”. Sometimes the degrowth policy package sounds a lot like just welfare-state capitalism, except with resource and energy consumption dramatically scaled back, and without the economic growth imperative. So… no longer capitalism as such, but still using many of the master’s tools to retrofit the master’s house.

In principle, a world exists in which wealthy countries consume far less and the rest of the world is freer and not (or at least less) exploited. In principle, degrowth measures could help us realize that world. Saying it’s not a revolutionary process might keep some readers from being scared off, etc, but I’m left wondering then: where does the force come from to make these changes happen? Are wealthy countries and individuals and corporations going to just agree to resource caps and wealth caps and redistribution? The argument that degrowth is a kind of decolonization and requires the demise of the colonial and capitalist view of people and nature is compelling to me, but that seems to conflict with the idea that degrowth can be implemented as a set of reforms to the systems that exist now, without the messiness of revolution and without somehow being co-opted by capitalism or packaged as ‘green growth’ (which Hickel makes clear would be bad and is bullshit). The ideological shift and end to growth is the big ask here - without that, the reforms are just rearranging deck chairs on the titanic, or maybe on the lawn of the master’s house, if you will.

[nicosraf]

Hi! A while ago I messaged you about Angels Before Man and how much I loved it, and I just finished Angels & Man and wanted to gush about your writing again. I think you did an amazing job with balancing the older plot threads of the first novel (ex: Michael and Lucifer, Rosier and Asmodeus) with the new storyline and characters (Azazel, Samyaza, the humans, etc). It's fairly rare for a sequel to do both successfully, so great job!

I was kinda surprised that this book was about the Watcher's Flood; I think I was expecting it to be like Paradise Lost, but this direction was way more interesting (and Cain's ancestral memories definitely filled in the gaps anyway). I don't know very much about Old Testament mythology, but what I could find seemed to indicate that the Book of Enoch is considered noncanonical in most Jewish and Christian sects. Was there any particular reason you chose to draw inspiration from a noncanonical text?

I loved the exploration of the theme of forgiveness in this novel. The lengths the angels went to seek forgiveness from God, and all the devastation that wrought was really compelling. Rosier and Asmodeus in particular were so poignant; Rosier's complex, partial forgiveness of Asmodeus due to the knowledge that their time is finite (as Lucifer said, they will all burn eventually) was absolutely fascinating. It makes me think that maybe we forgive because we know we don't have forever, and also kinda crystallizes the futility of seeking forgiveness from an immortal, everlasting God. I think Azazel and Samyaza seemed to realize this as well near the end. (by the way, the final lines are absolutely devastating. Thank you and how dare you).

I was also surprised to see the theme of parenting explored through the angels and their giant children, and the demons with Cain, contrasted with the love of God the Father. As monstrous as the Nephilim were, the angels still loved them, and even Cain was still loved by the demons even after he had killed. It was a really clever juxtaposition against the very conditional love that God had for the angels. The way the angels loved their children more than God ever loved them was incredibly heartbreaking. Although I do wonder if their indulgence of the giants' appetites to the point of ecological devastation was maybe not the best move. (First you extincted the dinosaurs with Lucifer, and now you've extincted the other megafauna with the giants. Your mind is brilliant and I am so sorry for all those giant sloths and tigers.)

Anyway in conclusion, your writing is fantastic, I love what you're doing, and I can't wait to read the rest of the series! As a fellow queer writer writing queer things, you're such an inspiration and I hope you have a great day :)

Hello!!! Aaaah thank you so much ! I'm so so happy you think I did good balancing all the plot stuff... that's means a lot to me, seriously. Thank you! It was really tough.

I answered something pretty similar on Insta but the reason I chose the Flood (as opposed to moving from Heaven into Adam and Eve in Eden the way Paradise Lost does) was because I became really interested in thinking about Satan's fall as an apocalypse. In my opinion, the devastation that the creation of sin would've brought to previously "pure" angels is sort of... downplayed in most media depictions. It would have been like a rapture for the angels — some damned forever and some allowed to live in Heaven.

And when I started thinking about Lucifer that way, I thought about the other apocalypses in the Bible (the Flood and Revelation) and noticed the angel involvement there too. I decided a trilogy about the different "ends of the world" in the biblical narrative would be interesting. I've said before that I don't really care for non-canon stories, but the interesting thing about Enoch is that the traces of it are still in the canon Bible itself, which you can see in the epigraphs of A&M.

Without the Enoch story, there's very little explanation for the Flood at all (the 2014 Noah movie is notoriously really weird about it — it knows it can't ignore the Watcher story or else the Flood makes no sense, but it also can't commit to Enoch... for some reason (probably religious on the creators' part.))

I'm glad you liked the themes of forgiveness! It was really interesting to write! I think, in my own experience, there's always been pressure to forgive people who've hurt me because of the finite nature of things — like keeping an older abuser in the family because "they're old" and "we should spend the last years we have with them happily." I feel like I can talk about Rosier and Asmodeus forever because there's a central theme in the series about what's forgivable and choosing to accept unforgivable things in life — and Asmodeus and Rosier are that theme taken to the extreme. (Sometimes you don't deserve forgiveness and have to deal with that

In the end, "forgiveness" is just a label though; it's doesn't mean much as long as you can still remember it happened (as the "pure" vs "forgiven" angels at the start of A&M display). Samyaza and Azazel realized this, more so Samyaza, since Azazel had somewhat known it from the start.

