Frostbite amputations reached new high in Edmonton, decreased in Calgary last winter

CBC
Tue, October 22, 2024 

Edmonton police inspect a homeless encampment in January 2024.

 (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press - image credit)

The number of amputations due to frostbite in Edmonton reached 110 last winter, the highest level in more than a decade, according to new data obtained by CBC News.

But Calgary marked its second consecutive winter of declining frostbite amputations, counting roughly one-third of Edmonton's procedures last fiscal year.

The frostbite amputation numbers mark a notable shift after years of Alberta's two major centres following similar trends.


It is not clear what caused the sharp divergence.

But doctors and homeless advocates point to two key differences between the two cities that may have played a role: Edmonton's aggressive encampment eviction policy, and the use of a more assertive frostbite treatment protocol in Calgary's emergency departments.

"I do think that houselessness and substance abuse are certainly contributors to it, but I think there's multiple things that may be contributing," said Dr. Scott MacLean, an emergency physician at Edmonton's Royal Alexandra Hospital.

What the numbers show

According to data from Alberta Health Services, the Edmonton health zone saw 110 amputations with a diagnosis of frostbite during the fiscal year of 2023-24.

That's up from 71 the previous year, and surpasses the previous record of 91 amputations in 2021-22.

The Calgary zone counted roughly one-third of Edmonton's numbers last year.

The health zones include areas well beyond the two cities. Banff and Claresholm are in the Calgary zone, while the Edmonton zone includes Morinville and Evansburg.

AHS does not release health statistics between one and nine on privacy grounds, arguing that an individual could potentially be identified from such a small group.

Because Calgary had one month in the past fiscal year where the number of frostbite amputations was less than 10 but greater than zero, the annual total is only known to be between 32 and 40.

The sharp divergence between Edmonton and Calgary is unusual, as data going back to 2011 shows that the two cities have largely followed the same trends without any significant difference in annual numbers.

Reasons for the discrepancy are not clear.

Weather data from Environment Canada shows that while Edmonton was slightly colder than Calgary, the two cities had similar winters overall last year.

Edmonton saw 21 days below –20 C last winter while Calgary had 17.

The number of frostbite or excessive cold diagnoses in emergency departments didn't change much in either zone — up nine per cent to 895 in Edmonton, down 17 per cent to 630 in Calgary.

Enumerating homelessness

Frostbite amputations disproportionately affect people experiencing homelessness. While Edmonton's numbers rose 55 per cent from the previous year, the increase among unhoused patients was 87 per cent.

More than half of such procedures in both cities last winter were performed on patients recorded as homeless.

While Calgary's homeless population was significantly larger than Edmonton's a decade ago, the two cities have found comparable figures in recent counts.




The last point-in-time count — conducted on a single day and including people without shelter as well as those seeking services — was in 2022. Edmonton found 2,519 people experiencing homelessness and Calgary had 2,782.

Both cities conducted their 2024 counts this month, but the results won't be released for several months.

Another method used in Edmonton is the "by name list" count, which is based on data from agencies and only includes people seeking services. That method counted 4,011 people in July.

Homeward Trust did not respond to a request for comment.

Contentious approach to encampments

Edmonton's 2023-24 winter season saw a series of court rulings, police actions and public protests over the decision to evict residents of encampments and dismantle the makeshift communities.

In December 2023, a Court of King's Bench judge granted a request from the Coalition for Justice and Human Rights for a temporary injunction against the City of Edmonton to stop an imminent plan for police to conduct a widespread sweep and dismantling of encampments.

In January, the injunction was removed and an earlier CJHR lawsuit related to encampments was dismissed due to the court's finding that the group did not have legal standing to represent the interests of people experiencing homelessness.

The decision allowed the city and the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) to move aggressively to dismantle encampments, removing nearly 50 in two weeks.

At the same time, the provincial government launched a navigation centre where unhoused and vulnerable people could receive help accessing services ranging from shelter to acquiring identification to financial assistance. A navigation centre for Calgary was announced in June and opened in July.

Chris Wiebe, counsel for CJHR, said he sees a direct connection between the encampment removals and the spike in frostbite amputations. He said he felt "intense sadness" at the numbers.

"Unfortunately, that's consistent with what the coalition's expert witnesses said would happen — that encampment evictions increase the risk of of exposure to cold weather and thus increase the risk of cold-related illnesses like frostbite," said Wiebe.

He took issue with the line from officials that tents are inadequate shelter in winter.

"Nobody's saying the tents are enough shelter," said Wiebe. "They're clearly inadequate." But, he said, they provide at least some protection for people unable to safely access shelters, whether due to fear of violence and theft or policies against allowing couples and pets.

Official response

"Any instance where individuals are sheltering outdoors during extreme cold is an emergency," a City of Edmonton spokesperson said in a written statement.

"While the statistics on frostbite amputations are concerning, they highlight the broader, systemic challenges of homelessness that extend beyond the city's direct control."

In statements, EPS and the provincial ministry of Seniors, Community and Social Services both said tents are not sufficient protection from winter, and highlighted that nearly 4,000 people had engaged with the provincial navigation centre in Edmonton.

Both statements indicated that the encampment removal policy would continue this winter.

"Removing people from freezing cold tents to warm shelters does not contribute to an increase in frostbite," said the ministry's statement. "Alberta will not tolerate a return to allowing dangerous encampments to remain."

EPS said that part of the spike in Edmonton's frostbite amputation numbers "may be due to greater intervention by EPS encampment response teams, who regularly found people needing medical assistance for exposure, hypothermia and frostbite."

The City of Calgary and the Calgary Homeless Foundation declined to comment on the data.

More aggressive treatment

Another major difference between Calgary and Edmonton is how frostbite cases are treated.

Since 2019, Calgary has used a more aggressive approach, according to Dr. Catherine Patocka, department head of emergency medicine at the University of Calgary's Cumming School of Medicine.

The approach is based on a protocol developed by doctors in Yukon.

"Looking at the data [of declining frostbite amputations], I certainly find myself wondering if what we're seeing is the impact of that protocol," said Patocka.

A key part of the approach is iloprost, a medication that can reduce the risk of amputation in severe frostbite cases. The use of it for frostbite is off-label, meaning it hasn't received regulatory approval for that particular purpose.

Iloprost has been used in Calgary through a Health Canada special access program, but its use in Edmonton is rare, according to MacLean, the Edmonton emergency doctor who is part of a University of Alberta group studying its use.

"It's almost never given in Edmonton ... whereas in Calgary it's quite commonly given," he said.

"When I look at the last three years of severe frostbite in Calgary, almost every case has received iloprost."

It isn't known how much iloprost might account for the the discrepancy between the two cities' experiences with frostbite cases, or how often the use of iloprost avoided the need for amputation. The use of iloprost in Calgary began in 2019, but the city still saw a major increase in frostbite amputations in 2021-22.

To determine iloprost's efficacy, MacLean and his colleagues have been comparing outcomes between frostbite cases in Edmonton, which did not involve iloprost, with similar cases in Calgary that did use the medication.

He said he expects the treatment to be more widely available to Edmonton doctors this year.

He said the increasing numbers for frostbite and amputations in Edmonton tracks with his own experience in the emergency department.

While MacLean agrees that a tent is inadequate protection from frostbite, and better long-term solutions are needed, he doesn't see Edmonton's encampment eviction policy as a good approach.

"I don't think that taking away limited shelter when inadequate shelter spaces are available has been helpful."

How to Advance a Just Energy Transition in Oil-Dominated New Brunswick

By Duncan Murray

September 27, 2024

Source: Non Profit Quarterly


Image credit: Cusack5239 on wikimedia.org

There are many places today that depend heavily on a single industry. This creates vulnerability should the industry in question start to fail. One industry that often leads to economic dependency is oil.

