Chris Till

Tag: GDP

  • The Climate Crisis – It’s BOTH Population AND Consumption

    Picture of Earth from space.
    Countries must work together on managing populations and resources evenly

    This is a topic that drives me insane, and has done for years. Many people are often quick to brush off any attempt to characterise the climate crisis as an overpopulation crisis (which it is). They want to say that population isn’t a problem at all. They insist that if the wealth accumulation of the richest people in the world, and their gargantuan consumption habits were curtailed; then that would be enough to stop the climate crisis getting out of control. I’ll come back to this shortly to discuss why they are incorrect. First, I will briefly cover why promotion of what we could reasonably at this point call traditional climate policies is foolish.

    We’re all familiar with talk about recycling, choosing to fly less and make individual decisions. We’ve been told for decades about how small things like these, plus renewable energy and electric powered everything will be enough to bring the raging climate under control; without the vast majority of us having to change our lifestyles at all. These days it seems like they mainly advocate for easy measures like putting solar panels on our roofs and plugging in our private cars rather than filling them with explosive, fossil derived liquid. It’s all very simple stuff. They try to not scare the public.

    I’m not going to go to deep into why basic green technology solutions, individual small choices, and maybe vegan diets are not enough by themselves to solve the climate crisis in this article. It’s frankly a boring topic that’s been done to death. I’ve talked a lot previously about why we need to reimagine how we’re going to live in future in every way. Just modifying how we already do things today, but powering the same things with electricity, is obviously not going to cut it. The changes we now need to implement in order to make a dent in the crisis will blow your mind if you haven’t considered this before.

    As a very quick recap of my ideas from previous articles, this means ideas along the lines of, for example:

    • Smaller homes and communal rather than private land
    • A vegetarian (and eventually vegan) food system which takes the individual choice (to buy expensive organic produce) away from citizens, and makes food high quality, delicious, and universally available and affordable.
    • The slashing of military budgets
    • No private cars (unless absolutely necessary)
    • Less personal stuff and pointless junk
    • Items such as tools that are shared in communities and built to last
    • Better public transport, but also a focus on less travel; and slower travel when we do go places
    • Severely restricted long distance travel (except for family emergencies etc)
    • The concept of tourism as we know it being redefined completely

    Now that’s out of the way, and we’re clear that only massive changes to our consumption habits are necessary to even touch the sides of this crisis; I want to bring population back in.

    Why the population critics are so wrong

    Not only do these people and organisations deny that the current global population is a catastrophic problem for the climate; they don’t even acknowledge the need for almost all of us to make massive changes to our consumption habits and way of life.

    Anyone who’s placing responsibility for this entire crisis at the feet of the rich, while making everyone else feel excused from having to act, is at best irresponsible, and at worst, downright dangerous. We need as a society and as a world to get serious now about how bad things are; how bad they’re going to get even if we start doing everything right; and then we need to figure out the next practical steps that all of us can take toegther.

    I hate the rich as much as anyone. But it’s way too easy to blame them and go about our own overly consumptive lives in blissful ignorance while the world around us goes to shit. That’s the last thing we can afford to do now. We’ve had enough of greed and indivualistic thinking. It’s time for unselfishness and collectivist thinking to take over.

    I highly recommend watching GREENWASHED, the excellent film on this subject, released last year by Dr Sofia Pineda Ochoa on YouTube. It gets deep into the statistics and the climate situation (although things will have worsened significantly in the year or so since it was made). It features well known experts on the natural world like Chris Packham, as well as climate, population and economic experts. They did their homework so well that it felt unnecessary for me to do a bunch of my own research for a blog that hardly anyone is going to read anyway. The vast majority of people in 2026 don’t care to read a thoroughly researched piece about an important topic. Let’s be honest. You and me are the odd ones out who still care about this stuff.

    One statistic from the film that really amazed me was the calculation by Cambridge University based Ecological economist Partha Dasgupta that the Earth could sustainably carry 3.3 billion people if every single person was on a salary of $20k.