Lastly, thank you for liking the parenting thematic things as well! I'm happy you saw the parallel between the Watchers' unconditional love for their monster children vs God's conditional love for angels. It was also really interesting to write! (And the Cain chapter is so important to me, arguably the real reason I wanted to write this book so badly...)

Thank you so so much for the kind words. It means so much to me, seriously. Good luck with writing!! I hope to read and love it some day too :') <3

[ultravioart]

Also reading the lore, Anubis was created to be in charge of ecological balance. With ALL the crap ow's humanity was doing, it can be inferred Anubis was forced to sacrifice entire species for humanity's survival. When humanity kept squandering healthy change, Anubis did what it was programmed to do: keep earth's ecological systems in balance. The biggest threat WAS humanity. Declassified stated after yet another round of global conservation talks that went no where, Anubis' monitoring team was taken out by limiting the air vents. (<We don't know what caused the ventilation shut down to occur. Could have been Anubis, could have been an outside actor aiming to sabotage Anubis.)

Then Anubis went 'rogue'

^ But I don't think Anubis went "rogue" -- Anubis was doing exactly what it was programmed to do. Balance the ecological systems of earth. And if there was any non human species causing a mass extinction event like humanity was doing, anubis would prune it. Logically, it HAD to have pruned species before.

Bc of what Anubis did, it implies ow humanity was statistically likely to end up killing earth, so Anubis determined it was worth the risk of causing some eco damage vs complete eco destruction if humanity kept it's course.

But Anubis lost, and now earth is severely damaged PLUS it doesn't have a god ai to oversee the entire systems PLUS the ecopoints have become more and more disjointed, with unsettling new weather anomalies and seemingly energy spikes out if no where (it's confirmed anubis had created secret omniums like in the east China sea, so I guess that there are more secret omniums, one could be in antarctica to match the unsual readings Mei discussed in the PVE codex.)

All this to say, by technicalities... #AnubisWasRight lmafo. Yet ow portrays Anubis as 'rogue' but like. Humanity made a stupidly designed tool, and was punished for hubris.

But then we look at how Ramattra disagrees with Anubis. And I find that really fascinating. We know it's in part of Ramattra disagreeing with how Anubis sent omnics to thier demise, but that's hindsight for the Awakening. So what could it be? ...I genuinely think Ramattra disagrees with the purposeful extinction of humanity. Ramattra is fighting humanity, yes, but only for omnic liberation from humanity's oppression.

I think his view is that trusting humanity as a species is dangerous bc humanity is not a hivemind like omnics can be. Humans cannot unilaterally organize, which causes violence and no assured generational safety. And omnics NEED assured safety throughout the generations bc if one human generation grants omnics liberation, only for the 3rd human generation to deny it again? Omnics are FINITE. They can't afford humanity's wishy washy organization when it comes to omnic's right to exist. Ramattra admires ant colonies: an ant colony is a super organism. He admires the things they build together, and how they cooperate when threatened.

I think this is why Ramattra is fine with individual "helpful humans" but not humanity as a whole bc humanity isn't a superorganism. I'm not sure where OW is going with Ramattra, but having Ramattra default like Bastion did with Anubis coding, and become the very thing Ram was terrified of becoming is a really wild take, doomed by the narrative fr. Narratively it's nature vs nurture question but uh... omnics are not organic? Omnics are so ingrained to 'nature'(omnic coding and anubis coding) it can be hard to seperate thier nature even with Aurora's gift of free will. So imo it becomes awkward to portray a "nature vs nurture" question with omnics, bc it implies nature(omnic: coding. organic: genetics) is the true influence. Bastion only became "safe" after Torb removed Bastion's anubis coding. So. Erm.

All this to say, well. Depending on what subjugator helmets do (we know removing a helmet incorrectly causes the subjugated omnic to die :( but what does it do exactly? It's SO ODD that Null Sector targets omnics, but then leaves the subjugated bodies lying around? I really hope it's not actually memory wiping or making omnics brain dead...) Ramattra might ALSO be technically a #RamattraWasRight.

If Ramattra is aiming to preserve as many conciousness of omnics as possible with the helmets, or possibly trying to create a new awakening to solve the finite generation issue. Well. Can you blame him? He will fight for omnic's right to exist, and doesn't aim to cause the extinction of humanity, but IF humanity does go extinct, well. Anubis technically deemed ow humanity on track with destroying all of earth. I think that's Ramattra's logic?

Sorry for rambles, and NO I DO NOT THINK HUMANITY SHOULD GO EXTINCT IN OVERWATCH LOL. But if u could save all life on earth if u prune one species, I think it's logical for robots in ow to choose to sacrifice one species to save earth's future LOL. And I think Ramattra is fully in his rights to defend omnics from extinction with violence because omnics cannot reproduce and ARE facing violence. Ramattra can either sit back and watch omnics go extinct, or step up and fight for survival (ow writes Ram as hasty and unprepared which.... imo is too human/ooc but ig that creates conflict but also like. Wtf he is litterally a commander robot why would he be incompetently hasty).

[kp777]

In May 2023, the Beyond Growth conference was held at the EU Parliament in Brussels. Headlined by government leaders and academics, its agenda was the urgent need to change the current economic system. The culmination was a manifesto that stated: “Our world is facing an eco-social crisis…driven by the global capitalist system, centered around perpetual economic expansion (growth) and accumulation. Our obsession with economic expansion clashes with finite planetary boundaries.” The manifesto drew the public’s attention to the idea that humanity might be best served by moving away from the presiding economic model of growth at any cost. For some, particularly business leaders and investors, the concept of “degrowth” (as the idea has been named) is anathema because economic expansion is believed by many to be essential to human flourishing and freedom. Ecological economist Tim Jackson summarized their sentiment: “Questioning growth is deemed the act of lunatics, idealists, and revolutionaries.”