Such is the case of New Brunswick, a small province tucked away on Canada’s sparsely populated Atlantic coast. New Brunswick is home to Canada’s largest oil refinery, which employs more than 4,000 full-time workers, produces over half the province’s export value—and emits 3 million tons of carbon annually.

The company that owns the refinery, Irving Oil, is facing a precarious future. A report issued by the Atlantic Economic Council in February 2024 says the company can survive the net-zero transition, but only with government aid. The recent death of the company’s patriarch, billionaire Arthur Irving, has heightened doubt over Irving Oil’s future at a time when the group has admitted an openness to a “partial or full sale.”

Whatever the future of New Brunswick’s most controversial employer, it is clear that fossil fuel is on the way out. Will the province adapt by diversifying its energy sector and building a green economy? Or does the inevitable fall of Irving Oil portend a future of economic hardship for what is already Canada’s poorest province?

What matters is not merely whether a green transition is occurring but how such a transition occurs.
The Fight against Natural Gas

Last summer, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) released a report describing the grassroots movements opposing fossil fuel development in Eastern Canada (Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island). CCPA researchers found that these movements have experienced significant success over the past decade. Public pressure in Quebec and Prince Edward Island has led to legislated bans on future extraction projects.

In New Brunswick, too, grassroots movements have succeeded in blocking new extraction and transportation projects. In 2014, various Indigenous, Anglophone, and Francophone groups formed the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance (NBASGA) to oppose shale gas extraction and infrastructure. Shale gas is a methane-rich natural gas found in fine-grained sedimentary rock.

The group’s opposition resulted in a moratorium on shale gas exploration and extraction, as well as a commitment from the Western Canada-based hydraulic fracking company Headwater Exploration that it would not invest in new projects in the province without “clear social licence and consent from Indigenous groups.” For a time, it seemed protestors had won the fight against shale gas.

But fears of natural gas projects have been renewed. The moratorium was partially lifted in 2019 by what was then a new provincial government. Still in power today, Blaine Higgs, the province’s premier (the Canadian equivalent of governor), has been an outspoken supporter of natural gas.

The Higgs government’s most recent energy plan has come under scrutiny for its express dependence on technological innovation, centering its efforts on hydrogen production and going so far as to name its report the New Brunswick Hydrogen Roadmap (NBHR). Hydrogen also holds export value, being transportable over long distances, and is carbon-free at the point of use.

But carbon-free at the point of use does not, it turns out, mean that the product is actually carbon-free. The degree to which hydrogen is a carbon-free energy source depends on its feedstock or the product used to produce hydrogen, which is later consumed. (This broader analysis of energy impact is sometimes referred to as “life cycle assessment”).

Critics of the report have not been hard to find. Jim Emberger, spokesperson for NBASGA, wrote that “the good and proven parts of the province’s new plans must be larger in scale and more rapid in execution, while those parts that are speculative, or based on political or economic factors, must be harshly judged on their ability to timely provide the necessary help.”

J.P. Sapinski, professor of environmental studies and sociology at the Université de Moncton, echoed Emberger’s sentiment. He also said that the government has poured millions of dollars into building small modular nuclear reactors—another point of emphasis in the provincial government’s plan—which, Sapinski told NPQ, are “probably never going to exist.”

One reason for the government’s divergence from popular opinion might be the influence of Irving Oil, owned by the province’s most influential family. Such influence is suggested in the CCPA report, coauthored by Sapinski, which states that the “political dominance of the Irving family is a major barrier to change, and the new climate action plan reflects the current political will to maintain the economic and energy status quo.” Challenging government policy is one thing, but challenging the province’s most lucrative corporation and biggest for-profit employer is another task entirely.
The Québécois Approach

Though all Eastern Canadian provinces have been able to block proposed fossil fuel projects, only Quebec has seen success in challenging existing infrastructure beyond coal plants. Quebec’s challenge has gone further still, taking on not only fossil fuel infrastructure but also the neoliberal conditions that abetted the climate crisis in the first place. Le Front Commun pour la Transition Énergétique (the Common Front for the Energy Transition) emerged on the back of 130 local committees, coming together to oppose the Energy East pipeline. The project was proposed to connect the crude oil produced in the Alberta tar sands to the then Irving-owned Canaport deep-water export terminal in Saint John, on New Brunswick’s east coast.

Organizers in Quebec have managed a level of success far beyond what has been achieved in other Eastern Canadian provinces, Quebec’s long and proud history of political organization proving fruitful in the climate crisis era. According to the CCPA:

Long-standing civil society resistance to fossil fuel extraction and transportation—built over 20 years and met with multiple key successes—has moved toward implementing a just transition. There is now an active province-wide public debate on energy transition and its social and ecological dimensions.

Movements take time. And one that challenges New Brunswick’s energy sector is unlikely to appear overnight. But what if there is no viable alternative to grassroots committees leading in the green energy transition?
A Conflict of Visions

The CCPA report outlines two paths to a green energy transition: a localist and a technocentric approach.

The localist approach seeks to empower communities and minimize the ecological impact of industrial scale solar and wind farms. Proponents champion focusing on communities’ needs through small, local, efficient projects that put control and power in their own hands while reducing the need for “emission-generating commodity imports.”

Supporters of the technocentric approach feel the urgency of the climate crisis as deeply and sincerely as the localists, but also stress corporate incentives and tax breaks for those creating energy-efficient and energy-producing technologies and building them en masse.

Sapinski argues that a technocentric approach is not only less effective in reducing emissions but could precipitate a kind of capitalism lock-in. When asked about large-scale wind farms, for example, Sapinski said he’s against such projects because it’s “usually large transnational companies that own and operate them, so they get the income.” Local communities have little to gain.

Sapinski added that it’s not that wind-generated power itself is unfavorable, but corporate-owned wind farms wrest agency from ordinary people. It is this concentration of wealth and power which is to be opposed. He gave the example of a case in New Brunswick, on Lamèque Island, where a local co-op and Spanish energy company, ACCIONA, jointly own a new small-scale wind farm. “[The co-op] gets 200 grand a year from the wind farm. It’s a very small part of the profits, but they get something.” Not much, but perhaps a start.

While many, like Sapinski, oppose New Brunswick’s current hydrogen-based energy plan, not all are as convinced the climate crisis necessitates a purely localist transition. Emberger is less insistent on how the green transition should occur. He explained to NPQ that NBASGA is an alliance encompassing groups of many types, which naturally have their own views, ideas, and agendas.

As such, NBASGA does not take an official position. While agreeing that the green energy transition should empower communities and minimize ecological impact, Emberger says, they “recognize that in order to meet the climate challenge that some solutions will require the involvement of governments—either because of the size, complexity, speed and expense of the solution, or simply as a matter of regulatory necessity, enabling legislation and public persuasion.”
Challenging Existing Fossil Fuel Infrastructure

As the movement against shale gas demonstrates, New Brunswick has the social infrastructure to challenge new fossil fuel projects as they emerge. In itself, this is a striking achievement, considering the popular support for new extractive projects in similarly sized American states. North Dakota, whose population is nearly equal to New Brunswick’s, increased its crude oil production by 260 percent between 2010 and 2023, with an explicit social license, reflected in the Republican Party’s political dominance in the region.

But where New Brunswick activists lag behind other provinces is in their challenge to existing fossil fuel infrastructure. Higgs, the province’s premier, is a former senior executive at Irving Oil.

Until recently, the Irving family held a monopoly on virtually all the local newspapers in New Brunswick. They recently sold their media company, Brunswick News, to Postmedia, which shares the same pro-business, pro-oil editorial views.

The Irvings are certainly divisive, but they are tacitly accepted by most New Brunswickers. The family is estimated to employ roughly one in 12 people in the province—if you do not work for the Irvings yourself, someone close to you does. How does one challenge the proprietors of fossil fuel infrastructure when the prospect of social and economic ruin looms?

