That’s a general statement, but you asked a more specific question.

I would never say it could.

“The logic of capital is not consuming more and more.”

Ok thanks we agree. ☺️

Really hits home how the only way the Left can deliver a massive public goods agenda is through power at the Federal level. 🫤

Despite your disagreement, do you agree that the logic of capital should not be defined as 'consuming more and more'?

It’s just the FT piece linked in the first post. Thanks.

You can admire Petro's anti-fossil fuel approach from a moral standpoint, but tbh given the USA/EU's own refusal to reduce their own FF reliance, Lula's approach (detailed in FT) to use oil revenue to fund green energy + reduce deforestation seems more savvy/practical. 7/7

But that hasn't stopped the Left (most notably Malm) painting his approach as the model everyone should follow. 6/7
jacobin.com/2025/08/colo...

What's even more depressing is, as I've argued, degrowth is terrible politics, and as the FT article explains, Petro's approach is generating a massive backlash that likely guarantees his party will be out of power in the election next year 5/7

Ultimately, Petro and many others since the 1970s, have wanted to wed Marxism w/ scarcity-mongering ecological economics (interestingly Georgescu-Roegen does rely on Marx's 'reproduction schemas' for his entropy theory of economics, but his conclusions are in no way Marxist). 4/7

Furthermore, as any Marxist knows, the 'logic of capital' also entails 'crisis', and in periods of crisis consumption is reduced across the board (capitalism is not always about 'consuming more and more'!). 3/7

This morning I was also reading Brian Potter's post on how US rail systems dramatically reduced the material cost of rail construction.

Marx called this 'economy in the use of constant capital' in Vol. 3. Resource efficiency can boost profit!
2/7 www.construction-physics.com/p/strap-rail

heatmap.news/ideas/zohran...

I honestly think she's sufficiently sober about the direness of the challenges ahead, but also wants to pushback against the sensationalist doomerism that our *capitalist* media thrives on and point out cases where things are indeed improving.

OK doomer. 😉

It's a great resource for teaching as well: teeming with data & rational arguments on where we stand on a variety of environmental challenges (an antidote to doomerism too!). I will also admit I enjoy how it simply destroys much 'green' folk politics (e.g. 'going local'). (2/2)

ourworldindata.org/sanitation