Read more.

[drmajalis]

TIL Coal Plants produce around 100 times more radioactive waste power kilowatt hour then nuclear power plants.

As if I needed more reason to be seething with rage at the anti nuclear idiots who condemned us to a future of smog and global warming.

Also as a side note but y'all know hydroelectric plants also cause tons of ecological damage with the flooding required to build water basins? As well as the harm done to anadrmous fish like salmon who suddenly are unable to make it to their natural spawning grounds?

WE. NEED. NUCLEAR. Its actually proven to work and be safe. Solar power requires tons of ecologically harmful mines to get rare earth metals, used wind turbines are considered toxic waste, and even with all the inherent problems we also only have a finite amount of rivers to dam.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

[forbidden-sorcery]

So cool that the green scare got internalized by the left, so now if you have more radical ecological politics than the liberal bullshit peddled by the likes of Bookchin and Kovel they’ll bring out the “ok eco-fascist” shit. Saying something as simple, obvious and objective as “exponential extraction of finite resources for perpetual production is not sustainable” means you’re the boogeyman. I saw a meme recently where someone is like “oh so I can use the word solarpunk to express my anarcho-communism in a less scary way for people?” and it’s like yeah, you can repackage industrialism in bright colors and optimism and people will fucking suck it down and yell “MALTHUS!!!!” at the anarchists who want to act against ecocide.

[dipperdesperado]

Notes on Solarpunk Beyond Eurocentrism

Crisis and collapse seem to be the currency of the present. 1st World societies, enveloped in the long shadow cast by prosperity, find themselves coming into open, naked conflict. Reality, or Eurocentricity¹? Reality says, ‘we can't have infinite growth on a finite planet!’ Eurocentrism laughs, walking away with delight. Rather than understanding “that which cannot be repaired is already broken,”² Eurocentricity tells us that we can pull and pull and pull, that a rudderless faith in extraction will somehow lead to balance. What happens if the world is bent until it breaks? All of our communities are at stake. This is “the clearest signal that there is something deeply wrong with the global system in its current form”³. We can see that somewhere along the line, someone fucked shit up. There's no other meaningful way to explain how we've gotten to where we're at. Eurocentricity is so prevalent that we even understand our technology on the scale of the “complex and special”, rather than “how a society copes with physical reality.”⁴ Solarpunk's focus on appropriate technology⁵ is a welcome corrective to the myopia of modernity⁶ and capitalism⁷. However, it is incomplete without an understanding of coloniality⁸.

If there are facets of coloniality that we need to address, they are the processes of (1) creating rigid taxonomies and categories for classifying the world⁹, and (2) creating hierarchies of power and value for the ways those things are classified. These two moves are embedded in the in-group/out-group exclusionary dynamics that coloniality needs to function, from the way that we privilege ‘humans’ over ‘non-humans’, ‘centers’ over ‘margins’, and the ‘visible’ over the ‘invisible’. This isn't just philosophical or for the sake of pontification. These presuppositions of knowledge, being, and meaning privilege Eurocentric assertions that see "other human beings’ ways of life [as] wrong and harming nature, [since] nature needs no human beings."¹⁰ If we are to move out of ecological calamity, ‘The Last Shall be First’ must be our operating system. By centering the margins (in the ontological and epistemological sense), we can actually end suffering, rather than outsourcing it. This has to take shape in such a way that engenders room for a polyculture of meaning, diametrically opposed to the hegemonic "monoculture of meaning"¹¹, beyond the ability to label any human based on what they "lack" as an "Other"¹².

This move to truly embody decoloniality has to critique modernity, capitalism, and coloniality. This is important to understand as “modernity organizes the world ontologically in terms of atomic, homogeneous, separable categories. Contemporary women of color and third-world women's critique of feminist universalism centers the claim that the intersection of race, class, sexuality, and gender exceeds the categories of modernity. If woman and black are terms for homogeneous, atomic, separable categories, then their intersection shows us the absence of black women rather than their presence. So, to see non-white women is to exceed "categorial" logic. [...] the modern, colonial, gender system [is] a lens through which to theorize further the oppressive logic of colonial modernity, its use of hierarchical dichotomies and categorial logic. [...] categorial, dichotomous, hierarchical logic [is] central to modern, colonial, capitalist thinking about race, gender, and sexuality.”¹³ We see that even in ostensibly postcolonial societies, "indigenous people who had already suffered from decades of colonial conservation policies, little changed with decolonization."¹⁴ This shows the depth at which we have to go to adequately respond to the social and ecological issues that are currently coming to a head.

This commitment isn't (principally) a moral or ethical one. One of the main reasons that we have to move towards a holistic decoloniality is because of the inability of coloniality to address the issues we're facing. "Indigenous leaders say [30x30, a worldwide conservation program] ignores generations of effective indigenous land management. [...] there was limited scientific attention paid to Indigenous stewardship."¹⁵ Unless we are willing to be radical, to grasp the roots of all the oppressive structures that we're facing, we will reproduce the things we are (ostensibly) trying to abolish in our (potentially unintentional) inability to critique coloniality onto-epistemically while proposing responses rooted in other ways of being. In the effort to try and correct the excesses of Eurocentricity, we see that Eurocentric modes of being like "nation-states [...] struggling to catch up with indigenous and other non-capitalist cultures’ understanding of the interdependence of life."¹⁶ This is not to exalt Indigenous, Black and 3rd/4th world onto-epistemes, to reify them beyond critique. It is to say that the Eurocentric onto-epistemic inability to see those modes as valid dampers the emancipatory potential extant in the world preventing the ability to reach the purported values of "progress" and "development". Eurocentric ideas have to play catch-up, and by their colonial and capitalist nature are unable to.