This is where consideration of how a green energy transition is to occur becomes critical.

A technocentric approach threatens to abet the trope of the coastal elites—out of touch with the rural, small-town masses—who close manufacturing plants, refineries, and drilling sites to build often-despised renewable energy infrastructure.

A localist approach, by contrast, seeks to empower local communities by finding climate solutions suited to their unique needs. These transitions are more likely to involve smaller-scale, locally owned energy production infrastructure, improvements in public transport, efficient urban planning, and improved energy efficiency in houses. And citizens are assured that there will be opportunities to live decent, healthy lives during and after the green transition.

Empowered to make choices about the future of their community, people will be less inclined to turn toward reactionary, authoritarian politicians. The fact that so many need convincing of the gravity of the climate crisis is deeply unsettling. Local empowerment, in short, can be a powerful antidote to climate denialism.

What must be more carefully considered by the vanguard of the green energy transition—scientists, activists, and ordinary citizens—is the need to address climate and economic justice together. How we build a green economy matters. Empowerment, cooperation, and a rejection of mass, technological nonsolutions—that is the path to a greener, fairer, and healthier world that benefits all of us.



Duncan Murray is a writer and graduate student at the University of British Columbia.

Canada Needs a Degrowth Green New Deal: A Response to Richard Sandbrook

By Vlad Bunea

August 26, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Art by Jessica Perlstein. This piece was created as concept artwork for a film based off of the novel The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk.

When I hear phrases like “degrowth is just not politically or economically feasible” (1) I suspect a combination of the following: ignorance about degrowth, malicious intent, selfish protection of privileges, lack of empathy, elitist arrogance, or just flawed analysis.

It doesn’t take much effort to recognize that green growth and ecomodernism are utter delusions. See some debates here: 1, 2, 3, and a funny sketch. They claim we can innovate our way out of the climate crises, social crises, political crises. Over and over again it has been proven that disconnecting economic growth from ecological damage cannot happen fast enough in absolute terms (1). Considering that we have breached six of the nine planetary boundaries, we do not have time to fool around, as a society, if we want to avoid collapse of economies and large-scale tragic social unrest.

Why do some Canadians dismiss degrowth?

Since the 2012 Montreal Conference, degrowth has not seen much advance in the public opinion unlike in Europe that gave birth to the concept. Is it because Canadians are so in love with their oversized houses, cottages, SUVs, lawn mowers, golf courses, spending sprees, stock portfolios, the 200k+ salary plus bonuses? Is it because Canadians are afraid not to upset the Americans? Is it because the Atlas Network has utter domination over public narratives? Is it the deeply ingrained fetish with meritocracy?

The honest answer is… we don’t know. We should not assume to know what all Canadians think about degrowth, about their ideal lifestyle, about how to increase wellbeing for everyone, about how to stop environmental destruction, about how to phase out capitalism.

Professor Richard Sandbrook writes: “we must rapidly make a green energy transition. This transition cannot happen unless people, including those employed in fossil fuel industries, see a better future at the end.” (1) Correct! That is what degrowth can do for everyone, including fossil fuel workers. One should not dismiss the word degrowth itself simply because of perceptions about how the syllable “de” rings in the ears of the growth-obsessed elites.

How about we unpack what degrowth actually proposes? A review of degrowth policy proposals found 530 different proposals, split into 13 policy themes. The most interesting proposals actually aim to dismantle capitalism, by dealing with fundamental constructions: the definition of property, the need for rationing and material caps on production and consumption, the fair and just amount of minimum and maximum wealth, the inequality of the ecological footprint of individuals and nations, the introduction of economic democracy which is absent under capitalism, the massive expansion of human rights from housing to universal basic services. Who can say no to this?!

This year, in an informal setting organized by Justice4Workers, I asked about three dozen Canadians, middle class and working class, what they thought about: (1) making housing a human right, namely nationalizing the for-profit housing, which would literally phase out price-gouging landlords, and then making residents equal owners in housing coops, all this to solve the housing crisis without relying only on market solutions, and (2) having a maximum wealth limit of ten million dollars. The answers I received? Unanimous support for both policy proposals, which by the way, are advanced by degrowth scholars and activists. Earlier this year, in a debate at University of Toronto where I defended degrowth against green growth, a whopping 80% of audience members (roughly 50 people) supported degrowth. Does this not make degrowth very politically acceptable? Can we remember how politically acceptable was the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, the weekend, the 8-hour workday, paid vacation, paid family leave, civil rights, marriage equality?

Richard Sandbrook writes: “A green new deal could be more effective at delivering positive ecological change than green growth and would likely be more feasible in the short-term than a degrowth model.” Okay, we know that green growth is rubbish. When we talk about a green new deal, what are we actually talking about? What are the policies proposed under a so-called capitalist-friendly green new deal?

The heart of the matter

Some folks believe that degrowth is desirable but improbable, and we can have a radical green new deal and get to keep capitalism, at the same time. Ah, have your cake and eat it too? We have heard about this before.

Hold on, but what do we mean by capitalism? Is it about free markets, free enterprise, private ownership of the means of production? What is at stake here, that we are so afraid of demonizing capitalism for all its crimes? What are the quiet parts not said out loud?

The heart of the matter is the elitist, inhumane, exploitative, unjust, unfair, unstable, amoral, immoral, sociopathic, hubristic, exclusive, egregious, effluent design of capitalism. The link between property (equity shares) and power (ability to dictate decisions) in corporations is proportional, therefore profoundly anti-democratic. You have one share, you have one vote. Employees who do not own shares have no voice in how the company is ought to be run, how much to produce, what to produce, how to set the prices, who gets paid and how much, who gets to be a boss, how profits are shared. This doctrine of proportionality must be phased out and replaced with a doctrine along the lines of power by equal sentience. That is if we want to progress as a civilization.

How on Earth can we keep growing the material economy and satisfy the design of capitalism? If we agree that we cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet, and that capitalism cannot exist without the profit incentive (aka growth), should we then not bite the bullet, be honest, and say that capitalism must be phased out using degrowth policies, so we can phase in a new economic system that provides wellbeing for everyone?

What would a degrowth green new deal look like for Canada

Of course, degrowth advocates for the phasing out of capitalism. No doubt about that. Degrowth aims at the heart of capitalism, its undemocratic structures. There is nothing special about Canada, in terms of how asset managers, investment bankers, stock brokers, venture capitalists conduct their affairs. What is specific about Canada is an innate cultural deference to the United States, a superficial mentality of cultural-geographical isolationism from the rest of the world which comes with the arrogance that fossil fuels can be extracted in Alberta and elsewhere with impunity, entitlement over the lands that were stolen from the First Nations, and all too often ignorance about the plunder of labour, energy, and resources that happens in the majority world (often known as the Global South) to sustain shameless sprawl and consumerism here.

So, let’s do a degrowth radical green new deal in Canada. We begin with permanent nationwide Citizens Assemblies that would be tasked to provide answers to the following questions and more:What is the fair amount for a maximum wealth limit for all Canadians?
What is the procedure to establish housing as a human right?
How can we protect the entire biosphere, of which we are all members, against the interest of profit-seekers?
How can we establish a job guarantee program that eliminates unemployment, creates well paid, decent, necessary jobs for all those who want it?
How much should the maximum income, or maximum wage gap be?
How can we expand public transportation nationwide, and make it free, sustainable, and ultra-accessible?
How can we phase out the stock market while maintaining fair value of pensions and savings, to build real value in the economy that is connected with the physical world?
How can we build sustainable provisioning systems for healthy food and essential products?
How can we phase in economic democracy, and phase out the profit motive?
How can we pay for our colonial responsibility to contribute to global climate and social justice?

This would be just the beginning. We will know what the entire country actually believes, once we engage all Canadians in the process. We will have crowd-sourced policies to back up the public sentiment. Whatever government will occupy Parliament Hill in Ottawa, they will be forced to listen, and execute the will of Canadians.