    Pretty much anyone should be able to grasp that 3.3 billion people (a bit more than a third of the current global population), each consuming the global average of someone on that kind of low income (from a western perspective), is a very, very long way away from where we currently are. And it’s very obviously not possible to achieve that just by forcing the richest people’s consumption down to the levels of the upper-middle class as it exists now for example.

    It requires, as I said earlier, a total reimagining of every element of how we live our lives and how our societies function. Nothing less than total transformation will suffice. Anyone who says anything other than that, is frankly full of shit.

    And that’s just people who advocate for what I call the traditional type of climate action I mentioned earlier. The mainstream discourse around population is actually dominated by the false talking point that low birthrates in many countries threaten our existence and our economies. Obviously these types of people want GDP growth for their ideologies and their own personal bank balances. But I’m far from convinced that a lower birthrate would even lead to lower GDP at this point, because of the advance of robotics and AI. Even setting aside immigration. So their obsession with birth rates is probably more down to stupidity and the typical fear associated with the conservative psyche than anything actually real. Also, the idea that a decreasing birthrate would lead to our nationalities ceasing to exist in future is just for the birds. It wasn’t that long ago that the UK population was approximately 20 million less than it is today. According to the ONS, it was 50,381,500 in 1950 (which is impressively specific). No one back then was saying our population was too small to do what we needed to do. No one was worried about the British identity disappearing. No one probably even thought about it.

    To sum up – The climate crisis is now so severe that we need to decide to have significantly fewer kids as humanity; and we need to all change the way we live dramatically (but also for the better). Not just the rich. All of us.

    Anyone who says anything different is either ignorant, or lying to you. It’s really that simple.

  • UK Defence Strategy written by a Degrowth Communist

    A destroyed tank
    All tanks are as useless as this destroyed one in modern warfare

    As with my previous articles in this series; this one will seem very shocking if you’re used to consuming British mainstream news coverage. All you tend to see in the establishment discourse are calls for yet more military spending (where the follow up question is never “how will you pay for it?”) Along with that, you just get warmongering about Russia, and fearmongering about China and Iran.

    Military spending and outdated weapons

    If I was writing our military strategy right now, the first thing I’d do would be to immediately slash the military budget by more than half. The latest target the Labour government have set is for 3% of GDP. Initially due by the end of the next parliament, but it seems that they now want to pull this forward by a handful of years. The current amount is something between 2.3% and 2.5%. I would cut that to around 1% of GDP to start with, and switch focus to be on defensive weapons rather than offensive. There’s no reason to have jet fighters, aircraft carriers or tanks in the present day, when we have such advanced automated weapons such as drones and ballistic missiles. It would presumably be extremely easy to destroy an aircraft carrier or a tank these days, so to me they come across as toys, for lack of a better term. I think it’s very clear that in 2026, the types of weapons bought by militaries is led by nostalgia as much as it is by the bloodlust of warmongering (overwhelmingly male) leaders.

    There’s very limited reason to have ground troops either, outside of perhaps special operatives like the SAS. Yes, it’s fun to run around shooting people in online FPS video games. But in real life, you’d logically just send in a drone, fire a guided missile, or use a sort of defensive missile system that automatically intercepts incoming fire. We can redeploy the vast majority of ground troops to do infinitely more useful jobs that aren’t going to leave them suffering with PTSD. Very much the opposite. Building renewable energy, EV buses and associated charging infrastructure. Maybe simply building homes. The types of people who end up as ground troops in the military are likely to be very capable of being trained as builders, mechanics or engineers for example. There are a lot of things they could be doing that would clearly benefit the country over what they’re doing now.

    I would extend this to all troops including those stationed in overseas military bases. I would close all of the overseas bases entirely. Our military should have no presence outside of the UK. Same with the US and every other nation. Unless you wanted to go down the route of having a continental army or global alliance, which I’m not opposed to. Perhaps that would be a good way to reduce costs in the next few years even further than what I’m envisioning. It could be a decent compromise between fully getting rid of the militaries, and continuing as we are now, for people who don’t feel comfortable (yet) with my kind of strategy. But I think doing it in a continental organisation would be difficult if you have strongly differing politics within the allied countries. It would make more sense to organise it based on ideology.