We have to problematize, to see as an issue, many of the foundational concepts might deploy as mired in Eurocentrism and coloniality. We can do this by (1) decolonizing what it means to be human by creating the space for Black, Indigenous and 3rd/4th worlders to self-determine and (2) "[take] non-humans seriously as persons[/beings] with agency [which] allows us to de-center humans, to notice how limited our field of sight becomes when fixated by the idea of the Anthropocene. Far from remaining a matter of theoretical discussion, non-humans [... ] influenc[e] social, political and legal realities."¹⁷ We have to bridge these two worlds: acknowledging the ways that the ideas of animality were defined along the bodies of Black people, how that relates to conceptions of humanity, and the care that we should have in highlighting the agency of non-human beings (both in the actual sense, and those who get denied humanity). This has to be done on the terms of those beings, as best as we can manage. If we are able to acknowledge that there are issues in modernity with how we taxonomize humans & how that relates to non-humans, for the sake of the biosphere, and we center those marginal and invisible beings, we can get a lot done.

I really want to impress the fact that not taking the trifecta of Eurocentrism¹⁸ seriously is resigning ourselves to doom. If we continue to build the cyberpunk future that we've been worried about for decades, the future of "urban decay, corporate power and globalization. The rise of zero tolerance policing, anxieties around health care and the psychological toll of the Cold ‘Forever war’ and the possibility of nuclear annihilation,"¹⁹ we resign ourselves, even in our imaginaries, to further our immiseration. We can use the 30 x 30 framework for conservation as a great example, where 200 countries were willing to accept it²⁰. This conservation framework reinforces the dichotomy between human/non-human²¹, assuming that top-down, bureaucratic processes of "management" are the answer to the problems that those very ideas created. The ironic thing is, even though this move would be woefully inadequate in addressing the issue of biodiversity loss or climate change²², we very likely won't even get to see it achieve protection of "30% of the world's land and water by 2030."²³ There's no meaningful accountability structure within the Eurocentric hegemony to do this. There is no room for living freely and honestly under these conditions.

"To see the coloniality is to see the powerful reduction of human beings to animals, to inferiors by nature, in a [piece-meal] understanding of reality that dichotomizes the human from nature, the human from the non-human, and thus imposes an ontology and a cosmology that, in its power and constitution, disallows all humanity, all possibility of understanding, all possibility of human communication, to dehumanized beings."²⁴ This is the double-edged sword of creating hierarchies and taxonomies around valid ways of being, knowing, and meaning. By operating along these lines, we end up in a situation where there is no meaningful way for anyone to truly reach the kinds of fulfillment that modernity is supposed to provide. Now, this is not to say that I'm personally going to cry very hard about colonizers dehumanizing themselves by dehumanizing me, but I think it's worthwhile to mention; we all benefit by tearing down Eurocentrism and building a new, multifaceted perspective that allows for mutualism between different ways of thinking about the world and our relations with/in it.

By creating these rigid categories of difference, there is an assumption of innateness that tends to become a part of it. If we are looking to dismantle coloniality, we have to situate ourselves in such a way that those seemingly subtle distinctions between differences in general²⁵ and the specific conception of colonial difference become visible. This allows us to see that "the epistemological fractures between the Eurocentric critique of Eurocentrism is distinguished from the critique of Eurocentrism anchored in the colonial difference."²⁶ Critiques of Eurocentrism that don't apprehend the imbrication of coloniality, capital, and modernity are left unaware at the meaningful distinctions that can be made between critique left incomplete and critique that gives us a way to move forward and build new relationalities.

I want to point back towards the phrase "The Last Shall Be First", which comes from Fanon (and the Bible). I understand this as resonant with the adage of centering the marginalized. If we truly believe that harmony and unity in life are worthwhile to work towards, the practical move to make is to, in every moment, work towards empowering those removed from power. By foregrounding those most negatively impacted by Eurocentrism through an understanding of intersectionality in material and onto-epistemological senses while spotlighting the "'decolonizers of the imaginary’, [which can be understood as] future generations, past generations, non-humans, and spiritual beings and concepts"²⁷, we can point ourselves towards more egalitarian and self-determining outcomes. We can compose and integrate efforts together, where cultural workers can do solarpunk art and organizers & community/affinity groups can build solarpunk sociality and architects can do solarpunk guerrilla urbanism and more, where collaboration becomes a space that starts to break down the borders between different ways of relating to the world. By problematizing the human "we", by understanding that while, ideally, abstractly we are including everyone, in practice, there are critical things missed that lead to the issues we purportedly want to face. We have to point towards a world where many fit.

As far as my specific commitments on the matter, I'm what I call an egoist. I've appropriated this term to mean that I find myself to be important (though not supremely so), to assert my onto-epistemology as valid, even though Eurocentric society was built at my (people’s) expense²⁸. I have hope, which I understand as the grounded counterpart to "faith" or "optimism", that things can change, that even if the world has to be broken down, that it can be, and a new, decolonial one can be built. In this space, I hope that every being is acknowledged on its own terms, to have the capacity for its "ego" to be fulfilled, roughly along the lines of the golden and platinum rules, depending on what makes sense given the situation²⁹. Solarpunk is very egoistic/anarchistic in my conception. Through horizontal power structures, we can minimize immiseration and foreground approaches to life that move our social activity towards the biosphere.