We should also remember that there is big public support for this kind of transformation, worldwide: In the world’s largest standalone survey on climate change, 72% of people globally said they want their country to move away from fossil fuels to clean energy quickly; 62% of Canadians said their country needs to give more help to poorer countries to address climate change; 47% of Canadians are more worried, and 40% about the same worried about climate change, compared to last year.
A survey of people in 34 European countries found that, on average, 61% of people favour post-growth. That is one way of saying degrowth, without saying it.
A survey study done by the German Environment Agency found that 88% agree that “we must find ways of living well regardless of economic growth”, and 77% agree that “there are natural limits to growth, and we went beyond them.
70% of more than 10,000 people surveyed in 29 high-income and middle-income countries believe that “overconsumption is putting our planet and society at risk”; 65% believe that “our society would be better off if people shared more and owned less”.
A study exploring two survey datasets found that 61% of the Spanish public hold growth-critical positions (agrowth or degrowth), with less than one-third of respondents in the survey expressing support for green growth.
A responsible consumption survey found that 52% of French people believed that “we need to review all or part of our economic model and get away from the myth of infinite growth”.
Poll shows that 81% of people in Britain believe that the prime objective of the government should be to secure “the greatest happiness” for people rather than “the greatest wealth”.
Two in three people across 17 G20 countries surveyed (68%) agree that the way the economy works should prioritise the health and wellbeing of people and nature, rather than focusing solely on profit and increasing wealth.
Another French study found that 67% of respondents had a “favourable” or “quite favourable” opinion of the term “degrowth”. Importantly, people from all the political spectrum had a majority favourable opinion of “degrowth” (86% for the far left and 59% for the far right).

Degrowth, post-capitalism are actually very popular among scholars and citizens: a survey of nearly 500 sustainability scholars found that 77% call for post-growth pathways in high-income countries; a study of European citizens’ assemblies found that sufficiency policies enjoy very high approval rates (93%); a survey shows that a majority of people around the world (56%) agree with the statement “Capitalism does more harm than good”, in France it is 69%, in India it is 74%; a 2018 poll shows that 70% of US citizens believe that “environmental protection is more important than economic growth” – how about that!

When are we actually going to talk to all Canadians about what they actually think, instead of jumping to opinions that degrowth is not politically feasible?
Dear Canadians, don’t be afraid of degrowth. That syllable “de” is also in front of beautiful words, like democracy, decent, delicious. Degrowth is the path from crisis to wellbeing. Once you realize that infinity (the wet desire of growth-seeking capitalism) cannot fit into finitude (Planet Earth) you will suddenly have agency to agree that capitalism must go, so we can phase in sustainable wellbeing for everyone, forever.


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Vlad Bunea
Vlad Bunea is a video essayist, economist, author, and activist based in Toronto. He is a founding member of Degrowth Collective and the International Degrowth Network. His most recent book is The Urban Dictionary of Very Late Capitalism, and his upcoming book is Degrowth of Humans and Sheep.

Degrowth Aims to Achieve ‘Frugal Abundance’

By Adrien Plomteux

August 26, 2024

Source: Resilience

Image from the 'Dear Alice' Decommodified Edition by Waffle to the Left

Degrowth is about building societies in which everyone is rich – without much material. It is a desirable project to strive for.

For critics, degrowth is not very appealing. According to them, it means impoverishment, restraint, scarcity, austerity or recession. It is seen as a project to reduce the overall prosperity of individuals and societies.

In contrast, in a recently published academic article, I argue that degrowth aims to achieve abundance, prosperity and richness. Other degrowth advocates have reached a similar conclusion, but here I claim that it first requires rethinking the dominant meaning of abundance.

It is impossible to promise everyone to achieve high levels of consumption. Indeed, it would lead to environmental and societal catastrophes. It would also be extremely unfair, as those most suffering from environmental degradation are already the most marginalised.

Instead, degrowth aims to achieve an abundance that does not entail high levels of consumption: a ‘frugal abundance’.
Challenging the myth of abundance through high consumption and production

Of course, abundance from a degrowth perspective requires the fulfilment of the basic material necessities. But it also aims to satisfy non-material aspects of life such as having many friends, a thriving environment, a lot of free time, deep relationships, plenty of passions, a healthy life, a thorough sense of purpose and high moral standards, among others.

The terms ‘prosperity’, ‘richness’ and ‘abundance’ have not always referred to high levels of material consumption and production. In the recent past, they also brought to mind a general sense of flourishing – it still partly does so for many. These terms alluded to morality, freedom, time, brotherhood, trust or wisdom.

Similarly, ‘frugality’ has not always been associated with restraint. Its etymology traces back to the Latin word frux, which means fruit, profit, or value. In this context, frugality relate to abundance.

By putting together two words that intuitively seem contradictory, the phrase ‘frugal abundance’ shocks and causes interrogations. As such, it makes us question what is important in life. For instance, is it to have the best car and the newest smartphone or is it to be happy? Is it to have a high-paid job or is it to spend time with loved ones and enjoy the beauties of nature?

By doing so, ‘frugal abundance’ challenges one of the most rooted myths of our times: that a good life and prosperity require high levels of consumption and production.
Conceptualising frugal abundance

The expression ‘frugal abundance’ intuitively refers to the idea of being rich without much. It is already used in degrowth spheres, but often as a catchphrase without really explaining what it means. I do so in the article mentioned above.

In a nutshell, I give three conditions for societies to achieve frugal abundance. First, everyone has a good life. Then, consumption is low enough to avoid large environmental impacts and so that everyone has enough resources to thrive. In short, it should enable global ecological and social justice. Finally, the material wants of everyone are satisfied.

Under these three conditions, societies achieve abundance because individuals have a good life and do not feel that they are lacking material consumption. Nevertheless, this abundance is frugal because the population does not consume much.

Credit: Plomteux (2024).
Some societies approach(ed) frugal abundance

Several ancient and still-existing societies are or have been close to reaching these three conditions. For instance, some communities in the Global South are happier than the happiest countries referenced in the World Happiness Report. Some indigenous societies like the Maasai and the Inughuit also seem satisfied with their material conditions even if they do not have much from Western standards.

The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins provided similar evidence in his famous 1960s’ essay The Original Affluent Society. He studied some societies which were able to fulfil their material desires without much consumption and production. He stated that they “enjoy an unparalleled material plenty – with a low standard of living”.

It is important not to romanticise these societies, but they can provide inspiration to build more sustainable and just futures. Moreover, they are or were close to frugal abundance not because they are ‘simple’, but because they have been able to create cultures and societal organisations in which the material wants of the population are finite and satisfied without much.

In contrast, most individuals in the so-called ‘rich countries’ are constantly dissatisfied with what they have and what they consume. Many also fail to fulfil the immaterial aspects of abundance, given the high levels of mental health issues and loneliness. From this perspective, many so-called ‘rich’ people and societies are actually poor. However, by creating the right societal organisations and cultures, our societies could achieve this abundance.

Degrowth is a radical project which contends that it is necessary to challenge the major social structures of our times, such as capitalism, imperialism and patriarchy in order to build societies based on sustainability, justice, care, simple living, democracy and emancipation.

Achieving degrowth objectives will certainly not be easy, but seeing the project as desirable is a precondition for any meaningful change in this direction. By associating degrowth with abundance, the societal project of degrowth becomes appealing and worth striving for.


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Adrien Plomteux

I am a researcher-activist involved in the degrowth movement. I am a member of the editorial collective of the Degrowth journal and a founding member of Degrowth London. My PhD research centres on the concept of ‘frugal abundance’, which applies to societies in which everyone lives well without consuming too much. I am carrying out participatory and mixed method research with rural and indigenous communities in Kenya and Iceland to better understand what frugal abundance means for them, how it works in practice and how they think that this way of life could flourish elsewhere. I have previously worked in NGOs on social-environmental topics after transitioning from mathematics to the social sciences.