    Nuclear Weapons must go

    I would retire nuclear weapons. Our current nuclear submarines don’t work, and we require the USA’s permission to fire their nuclear warheads. Not that we should keep nuclear weapons even if they did work and we fully controlled them. But the current situation is particularly absurd.

    People will say that getting rid of our nuclear deterrent leaves us exposed. At the end of the day, any kind of nuclear war means the end of humanity as we know it anyway. And we wouldn’t be any more exposed than we are currently, even if the world wasn’t going to end in the process. In fact, we are about as exposed as it’s possible to be. To reiterate; we rely on a fascist dictatorship currently threatening to invade (or has already invaded) various countries, to use our broken nuclear weapons. We’re also not a part of the EU, so we’re not going to be a high priority for them to defend if it came to that. Anyone who is actually serious about national security should be talking about rejoining. And NATO is under threat due to Trump’s threats over Greenland too. I agree with Zack Polanski about NATO. In the current paradigm, I would look to replace it with a European or World alliance with countries who aren’t fascist. I think that’s only likely to be sufficient for a few years; so I wouldn’t seek to go in that direction personally. I’d want a global alliance specifically for true world peace and disarmament. But it would be preferable to the current situation at least.

    Emissions of war

    Militaries are never going to be sustainable. Just the idea of war powered by green energy is laughable. Destroying things in a sustainable way can never happen. This is a big reason why military emissions have never been included in national emission reduction targets, or talked about at the useless UN COPs. It is estimated that 5.5% of overall global emissions are attributable to militaries. But this crucially doesn’t include the emissions of warfare itself, or the emissions involved in clearing up the destruction and rebuilding. Nor does it include the long-term health implications of the lingering toxic chemicals remaining in the environment. Human and animal lives are just collateral damage.

    I think it’s safe to assume based on the data I was able to find that we’re probably looking at closer to 10% or more of global emissions. That’s a lot. And we can cut it.

    The warmongering neoliberal leaders we’ve been stuck with for decades knew that militaries will always be inherently polluting, and they didn’t care to do anything about it. We need a world where we focus only on looking after people and things, and stop putting so much energy into poisoning and destroying them.

    Pacifism is necessary

    In the end, a world in which militaries exist at all is a scenario where genuine climate action is practically impossible. When governments are spending significant percentages of GDP on deadly weapons, and they’re boasting about how that’s good for growth; while healthcare, education, housing and transport are all severely underfunded and struggling; where utilities are privatised, failing, and unaffordable; you know you’re dealing with a society with its priorities backwards. And I didn’t even mention climate action there. The sentence was already far too long. And it more importantly reflects the reality that the preservation of our world is practically always the last thing people think about.

    Pacifism is necessary in my view. Can you imagine a world in which we actually take the climate crisis seriously, and all countries genuinely work together, while we still have militaries? I can’t.

    Maybe you do think we can have militaries and deal with the climate in a serious way. Maybe you think that the issue is the size of the militaries. With smaller militaries, and a more friendly overall global perspective and desire for co-operation, we’ll be able to do it. Perhaps you’re right. I just think history suggests we would have done so by now if that was going to be the case.

    Feminism’s role

    There’s clearly a gendered element to this. We still live in a man’s world; and you don’t get equal and happy societies, world peace, or climate action without gender equality first. It’s the root of everything going wrong. Obviously, there are exceptions; but I would say in general that women are most often involved in nurturing and building things, and men are almost always the ones involved in destroying them.

    I think this tendency is visible in politics too, where in recent UK polling, we see the far-right Reform UK polling higher among men, and the left wing / centre-left Green Party polling higher among women. I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. Degrowth communism and feminism are inseparable. We need a more compassionate, intelligent society in which we prioritise all the things neoliberalism has left to rot, while dismantling the one thing they care about building up; the armed forces.

    Things are already bad enough under the supposedly centrist Labour government; and the fascism of a potential Reform replacement will dramatically exascerbate the existing damage to our precious public services. More people on the left need to be willing to stand up and say the kinds of things I’ve outlined in this article; no matter how insane it makes us look in our extremely disingenuous, reactionary media. It doesn’t matter if they laugh, as long as the idea of pacifism is planted in their minds.