We can start working towards this, right now. Like, on some "you can go do the work after this" kind of thing. While we don't necessarily have a linear path forward, we can listen to ourselves and our desires, and experiment with doing things to fulfill them in the present, seeing them as springboards for further movement into the kind of spaces that we want to go. On a basic level, we can think about the ways that we are restricted by our needs due to alienation from self-determination, and devise plans to get those things, from food autonomy, to housing security, to social and cultural spaces. With this, I want us to be rooted in place--no White Flight ass culty commune shit. Our work should ground in locality and communality. If every being deserves the kind of world that solarpunk futures suggest, it makes no sense to leave if we have capacity³⁰ to stay. In a more egoist turn, I think places where we can practice what James Scott calls anarchist calisthenics³¹ are worthwhile endeavors; authority, as in authoritarian rule, is never legitimate. Whenever we can and have the desire to, we should rage against it. Hosting do it yourself (DIY) events are a good example of this. DIY events are usually music shows, but they can be parties or anything else, where you do it without "permission" from the state or authorities. They can happen "in a park, on a beach, deep in the forest, in a barn, under a bridge, in a parking lot, next to a pool, or at the top of a mountain. The event could be on wheels: in an RV, on the back of a truck, in a van. You could build a secret tree house. You could borrow a boat. You could find an abandoned or empty building and re-purpose it. If there’s no electricity and you need it for a PA, find a generator. If you don’t need electricity, use candles for lighting. If you would like to lessen the chance of police interference, acquire several buildings and move people from building to building during breaks. You could even take over a street."³²

If we're willing to commandeer space, the elusive element in much theorizing on change³³, we can start changing the paradigms. Rather than "fall[ing] back on [...] creat[ing] protected areas"³⁴ for the sake of reaching "biodiversity goals" and "ecological harmony", we can focus on land back, we can pull from knowledges in appropriate technology, traditional ecological knowledge, and the best that western science has to offer for being good partners with other beings in our communities. To horizontalize relationships between humans, breaking down barriers of political and socioeconomic varieties, we can put the last first and act as accomplices, supporting their needs and fighting alongside them. Any critiques that we have of the system should, within our capacities, be externalized, the (dialectical and logical³⁵) contradictions laid bare in the material world. If there is a public building that isn't being used for the public, we can commandeer it and turn it into a commons³⁶. Around these moves we can build or tie in networks of support and take seriously the militancy, strategy, and tactics required to defend that space. Or, we can be more fluid, moving from place to place, an occupation traveling band that swarms spaces, creates more solarpunk and communistic relations within, shares those tools and collaborates with folks more rooted in that space, and floats out as to remain flexible. Or, a ton of other possibilities, a ton of other ways to engage space. There are many ways to do it.

This is meant to be a conversation starter. I have a lot of love for solarpunk--you can see that from my writings. It is a really useful meta-frame for the narrative component of systems change. I also acknowledge the susceptibility that it has towards eco-modernism, crypto-scheming, and reactionary yearning to return to the "good old days", whether it's a time "before agriculture" or a time before industrialization". I hope that, through the works of 3rd and 4th worlders, and more material ties to prefigurative and insurgent practices vis a vis systems change, solarpunk can shake off the chains of Eurocentrism, towards a pluralistic decoloniality and anti/non-capitalism.

Notes

Eurocentricity/Eurocentrism is the cultural and philosophical constellation of worldviews that sees the ideas birthed from Europe and wedded to capitalism and coloniality as the only valid, worthwhile, and legible modes of knowledge, being/existence (especially as it relates to “humanity”/humanism), and meaning. Things like linear progressions of time, a fetish for scientific thought, and atomistic conceptions of the individual permeate Eurocentric thought.

XXIIVV — permacomputing

Beyond Extinction. Transition to post-capitalism is inevitable | by Nafeez Ahmed

Anthem of the Sun — Real Life

Appropriate technology is essentially what it sounds like; it looks at what technology would be appropriate, meaning that it would minimize ecological harm, to achieve specific needs/goals.

The advent of nation-statism, colonial empires, and industrial capital make up modernity. It is the “never-ending” historical period in which we find ourselves.

Capitalism is distinct, in all of its configurations, for the fact that it combines: (1)private, dictatorial authority over property, most notably of the means of production, (2) wage labor relations where those who don’t have productive private property need to work using someone else’s to survive, and (3) a focus on continual growth, which is seen as an unquestionable good.

Coloniality is the power structural relationships and ways in which society was chopped up and categorized, that, while originating during the eras of European Colonialism, still persist to this day.

Toward a Decolonial Feminism - Maria Lugones

How the world’s favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence

Decolonizers of the imaginary

Wynter Sylvia 1492 A New World View

Toward a Decolonial Feminism

How the world’s favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence

How the world’s favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence

Decolonizers of the imaginary

Decolonizers of the imaginary

Capitalism, coloniality, modernity

SOLARPUNK: Life in the future - Beyond the rusted chrome

How the world’s favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence

This is meant in an expansive sense, where colonized subjects and what is commonly referred to as nature is included

Eurocentric assumptions on what it means to "conserve" certain lands go against the very things that are done to preserve biodiversity. There is not a mechanism by which we can meaningfully protect lands from "on high", away from an intimate understanding rooted in place.