 

Sacred Economics: Shylock as Anti-Christ

by Eric Walberg / August 7th, 2024

Money vs the gift
Sacred Economics 100
Deconstructing the Story of Self/ the World
Life without prisons

Marx’s ‘death knell’ of capitalism, revolution, was the first answer to capitalism’s ills, after which the state would wither away, and we would live in a utopian bliss. The 20th century put paid to that vision, as revolution, as most revolutions do, disappointed, mostly unravelled, and predatory capitalism took hold again. Are we stuck with a system that’s quickly leading us to the cliff edge with seemingly no turning back?

Happily, no, and happily no need for messy revolution, though there is already growing hardship from (and growing resistance to) our economic system’s gross injustices, insanities. The transition to a new economic logic is already underway, and we can all help nurse it into reality. In Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in the Age of Transition (2021), Charles Eisenstein draws on anthropology and the prophetic writings of 20th century social critics to provide the way, hidden in plain sight. To return to the gift economy, to get rid of usury, debt money. For 90% of human history, that was how we lived, not in a mindset of artificial scarcity, where even the wealthiest pinch pennies, but one of abundance, where selfishness was despised, and ‘trade’ was a way of fostering peace, not ‘war by other means’.

Basically an ecological communism, where moneyS are based on real wealth and prices include all the environmental costs of your product. We have to make most of nature (land, water, air) a ‘commons’ again, as in feudal times when most land was commons, under the authority of lords but not an alienable commodity to be bought or sold.

Eisenstein picks up where Marx left off, or rather he takes out the rhetorical flourishes and puts the economy back into ecology, and in the process, establishes the underlying laws of the human-nature nexus. The Law of Return the most fundamental: Everything you consume is consumed somewhere else in nature. The uroboros. Pioneer species pave the way for keystone species, which provide microniches for other species and circle back to benefit pioneer species as they move into new territories. Actually a tautology but one that we’ve ignored until violating its logic has brought us to the brink of catastrophe.

Uroboros vs Sorcerer’s apprenticeMoney vs the gift

First, chuck out your guns-and-butter Eco 101 text. We must look at not-so-innocent words like money, interest, profit, investment, goods&services, and put them to work for us and the world, not against us and the world.

The real human economy for at least 100,000 years was a gift economy, with daily life needs, division of labor, ensured through tradition rather than a punch-clock and cash. Money was originally used ceremonially, in a complex system of exchange to ensure trust between tribes, and as tribute. Social currencies were for consolidating relations (marriages, funerals, blood money, intertribal peace).

With the rise of agriculture, money transformed, secularized, as a form of credit (tallies of loans denominated in common unit of account, periodically settled by deliver of commodities). This conflation quickly led to debt peonage i.e., slavery, and the demotion of women. Behind every ledger is a man with a sword/gun. The world was no longer sacred, and man part of it, worshipping it. Our spiritual connection with nature was sundered, our spirit thin and now identified with gold-as-fetish, not with God. A king-god must be carried aloft, high above lowly earth. Man became divorced from nature, culminating in Descartes’ lonely ‘I’. We were already transforming nature 4,000 years ago, creating empires, replacing ‘sinless’ God with ‘sinless’ gold, a lethal case of misplaced concreteness.

This ushered in the Age of Separation – spirit-matter, mind-body, human-nature. This Story of Self/ World, the Ascent of Humanity,¹ as Eisenstein called his earlier book dealing with this separation. It starts with the farming virtues of hard work, thrift, accumulation, but also the darker master-slave relation where slaves were often debtors who would never be able to pay. That isn’t in the Storybooks. Instead we have the story of isolated individuals rationally maximizing ‘utility’ (pleasure, which is still unmeasurable).

This Story as depicted in economics textbooks makes a bizarre kind of sense in a scientistic, timeless Newtonian world of atoms, but it has nothing to do with how we live our lives. What is it but a denial of spirituality, embodied mind, humanity itself? So the ‘ascent’ is a delusional one from the start, actually the opposite, as we see all around us today. If this is the crowning achievement of science, we would be healthier, happier in some (almost any) precapitalist society, absent money, certainly absent money as a hoarded store-of-value, and interest, a pointless and dangerous attempt to annihilate time-space. Of course, this is impossible. We live in space-time. You can’t go back in time, and the ‘space’ is already taken. We are long overdue for a Story that reflects us-in-the-world. Heidegger calls that dasein.

Reimagining our economy means first of all gaining control over our simple, elegant, now global money system which lets you do everything, everywhere, all at once. i.e., the antithesis of ceremonial money, which was attached to time, place, giver and receiver, as part of reinforcing that traditional way of life, with money as a sacred binding force. Now, instead of a simple, functional broom, we have the sorcerer’s apprentice. A hammer to kill a fly. Unnecessary power over everything, everywhere, all at once, which imprisons us in unreal fantasies and requires prisons for trigger-happy types.

Key reforms immediately suggest themselves:

• Return us to localized, ritualized methods of exchange. Reinvent the fly swatter to deal with fly problems. That looks ridiculous to our individualistic mindset, captivated by the supercharged power of money, gold-as-god. Most precapitalist societies worshipped the sun as god, or all of nature. What we can call ‘the collective West’, formerly the imperialist power, latched on to gold as the ideal money by the 15th century, when Europeans travelled the Earth, invading and stealing wealth, especially gold, wherever it was found. That obsession marks the great divide in human history, total war of conquest of the planet, fittingly symbolized by gold. Inert, eternal, beautiful, heavy (i.e., important).

• Following on the Law of Return, internalize all costs of whatever you produce/ consume. Right down to working conditions in the DVD factory in Bangladesh if that’s where your DVD player is made. Immediately it is clear that the majority of what we now produce and consume won’t make sense anymore. You will produce and consume more and more locally as the Age of Transition gets under way.

Eisenstein (and Keynes) argue that the short reign of gold as THE currency (1870–1932 and 1944–1971) was perhaps a necessary stage in our maturing as a species, but that it has outlived its purpose and, as we have witnessed over the past century, has already been replaced, though it is still a totem, a fetish that we secretly worship, many convinced that a return to the gold standard would solve all our problems. The fetishism is now secularized and represents the vast fortunes of Wall Street as if in a separate, disembodied realm. We need to take money off its pedestal, to invent new forms of money that will encourage good hoarding (of the commons) not the bad version (destruction of the commons).

The conquerors laughed at the cowrie shells that Polynesians carried thousands of miles by canoe to ‘trade’, seemingly senselessly, with other tribes. Or the wampum beads of Turtle Island natives. Even the most warlike tribes lived more or less peacefully, with their interactions centered on this ritual giving, before ‘we’ arrived with guns and declared total war of conquest on the world, inspired by gold.

It proved easy to unravel the complex, ritualistic societies outside Europe, once the Europeans launched their world war in search of gold for their very special and lethal money. ‘We’ ruined the complex web of world culture (just like we destroyed the anti-capitalist Soviet Union), and are quickly ruining what’s left of nature and now humanity itself, with total all-out war (not our low-grade ‘cold wars’) threatening like a Damocles sword over all our heads. And it is our very bloody form of money, or rather its pretend substitute, electronic money) that now governs a godless, global reality on the brink. Goethe’s (and Disney’s) sorcerer’s apprentice.

But our neurotic fetish is also responsible (everything is connected and money has been our hammer for everything) for the explosion of knowledge in the past five centuries. As we clear-cut the precious legacy of the our social evolution, the dazzling mini-civilizations everywhere on Earth, our scribes, anthropologists (or better, morticians) document(ed) the fast-dying remains of precapitalist civilizations, their (to us) bizarre customs, revealing discoveries about precapitalist societies every bit as marvelous as the potato, rubber trees and other gifts. ‘We’ quickly adopted the potatoes etc as they were profitable, ‘produced’ more gold, adapted to our industrial ‘civilization’, and wiped out the giver, the keeper of that miracle food.