    I don’t necessarily think the Greens have to go as far as I’m going. I think you need a more extreme flank and a more mainstream friendly party like the Greens are right now. Roger Hallam is definitely right about that. But I do think Zack and co need to seriously challenge the bloated military budget as a starting point.

    There is a real threat of fascism materialising; with their toxic politics being amplified daily by a media that is clearly biased towards misinformation, hate, pollution, destruction and division. We can’t let the bullshit warmongering narrative go unchallenged, and we have to offer a totally different perspective. Let as many people as possible know that things don’t have to be this way. The military doesn’t have to keep growing. It can shrink and change. Or it can disappear entirely if we want.

    Similarly to how Labour are more scared of the Greens than Reform; they’re also more scared of peace than they are of war. Think about that.

  • It feels like we’re heading for extinction

    Cryptocurrencies, NFTs, the Metaverse, right wing authoritarian governments, unending talk about GDP growth, and a global population seemingly getting stupider and more unhinged by the day. Even if we can reverse course from here to create a better future; you can’t deny that what we’re seeing right now looks like the demise of the human race.

    It seems like everywhere you look, you’ll struggle to find anyone speaking much common sense about Covid-19, about ending pollution, about making a fair society. It’s a massive shock when you do hear someone speaking logically. I feel like I must follow them on Twitter. There aren’t that many of us now so we have to band together. That’s perhaps overstating it a bit, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s how it goes considering the trajectory we’re on.

    The thing I don’t understand is that not only are we not making a dent into the environmental and societal crises we have chosen to get ourselves into, but we’re actively going backwards in almost every respect. Things like NFTs are so bonkers that it’s hard to even comprehend. People pay huge amounts of money to “own” a picture or video of a real item, when those things are both widely available online for everyone. There’s no value whatsoever in these things, and it uses giant quantities of electricity to complete transactions. It makes absolutely no sense.

    And then there’s the Metaverse. It’s basically a VR world where people can meet and have avatars, virtual homes and possessions etc. It’s like Cybertown meets Second Life, PlayStation Home and presumably countless other similar ideas, except with VR headsets and higher resolution virtual homes and furniture.

    It feels like Mark Zuckerberg is reaching his ultimate form. People have always talked about how nefarious he might be or at the very least mocked his awkward nature. But now it really feels like he’s embracing it by going with the Meta brand and Metaverse concept; even if it’ll most likely be about as successful as 3D TV.

    When I think about it, I just imagine the scene in the film Wall-E where the obese people on the space ship are sitting there in VR. Why would anyone want something like that? I can see some good uses for VR, but the particular desire to have a whole separate existence just seems unnecessary and dystopian. We need to stop this madness and just focus on what VR is actually good at. Allowing us to do and experience things that we can’t in real life, not trying to replace real life.

    We have to focus as much as possible on our real world in order to want to save it. Video Games are one thing, which in moderation are great. The Metaverse is something totally different, that I have a hard time believing has anything beneficial to offer society. It’s the type of thing you create when you’re out of ideas for things that really help society. When Facebook started, you could make a pretty good case that it made a positive impact on society. Who can say that now? How many of us still use FB as it was originally intended? To keep up with friends and make communities around common interests? I do, but it mostly seems to be just a breeding ground for far-right views and misinformation. Even though I do use it for a couple of good reasons, I wouldn’t miss it if it was gone, and I doubt many others would either. And that just shows how badly it’s been developed over the years.

    But it’s not just these particular dystopian trends. It’s everything in society that needs to change. We need to immediately stop all of this nonsense and reverse course before we set off all of the cascading feedback loops in the climate system.

    I really don’t know how, but all these products and concepts have to end, and soon. We have to start thinking about what really matters to us. Is it the ridiculous gadgets and gimmicky services? The endless pursuit of economic growth when we all feel miserable? Or is it the wonder of nature, the simple pleasure of a bike ride, relaxing and enjoying the slow life? If we’re going to avoid extinction, it’s crucial that we stop this trend of doing the worst possible things at the worst possible time. We need to wake up fast and reassess everything we’re doing, because the vast majority of it is the opposite of what we should be doing.

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