How the world’s favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence

Toward a Decolonial Feminism

I don't find issue with the concept of "difference". I am not my phone, or my mom, or my favorite animal. At the same time, we have to be able to separate the idea of difference from the idea of colonial difference, and understand the ways that material and social processes shape the ways that difference in general is constructed. Ossified understandings of difference, like "I am a man and men do X" are antithetical to liberatory change.

Toward a Decolonial Feminism

Decolonizers of the imaginary. Not that there's overlap here between acknowledging 3rd & 4th world folks ways of being and knowing and a flattening of the "nature-culture" dichotomy that is generally espoused in 'colonized imaginaries'

This system tells me to assimilate or to stop existing. I choose neither, and go towards full spectrum resistance and abolition.

The golden rule is treat people how you want to be treated. The platinum rule is treat people how they want to be treated. I think there's an innumerable number of options in this range, depending on how well we can understand what other beings need. By not pedestalizing any one being over the other while understanding the deep history and present, we can move towards that. I want to make it abundantly clear that we cannot just "jump" towards that moment, as things like reparations and land back need to happen. It's a yes and situation. We should understand that every being deserves what it wants as long as it doesn't systematically/power structurally prevent someone from doing the same. And to this end, there are certain, non-privileged/marginalized/invisibled beings that will have needs that reflect a different reality visavis self-determination.

I am not saying to stay in dangerous, toxic, harmful situations. I'm saying that changing the places you're already in has more radical potential, if you're specifically looking for that, than getting a commune established out of arms reach from society.

Anarchist Calisthenics, by James C. Scott

A DIY Guide to Creating Spaces

Anecdotally, it seems easier to imagine vastly different economic, political, and social systems, but it is harder to imagine different technologies, and even harder to imagine different ways of interacting with spatial-temporal dynamics. Much of politics is actually about space and how it is occupied, and we should lean into anarchic, decolonial takes on "geography", "urban planning", and "architecture" among other fields so we can really take seriously how we are addressing all the things we need to.

How the world’s favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence

Contradiction (logical): when a subject, object, or phenomena is said to have features or properties that can’t exist at the same time and be factual. For example, All apples are fruits. If someone were to say that some apples are not fruits, that is a logical contradiction, because there is no way to substantiate that claim through information, reasoning, or data. Logic is all about “internal” consistency, where the “internal” refers to the relation between the claims being made and the things being compared. Within the system of interest, in this case the “system” of fruit classifications, of which an apple is an element, the claims and conclusions should be supported by the characteristics of that system. Contradiction (dialectical): In dialectics (or a dialectical process), contradictions can take the shape of logical contradictions, (All X are Y → Some X are not Y | No X is Y → Some X are Y) but they only need to take the shape of tensions between elements in a system more broadly. It’s all about the relationship between elements.

What if We Cancel the Apocalypse

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

If we put humanoid life on numerous planets throughout space... with the billions and billions of stars out there... if life can be practically everywhere and filled with people. Just how crowded would my world be? If say every solar system out there had at least 2 planets with life on it. And plenty more if terraformed. Also calcuations might get dicey when we get so many large numbers like the population of an entire galaxy might be decillion or something. Maybe numbers could be heavily geared toward scientific rather than words?

Tex: What’s your reproduction rate per generation? If it’s at or approaching 100% (i.e. every single person that makes it to reproducing age reproduces a minimum of two children per lifetime), then the population will be, mathematically, stable. This does not account for anyone having no children, one children, or three or more children per lifetime, or even people who do reproduce but the children die before they can reproduce.

What you’re thinking of is carrying capacity and sustainable population. Something that falls under your consideration is the pre-existing ecology of the planet that your humanoid life decides to live on. Doing things to “make room”, such as wiping out keystone species, pervasive drilling for materials that poisons the soil with heavy metals, and developing materials for technology development that poisons both your population and the planet’s ecology even further will end up killing off your population long before they can even get through the billions on a single planet.

Another consideration is how many people will live off-planet, in things like space ships, space stations, etc. This is of course also finite space, and carries its own maximum carrying capacity and ideals of a sustainable population, which, unless you’re building a Death Star, is inherently going to carry only a fraction of a population that a planet can.

With a society advanced enough to travel a galaxy (I’m presuming you’re working within the boundaries of a single galaxy), they’re not likely to socially require constant reproduction from a large percentage of their adult population. Reproduction, historically, was meant as a means to secure blood lines, have enough people to work on a farm, and have people to take care of you when you become too old/disabled to work in what’s probably going to be manual labor.

If you’ve solved the food resource, non-food resource, energy, and poverty issues that typically plague a society, then your birth rate will fall - maybe not by enough to have a permanent decline in population, but what that society will consider an ideal population maximum will change drastically after those issues are considered solved.

Whatever the needs are of your story, or non-story worldbuilding, that’s going to end up being the amount of people that you need. Whether your humanoid population considers this crowded or not is up to how you define their cultural interpretation of population density.

Utuabzu: So, the first thing to consider is that space is big. Like, really, really big. So big humans can’t properly conceive of how big it is. It takes over 4 years for the light from our nearest stellar neighbour (Proxima Centauri) to reach us, and current physics says it is impossible for anything to move faster than that because it would break causality. So, one solution to your problem is to not have faster than light travel. Even if humans (and potentially others) have spread out across the galaxy, you’d only have reasonably accurate and up-to-date information on the few dozen systems nearest your own, with everything else being decades or even centuries out of date. So for your characters the answer to ‘how many people are there in the galaxy’ could very well be ‘hell if I know’.