As for the cultural wealth of those other civilizations, who cares? If they don’t make more gold, they are the enemy to be conquered or eliminated. Even the great thinkers of the 19th century, Hegel, Darwin, Marx assumed that these ‘primitive’ societies would be wiped out. But thanks to our morticians, we have salvaged some of what we realize now are precious gifts from the past. Most important of these human cultural artifacts is the gift culture, the social glue that let humanity prosper for millennia with destroying their world, Earth.

We must return to the gift, our traditional way of relating to nature and each other, but at a higher level. Thatcher’s TINA. There is no alternative. Just as tribes and nations have a cyclical rise and fall and, transformed, rise again as a new civilization, so does mankind’s trajectory from hunter-gatherer to agriculture to industry to information age, also have a grand overarching cycle, returning to the natural order after our spectacular but lethal bursts of creative innovation, which took us so far from the natural order.

Sacred Economics 100

Law: Everything is sacred. In the first place, money. Money has magical qualities, the power to alter human behavior and coordinate human activity. The simplest way to inspire belief is to appeal to our instinct of self preservation, ‘me first’. So ‘greed’ is a kind of default attribute for money, a lowest-common-denominator money, supposedly appealing to our natural state. Like a person stuck at the level of a two-year-old, ‘ME!’ is then our belief system, which our money reflects, urging us to hoard, take by force.² And what better than using an inert metal that never decays? So gold.

But this was much later. Hunter-gatherers actually grew up without gold, not stuck at the ‘terrible twos’, never ‘greedy’. Their money was constantly exchanged as part of their foreign relations. They couldn’t hoard anything and didn’t need to. Any accumulation was seasonal. They lived in abundance and shared everything, treated everything as a gift, promoting generosity and gratitude, not greed and war. So they had no need of this base money, our money.

We have learned that early humans did not see themselves as apart, above nature. They were part of a complex world of man-nature, matter-spirit, where everything is sacred. Everything. including our consciousness is a gift. For Muslims this is our God-given nature, fitra. We dismiss this worldview of the world as a huge gift as a charming metaphor, but the gifters were serious.

For atheists this is a problem. Who to thank? For me, my existence alone is enough proof of a higher order reality. If I’m right, then I should be thanking God every second of the day and night. Sufis strive for that mindset. For Muslims, praying 5 times a day is a religious duty. And the implication is you must treat every gift with respect. Use it and leave nature as rich and beautiful as it was before. So the Alberta tarsands, a huge toxic wound on the beautiful gift of the land and resources, is sacrilege. The guilty parties are traitors to our heritage and deserve the highest punishment. Instead, we laud them and give them billions of dollars to poison more of our gifts. ARGH.

Some things are more sacred than others (thunderstorms, waterfalls, rainbows, orchids), that were there to remind us of the sacredness of all things. With the rise of agriculture and greed money, we became progressively more divorced from nature, culminating in our modern economy, where gold is valued above all else, though, apart from sitting in vaults, hoarded for its magically quality, it is useful only as ornament. Ditto mankind as a kind of secular embodiment of gold, the supreme living creature as ‘golden boy’, is valued above all else to the point of destroying all else.

The rot really set in with Descartes’ disembodied soul, divorced from the body, observing but not participating in the world, which is run by a robotic Newtonian watchmaker god. As if Descartes was intuiting what the best Story of the Self was for our Story of the World, modern capitalism, governed by the abstract, now secular spirit, money. Your soul, mind is outside of science and not that interesting in a materialist, secular world anyway.

Shakespeare, writing at the birth of the new secular, capitalist order, made the usurer Shylock the archetype for the new man of finance: cruel, ruthless, paranoid, greedy. Shakespeare’s most compelling villain. The Merchant of Venice is the only play focusing on the economics of society, on an abstract idea, usury. Shylock loses everything including his daughter, who steals her inheritance and converts to Christianity. The play was problematic from the start, Jessica seen as a schemer betraying her father. Philosemitism runs deep in Britain, a product of the Protestant Reformation and the condoning of usury as good for business.

Shakespeare wanted us to detest the usurer, but already usury was an integral part of the now accelerating commercial and industrial revolutions. His audiences had usurers among them, and the immortal words of Shylock and Portia calling for tolerance and mercy have been emphasized, without Shakespeare’s anti-capitalist message. It took Marx and a century of anti-capitalist revolution for Jessica’s rejection of Shylock’s clear villainy to be appreciated for what it is, Shakespeare’s genius at penetrating to the heart of the new order and warning us. The answer is there in the rejection of usury, the demonetization of hoarded wealth, i.e., Jessica’s jewels revert to baubles, not capital, Christianity (still outlawing usury in the 17th century) the already ineffectual antidote to the usury of the Jew.

Paradox: Even as we realize the evil of usury/ interest, we outlaw criticism of Jewry for its adoption of usury as the basis of Jewish world power, such is the power of money. It force-feeds us illusions and forces us to spout lies to maintain the system. For all that, The Merchant of Venice is Shakespeare’s most popular play in Israel. (Only Jews in their Jewish state are free to be ‘anti-semitic’.)

Marx argued that money has become a world power, and, as the practical Jewish spirit, has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations, which became the spirit of the capitalist age. A Jew himself, he identified the Jewish practice of usury as the source of the evils of the day, and assumed Jews would disappear as a persecuted race once usury was abolished. He wrote before the secrets of past civilizations had been documented and jumped to ‘revolution’ and a very abstract communism as the one-size-fits-all answer. Another hammer to kill a fly.

We have built our lives as autonomous individuals worshipping this secular, material god, rather than the traditional spiritual god. We see the world crumbling before our eyes, we know the culprit, but, like a druggie, we just keep looking for our next fix, our disembodied soul no help at all.

So first, rewrite our economic textbooks, demystifying money. Money’s ‘natural’ purpose is to connect human gifts to human needs. Now money is based on artificial scarcity and rationality. Nothing about gifts, abundance. Our thinking too must change, though the change is just a reversion to our naturally/ socially evolved generosity and gratitude, adult emotions that we have suppressed as we live out our ‘terrible twos’, still dressed in diapers, unable to metabolize what we take from nature in a civilized way.

Deconstructing the Story of Self/ the World

Our Story of Self as autonomous individuals governed by instinct (mistakenly called greed) breaks down with observed reality. We are all found under the proverbial cabbage leaf. Our lives are given to us. A gift. Let that sink in. We are walking miracles! So our default is gratitude. Even in our Age of Separation, we still honor our parents for the gift of life, which we can never repay in money. That is the truth of our existence.

I still need to pause and reread that. We are so totally programmed to blot out that essential truth. Our new Story of the Self and consequently our Story of the World must start there. Life as a gift, ‘the gift of life’, gratitude to parents, responsibility to pass on the gift of life and the gifts of nature to the next generation (natives think in terms of seven generations). No wonder ancient religious thinkers said God made the world, and gave it to us to enjoy, i.e., gave us reflective consciousness. So the basic ‘units of account’ in economics should be humility and gratitude not selfishness and egotism.

The Big Bang is like God’s humongous gift – everything for nothing. As if the universe was created for us to see and reflect on (and be thankful for). Does any of this sound like today’s Eco 101? It starts with separate selves competing for scarce resources to maximize self-interest. Our bankers create money and divvy it out to profit-maximizers, so that we can maximize our utility in this world of efficiency.

This turns out to be as depressing and destructive as it sounds. It is a neurosis-inducing Story of the People, robotic, defying our natural emotions. Ditto with the Story of the World, on the surface rational and profitable, but with scarcity and fear lurking at the unconscious level. Barter and comparative advantage in a Hobbesian brutish and nasty world. New stories, please!