Even within a single star system, as Tex said, you’re not limited just to planets. If you’re colonising other star systems then you have the ability to live long-term in space - space is really big, after all - which means you can build large, sustainable habitats in space. In many ways these are probably preferable to planets, since most proposals generate a pseudogravity via centrifugal force - by spinning - something you can test out yourself by getting a bucket, partially filling it with water, and then holding it arm outstretched while you spin quickly in place. The faster you spin, the stronger the centrifugal force. Which means a space habitat that uses such a system can be designed to simulate whatever strength of gravity you want. Which is good, because we know from astronauts that microgravity has serious health impacts on humans.

Slap a layer of protective ice or something on the outside to shield it from radiation and micrometeorites - conveniently also a reserve of water - fill it up with air and you’ve got new living space. And there’s plenty of material in the asteroid belt and assorted other minor bodies before you need to begin to bother with mining actual planets and moons. Which means that the maximum population you can potentially get away with in a star system is ‘yes’. Of course, as Tex said, most people aren’t going to have all that many kids, particularly not in a developed economy such as would be required to actually build all this, since the necessary technology would mean that children are no longer economic assets - helpful labour - and become economic dependants, and are far less likely to die. This is why increasing urbanisation and economic development correlates with falling birthrates across the world.

But maybe this culture has achieved Fully Automated Gay Space Communism and people are so bored they have to make their own friends. One star system could very believably have a population in the trillions, quadrillions or some number so huge that you do need scientific notation to write it in a reasonable space.

And that doesn’t even consider non-human people, who might have wildly different needs and population patterns and could coexist with humans by thriving in environments where we’d die instantly, while they’d die instantly in the environments we thrive in. The frozen wastes of Titan could be a paradise to some ammonia-based alien, complete with snow beaches along the shores of methane lakes, and they’d be more than happy to leave the inner system to the lava monsters and their water-based hellscapes.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Think of Megafauna as the evolutionary equivalent of The Rich

no no no, hold on with me a second

matter and energy are finite. an ecosystem is, essentially, a group of organisms in a particular location balancing each other out in order to allow for matter and energy to flow in a constant cycle

that balance requires each species to reproduce to the best of its ability, and all the species around it to take advantage of that reproduction to the best of their abilities

the larger you are, the more energy and matter you need to survive. yes, if you're bigger, you can have an advantage over other species in getting food (either by being able to reach more of it, or overpower things to get to it, that kind of thing). but you have to make up for it by eating more. a LOT more. it scales up logarithmically.

because bigger species need more resources to exist, they aren't able to spend as many on reproduction, meaning that - as a rule - bigger species have smaller populations. which is an evolutionary disadvantage. but not their only one.

in a way, they are hoarding matter and energy in the bodies of a select few, that gained larger size in order to access more matter and energy. which, yes, every species tries to do, but at smaller sizes, its sustainable.

smaller species have larger populations, which then speciate more so that more offspring can live and occupy new niches, which then leads to more speciation because niches beget niches, and so on

yes, bigger species can also strike that balance, but they sit on the top of a precarious peak. they rely on that entire system to continue to function in order to fuel their large size and successful populations.

so bigger species tend to evolve in systems where there are not selection pressures for them to be economical. and most bigger species do not have much in the way of modern descendants.

because the minute their ecosystem starts to fall apart, they can't get enough food.

and they go extinct.

megafaunalism is just a different kind of specialization, and niche specialists have to be very lucky to survive mass extinctions.

we see this in every extinction. end ordovician, end devonian, end permian, end triassic, end cretaceous, the current one. megafauna go first.

the main difference between megafauna and Human Wealth Hoarders is that megafauna aren't making a conscious choice. Human Wealth Hoarders are.

and, much like megafauna, as the system they rely on collapses, they will be the first to go extinct. there's fewer of them, and they're more vulnerable. poorer people, much like smaller species, will lose many members - but, because there are more of us / smaller species are significantly more diverse, we'll/they'll ultimately get through it a lot easier.

the only reason we think megafauna = good is because *we're* megafauna. not only megafauna, but the highest trophic level (ie "top predators", which, given everything gets decomposed in the end, sure is an extremely revealing way to phrase it in terms of the psyche of the people inventing the term). we've convinced ourselves that being at the "end" (there is no end. we all get decomposed) of the "food chain" (it's a circular web) is best because that's where we are, and it gives us more power and control.

but just as toxins in water concentrate in "top predators", so do the stressors of ecological crises disproportionately affect megafauna. and us.

smaller is more diverse, more speciose, because they can. and evolutionarily speaking, more diverse = winning. because you're more likely to keep playing the game in the future.

so yeah. bigger is worse, actually.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Proponents of degrowth say rich countries must scale down destructive and unnecessary forms of production to reduce energy and material use, focus economic activity on securing human needs and well-being, and abandon the goal of economic growth altogether.

“We’ve overshot the capacity of the planet to support us,” says Peter Victor, professor emeritus of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto and author of Escape from Overshoot: Economics for a Planet in Peril.

As his book points out, we are demanding far more of the planet than it can provide through its ability to regenerate – also known as overshoot. Last year, humanity’s ecological footprint exceeded global biocapacity by 71 percent. In other words, we used an entire year’s worth of biological resources in just seven months.

“Green growth assumes you can keep expanding GDP [gross domestic product] at the same time you are lightening the burden on the biosphere,” Victor explains.

“Degrowth says you can’t reduce this burden unless you reduce the materials and energy used in the economy, and this cannot happen fast enough – or at all – if increasing GDP remains the goal.”

Victor believes advocates of green growth don’t recognize that the economy is embedded in the biosphere: we extract raw materials from the earth, transform them into manufactured products, and then dump waste into the air, oceans and land. As the global economy grows, so too does our resource use and pollution.

What’s more, economic output isn’t shared equally between countries or between people within individual countries. As a result, we overuse resources while still failing to meet many basic human needs.

As a prime example, the richest 1 percent of humanity cause more carbon emissions than the poorest 50 percent, according to a 2020 study by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute.

And if everyone on Earth lived the same lifestyle as the average person in the U.S., we would need five planets’ worth of resources.

“Escape from overshoot requires a much more comprehensive assessment of the situation than simply the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions,” Victor says.

That means de-commodifying essential goods and services such as housing, transportation, energy, and healthcare, which should instead be funded through public financing and based on resource-efficient technologies.

On the other hand, degrowth would mean drastically cutting the production of goods and services that are not really necessary and have huge environmental footprints – private jets, fast fashion, advertising and military hardware, just to name a few.

Some fear that this could lead to mass unemployment, but exponents of degrowth argue that what we need is a fundamental redesign of the global economy, including employment.

Government policies would need to guarantee jobs by providing opportunities in the green sector, such as installing renewables and insulating buildings, regenerating ecosystems and improving social care. Demand for these jobs will grow as the economy is decarbonized.

As polluting and less ‘important’ industries are phased out, there will inevitably be less work to go around, but degrowth advocates plan on addressing that with a shorter work week, a lower retirement age, and a universal basic income to provide a healthier work-life balance for everyone.

[puc-puggy]

landback because I want to live in the food forests Europeans were too unsophisticated to even recognize

landback because indigenous american land philosophy asserts the dignity of all living things as kin & because we can see in real life the hard evidence that proves it fucking works. 85% of the entire planet's remaining biodiversity is protected by indigenous people. how about we give them the rest of their own fucking land and boost those numbers.

landback because indigenous people have been-for centuries- attempting to share vital truths about the ecology of this planet that the west is only now coming to discover. discoveries only pursued because our ignorant shortsightedness is threatening all life on earth

landback because white people Do Not Know Best and our confidence in our intellectual and technological superiority has wrought incomprehensible destruction to people and to the planet.

landback because we cannot in fact dig the ground out from beneath our feet and remain standing. there is a finite amount of physical material on this planet, and the selfishness of individualist consumerism is devouring our life support.

landback because there is no statue of limitations for genocide and we can ALWAYS seek to support the repair and restoration of what we've destroyed

landback because it's not our fucking land!

[aiyexayen]

✿⋆₊⊹ Zonai Facts ⊹₊⋆✿

Mammalian features.

Furry.

Bipedal.

Had exclusive access to incredibly potent but finite power source obtained by unsustainable mining practises.

Opened enormous pit mines in underground caverns beneath every single major city of every nation across Hyrule in the pursuit of more of the energy source.

Bound naturally-occurring root systems in tight woven nets throughout Hyrule's underworld to funnel large quantities of daylight down from the surface, introducing invasive species of surface flora in the process, in order to see better in pursuit of more of the energy source.

Named the energy source after themselves.

Energy source notably corrupts other beings who mine for it.

Used their power and technological advancements to invent fully modular mass weapons of elemental destruction.

Created an army of effectively-immortal, autonomous war robots that are hostile to all lifeforms and attack immediately with deadly force.

Had the power to semi-permanently suspend enormous land masses in the air and did so.

Seeded aforementioned robots on these land masses across the entire skies of Hyrule suspended over every other peoples' land.

Spread their Zonai-exclusive-access technology across the entire surface of Hyrule as well--into towns, caves, valleys, mountaintops.

Supplanted many Hyrulean culture's beliefs and religious practises, building all of them enormous temples with little apparent religious function beyond interacting with the Zonai themselves.

Built over ancient sacred grave sites with their own architecture.

Constructed their own buildings on sacred land intruding on the homes of spirit beings.

Perpetuated the belief that the Zonai themselves were descended from gods.

Filled each of these Zonai temples across Hyrule with technology exclusively able to be accessed by the Zonai or those few they grant permission.

Each temple's technology contained the enormous elemental potential to wreak extinction-level destruction on the peoples and land of Hyrule, not unlike enormous floating war machines.

Seeded the temples with scores of their previously-mentioned immortal, armed with deadly force, universally hostile battle robots.

Places where the Zonai land masses interact with Hyrulean ground cause the latter to begin to disappear, native ecology being replaced as patterns of unknown nature spread out from the point of contact like a living tattoo.

Made a marriage alliance with the most populous and centrally-located race in Hyrule, who also claimed divine bloodline.

Both accepted and demanded allegiance from every other prominent nation in Hyrule.

Described as "warlike" by those who outlived them.

Commandeered the most powerful spiritual leaders from each race and bonded them to ancient and powerful Zonai amulets.

Crafted Zonai-style animal masks for this elite team of mages that they appeared to wear permanently, while the Zonai and Hylians remained unmasked.

Ensured their own visages and names would survive eternally through hundreds of shrines built in their image across the land and sky, filled with an absurd quantity of light energy from an unknown source (and battle robots) to eternally preserve and protect them.

Left the other mages' faces and names out of history entirely--until they do not exist even in the records of their own peoples and nations.

Adorned royalty with intricate stone jewellery.

Severed limbs capable of functioning independent of rest of body.

Had white hair.

Very tall.

Fuckable?