Rule of the gift: What comes to you is not kept for oneself unless one cannot do without it.

Rule of the gift: Everything is related, so economic relations are mutual, we always owe someone/ nature for our taking. Toaripi, Arabic, Chinese, German, Japanese have only one word for borrowing/ lending. The Arabic din means religion and debt. The Lord’s prayer used to be ‘forgive us our debts, as we forgive other’ until capitalism got a hold of it and changed that to ‘trespasses’.

Modern money transaction are closed, no obligation, at most a ‘money-back’ guarantee, but the buck stops there. The gift is open-ended, a relationship between participants. With a gift, you give some of yourself. Now you are just sell a ‘good’, which could be bad, and which has nothing to do with you.

Even today we go all soft in ceremonies of giving presents, without the hard edge of money involved. The gift still embodies something special that money kills – the sense of uniqueness and relatedness (the self expanding to whole community) that we all know we are, not the diminished robotic self that buys and sells as the ‘greatest good’.

Law: In the money economy, more for me is less for you. Zero-sum game. In the gift economy: more for me is also more you. Positive-sum game. I.e., those who have give to those who need. Gifts cement the mystical reality of participation in something greater than oneself. Axioms of rational self-interest do not apply, as the self has expanded to include some of the other.

There is no need to distinguish between work and play, business and personal relationships. Think hunter-gatherer: you do what you have to each day which takes a few hours, all the time social networking, telling Stories. Work and play are one. Economics was linked to cosmology, religion, psyche. You, John, need x from me. So you give me wampum, which means: ‘John met the needs of others in the past and earned gratitude.’ So I can give John’s wampum later when I am gifted by someone. The Story of the gift. Now, instead of giving me wampum, I get money, which no longer satisfies the need-gratitude problem, which has no story behind it. There’s no one to thank, not even God. Today, especially not God.

When the division of labor exceeds the tribal or village level, there is the need to extend the range of our gifts. Yes, trade, progress. Comparative advantage. Eco 101. By facilitating trade, we reward efficiency in production. Money facilitates trade and should enrich life.

So what happened that turned trade-as-nice-novelty into a weapon of mass destruction, destroying entire nations through boycotts, enriching others obscenely? Now money is the source of anxiety, hardship, polarization of wealth. The US boycotts, sanctions a third of the world for daring to disobey orders, killing as many as actual warfare and bombing.

Paradox. Dollar bills still show deified presidents, ‘out of many one’, ‘in God we trust’. Not. We need a true Story of wholeness and harmony, return to the hunter-gatherer, our most successfully evolved social organism, at a higher level.

Our ‘gifts’, given by God have some of Him in them. Prometheus’s fire, the Apollonian gift of music, agriculture, all ‘made in His image’. We have the desire to develop those gifts and give from them (from Him) to the world. Nothing beats the joy of giving.³ You are playing God in the best sense. Rational self-interest does not apply in our interactions with others. Just our innate generosity. You can’t live a fulfilled life without developing those gifts, sharing them with others. But our gifts are mortgaged to the demands of money, survival. We fret about the ‘cost of living’, we are ruled by the specter of scarcity.

Where did this ‘scarcity’ in a world of plenty come from? It invaded our epistemology of i/ biology with ‘selfish genes’, ii/ socio-biology with competing selves. It is more a projection of our own capitalist culture of artificial scarcity than an understanding of nature. Recent advances in biology shows that nature gives primacy to cooperation, symbiosis, merging of organisms into larger wholes, with competition playing a secondary role. And there is no stasis in nature. Everything is always in motion, evolving, living/ dying. The world is alive.

Nature is both complex and radically simple. Human nature is the same. In nature headlong growth is sign of immature ecosystems, followed by renewed interdependency, symbiosis, cooperation, always returning, recycling of resources. Ditto human societies. We have lived through a few centuries of wild, uncontrolled exploitation of nature and this is coming to an end even as I write. Money is already frayed and will continue to unravel as our lives take on more and more the properties of gift, as we return to our true nature, our fitra. The economy will shrink, our lives will grow. What a rousing, cliff-hanger Story of Transition this will make.

Law: In a dynamic system, there is no equilibrium but a state of controlled disequilibrium, infinitely complex.

Life without prisons

Our Stories’ economics axioms: scarcity + rational maximization of self-interest. Result: Wealth makes you greedy. We need prisons to prevent greedy people from being too greedy.

Money’s basic function is to facilitate exchange, connect human gifts with needs, from each according to his ability to each according to her needs. That’s right. Communism. But also any religion worth its salt. And ‘we’ turned money into a corrosive agent of scarcity. Starvation a constant for much of the world, though there’s more than enough for everyone, and most people want to help, but can’t because there’s no money in it.

Indigenous Turtle Islanders from the start shook their heads at their dangerous visitors. They had no problem of greedy people (though the Europeans saw their disdain for things as sacrilegious), no need for prisons. None voluntarily joined the Europeans’ cruel, arbitrary society of violence and slavery. Many whites ‘went native’, enjoying the freedom and beauty of moneyless society and had to be dragged back or killed. No room for traitors.

Basically, capitalist society was/is a system of warfare, a zero-sum game where the natives lived life as a positive-sum game. Captured debtors and thieves like POWs, requiring prisons. Natives understood that if you have a good community, you don’t need prisons, or (today) a complicated maze of private daycare at $10,000+ a year (nice prisons to control your children).

Natives were so busy enjoying life, they don’t have time to get bored. No one got ‘bored’ before the word was invented in 1760 at the dawn of assembly lines, mass production urban ghettoes devoid of community, no contact at all with nature.

‘Bedouins can sit for hours in the desert, feeling the ripples of time, without being bored.’⁴ Boredom, the yearning for stimulation, distraction, for something (rather than a relation) to pass the time. Life is not about things, but relations. But we are isolated automatons in our Story of Self. We don’t need relations, but as a result we are stuck with things to soothe the existential pain of separation, lack of relations. Camus.

Now we get bored in an instant. We demand to be entertained. Reality is boring, alien. Media is more real.

As for economic growth, the mantra promising greater happiness, really just means the economy, the commons, life in general, is more and more monetized, colonized, producing lots of things to soothe us. But when everything is monetized, a scarcity of money makes everything scarce, even when drown in a sea of ‘goods’. Nothing has changed in the real world, but now you starve. Magic.

‘Evergreen’ container ship blocked Suez Canal for a week in 2021

From Perpetual sacrifice

by William Wordsworth

Men, maidens, youths,
mother and little children, boys and girls,
enter, and each the wonted task resumes
within this temple, where is offered up
to Gain, the master idol of the realm,
perpetual sacrifice.

Wow. Buddhism sees spiritual value in suffering, but that’s in pursuit of enlightenment. To commit someone to ‘perpetual sacrifice’, wage slavery, in the service of profit is about as low as you can go. We have reached the physical limits of our Stories, where abundance is cloaked in artificial scarcity, where the engine of growth is greed. How did our natural impulse of giving, generosity, turn into its opposite? Greed doesn’t make sense, even in the context of real scarcity. We naturally share especially in times of danger. We need scarcity to penetrate into our minds, emotions, so we will discard, repress our higher impulses, our social instincts, honed over millennia, in favor of the more primitive self-preservation instinct we are taught to call ‘greed’. Greed must be built into our Story of Self, and taught in schools and universities, so that there are no traitors to the cause.

Contrary to Eco 101 wishful thinking, there is no biological gene to maximize reproduction of a self-interested, economically rational actor. Greed is not written into our biology, but is a symptom of the perception of scarcity. In a psychology experiment a group of poor vs rich were given $1000 to share. Guess who is more generous? That’s right, the poor. You knew that ‘instinctively’, 2 times more generous! When you’re rich, anxiety is always there, scarcity just a step away. It’s not greed makes you wealthy, but wealth makes you greedy. I.e., they are so ‘invested’ in their wealth, they can’t let go. Pity poor Midas.

ENDNOTES:

• 1
  Charles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity: Civilization and the Human Sense of Self , p21, 2007.
• 2
  But children quickly move beyond that, naturally sharing when they’ve had enough.
• 3
  Readers joke I intentionally get lost on my biking adventures to feast on the selfless generosity of strangers.
• 4
  Ziauddin Sardar, Cyberspace as the darker side of the West, 2000.Facebook

Email

Eric Walberg is a journalist who worked in Uzbekistan and is now writing for Al-Ahram Weekly in Cairo. He is the author of From Postmodernism to Postsecularism and Postmodern Imperialism. His most recent book is Islamic Resistance to Imperialism. Read other articles by Eric, or visit Eric's website.

RIP

Falling tree fatally injures Alberta firefighter battling Jasper-area wildfire

CBC
Sat, 3 August 2024 


Smoke can be seen rising from a wildfire near Jasper, Alta., on Saturday. (Jasper National Park/Facebook - image credit)


A 24-year-old Calgary man is dead after being injured by a falling tree while fighting a wildfire northeast of Jasper, Alta.

According to the Jasper Wildfire Complex Unified Command, which is comprised of members of both Parks Canada and the municipality of Jasper, it happened around 2 p.m. MT Saturday.

The firefighter's crew provided first aid before Jasper National Park visitor safety specialists and the Alberta Wildfire unit used a wheeled stretcher to bring the 24-year-old firefighter to the nearest helipad, the unified command group said in a statement.

From there, he was flown to the Parks Canada operations compound in Jasper, where STARS air ambulance was waiting.

"Tragically, despite efforts of the first responders and STARS air ambulance team specialists, the injured firefighter did not survive and was pronounced deceased shortly after transfer to STARS," officials said.

The man — whom RCMP say was part of the Rocky Mountain House Fire Base — was among hundreds of firefighters who are in Alberta to fight the massive wildfires affecting the province.

"RCMP wish to express our heartfelt condolences to the family, friends and co-workers of the deceased," said Alberta RCMP in a release issued late on Saturday night.

Crews with Alberta Wildfire held a procession for the 24-year-old Sunday morning, lining up on either side of the road in the Jasper area to pay their respects as emergency vehicles drove by.

"Today we are mourning the loss of one of our own. An Alberta Wildfire crew member was fatally injured yesterday while responding to the wildfire in Jasper. This morning we stood heartbroken with our partners as a procession passed by," the provincial agency said in a social media post.

Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Services Mike Ellis said in a statement that the bus tours that were supposed to take place Sunday for Jasper residents to see the destruction in the town have been postponed by 24 hours "out of respect for the family, crew and all those impacted by this tragedy."

He said residents who had signed up for the tours were notified of the cancellation Saturday night.

"We are working to ensure supports are available for all those working in Jasper during this incredibly difficult time," Ellis said.

In a statement to CBC News, Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek expressed her sorrow over the firefighter's death.

"My heart is with the family and friends of the wildland firefighter who tragically lost his life while serving community in the Jasper wildfire. Calgarians grieve with those in the Rocky Mountain House Fire Base," she said.

Alberta's Forestry and Parks Minister Todd Loewen said in a social media post on X that he was devastated by the news.


The province says more than 700 firefighters are battling wildfires in Alberta, including more than 100 firefighters and support staff from Ontario, Quebec, PEI, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

The province says more than 700 firefighters are battling wildfires near Jasper, including more than 100 firefighters and support staff from Ontario, Quebec, P.E.I., New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. (@AlbertaWildfire/X)

"My heart goes out to the family and friends of this front-line hero who had a unwavering commitment to safeguarding our communities," he said.

"Our deepest condolences also go to his fire-line crew, the 700-person strong team working in Jasper and the larger Alberta Wildfire community. I know all of you have been deeply impacted by this loss. On behalf of all Albertans, we grieve this terrible news with you."

"We are profoundly saddened by the tragic loss of an Alberta wildland firefighter who gave their life today to protect our community. This dedicated person travelled to Jasper to help us, to help protect our town and our home," Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland said in a statement.

"Our hearts ache for their family, their loved ones and their comrades," Ireland said.

Premier Danielle Smith said on X Sunday morning she is deeply saddened about the death of the 24-year-old.

"Our hearts go out to their family and friends in this incredibly difficult time. We are forever grateful for the courageous wildland firefighters who risk their lives every day to protect others," she said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also released a statement about the firefighter's death.

"Heartbroken by the news that a firefighter has lost his life while battling the wildfires in Jasper. He served Albertans with unwavering bravery, and his loss is deeply felt," he said.

"I'm keeping his family, friends, and his fellow firefighters in my thoughts."

RCMP say Alberta's Occupational Health and Safety is investigating the death.

Falling trees can be extremely dangerous when battling against wildfires. It's been a year since Devyn Gale was killed by a cedar tree that fell on the 19-year-old while she was fighting a wildfire outside of Revelstoke, B.C.

A dangerous tree is brought down in the Municipality of Jasper on Wednesday, July 31, 2024.

A dangerous tree is brought down in the Municipality of Jasper on Wednesday. (Jasper National Park/Facebook)

The Jasper unified command statement said Saturday's incident highlights the dangerous nature of wildland firefighting and the hazards that crew members encounter every day.

"Every single person responding to the Jasper Wildfire Complex is in mourning today for our friend and colleague. The wildland fire community is small and every loss deeply impacts us all.

"We are eternally grateful for the personal sacrifices first responders offer to protect Canadians and their communities. Our hearts are with their family and friends in this difficult time."

Firefighter, 24, is first victim of huge west Canada blaze

AFP
Sun, 4 August 2024 

This August 3 2024 image obtained from the Jasper National Park in Canada, shows fire activity near Lake Edith (Handout)


A 24-year-old firefighter has died while battling a vast and still uncontrolled wildfire in western Canada, the federal police announced Sunday.

The man, whose name was not immediately released, became the first casualty of a huge fire near the beloved tourist town of Jasper in Alberta province. Last year's historically bad fire season claimed eight lives.

The victim, a Calgary native, suffered a serious injury Saturday afternoon when struck by a falling tree "while fighting an active fire northeast of Jasper," said a statement from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

He was transported, first by helicopter and then by air ambulance, to a hospital but was later declared dead, said Parks Canada, the federal agency that manages the national parks.

"Every single person responding to the Jasper Wildfire Complex is in mourning today for our friend and colleague," said a joint statement from Parks Canada and the town of Jasper posted on Facebook.

"The wildland fire community is small and every loss deeply impacts us all."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was "heartbroken" by the loss, adding on social media platform X that "he served Albertans with unwavering bravery, and his loss is deeply felt."

Several firefighting units paid homage to their fallen comrade Sunday morning in a vigil in the nearby town of Hinton.

Provincial authorities said they were investigating the circumstances surrounding the death.

Some 700 firefighters, including several from other countries, are now fighting the vast wildfire, which has burned some 34,000 hectares (84,000 acres).

Ignited two weeks ago by lightning in a region enduring severe drought, the fire destroyed a substantial part of the tourist city of Jasper, known as the jewel of a naturally beautiful region that draws 2.5 million tourists a year.

Still out of control, it is the largest fire to hit Jasper National Park in 100 years -- and it could burn for months more, the authorities say.

On Friday, the highway serving the city of Jasper was partly reopened to traffic, and authorities allowed evacuated residents traveling on chartered buses to come inspect their homes, conditions permitting.

No date has been announced for a full return to the city.

Last year saw a catastrophic number of wildfires in Canada, with 15 million hectares burned and more than 200,000 people evacuated.

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