Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts: A Defence Of Growth, Progress, Industry And Stuff, by Leigh Phillips
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Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts: A Defence Of Growth, Progress, Industry And Stuff, by Leigh Phillips
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Economic growth, progress, industry and, erm, stuff have all come in for a sharp kicking from the green left and beyond in recent years. Everyone from black-hoodied Starbucks window-smashers to farmers' market heirloom-tomato-mongers to Prince Charles himself seem to be embracing 'degrowth' and anti-consumerism, which is nothing less than a form of ecological austerity. Meanwhile, the back-to-the-land ideology and aesthetic of locally-woven organic carrot-pants, pathogen-encrusted compost toilets and civilisational collapse is hegemonic. Yet modernity is not the cause of climate change and the wider biocrisis. It is indeed capitalism that is the source of our environmental woes, but capitalism as a mode of production, not the fuzzy understanding of capitalism of Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Derrick Jensen, Paul Kingsnorth and their anarcho-liberal epigones as a sort of globalist corporate malfeasance. In combative and puckish style, science journalist Leigh Phillips marshals evidence from climate science, ecology, paleoanthropology, agronomy, microbiology, psychology, history, the philosophy of mathematics, and heterodox economics to argue that progressives must rediscover their historic, Promethean ambitions and counter this reactionary neo-Malthusian ideology that not only retards human flourishing, but won't save the planet anyway. We want to take over the machine and run it rationally, not turn the machine off.
Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts: A Defence Of Growth, Progress, Industry And Stuff, by Leigh Phillips- Amazon Sales Rank: #1022194 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-30
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.61" h x .63" w x 5.39" l, .80 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 304 pages
Review "In an age of wilting ambition and self-imposed frugality, Leigh Phillips has written an important rallying cry for both the desirability and possibility of a radically better future. Against the austerity of neoliberalism and the austere life of the 'small is beautiful' crowd, Phillips reasserts our capacity to go beyond parochial constraints. This is a work that deserves to be read widely." - Nick Srnicek, co-author of Inventing the Future and the Accelerationist Manifesto"As erudite as it is justifiably polemical. Leigh Phillips takes no prisoners. The book should be titled "Manifesto for the Green Jacobins", and read in the spirit of The Holy Family, Or a Critique of Critical Criticism about the Bauers. A refreshing antidote to technological pessimism. Cures intellectual drowsiness." - Calestous Juma, Director of the Science, Technology and Globalization Project at the Havard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
About the Author Leigh Phillips is a science and EU affairs journalist who has written for Nature, the Guardian, the New Statesman, and Jacobin.
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Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful. Missed some great opportunities, didn't do his homework. By Aaron V I read this book to get an idea of what some valid Marxist/leftist responses would be to the growing degrowth movement.However, I was seriously disappointed.While the book does provide a good survey of environmental issues, on the whole, the analysis fails to be self-consistent.Apart from many nit-picky problems I could highlight (at a rate of about 2 per page--which can get draining) I had two overall issues with the claims Phillips made.First--poor treatment of the term growth, and by extension, economic growth. This was the only definition of growth that I could find:"Of course, one might argue that I'm being far too loose with the terms growth, progress, and invention, which begin to blur here. But then, as well they should, as perhaps what it means to be human is to invent, to progress, to grow. To constantly strive for an improvement in our condition. To overcome all barriers in our way."For a book with the subtitle, "A defense of growth, progress, industry and stuff", it's a bit of a cop out if your definition of growth simply falls back to "any Good Thing that has existed, ever."This poor defense of growth was also rooted in a very poor treatment of the degrowth position. While he did list some degrowth scholars out there, he clearly did not do his research and engage with the literature, which is incredibly diverse and holds many different positions--from more apolitical to more political, defining degrowth as shrinking the economy to using it simply as a critique of the idea of economic growth. If your book sets out to defend that idea of economic growth, you're going to have to read the critiques properly--which includes the argument, made by many leftists, that the idea of economic growth was an invention created by the elite in response to labor struggles. The idea of economic growth has only existed since the 1940s, and has only been used by governments since the 1950s, as Timothy Mitchell and many others have described in detail. So, with respect to growth, he could at the very least have defined what he meant by it, and could've actually engaged with the literature he set out to disprove. The result was extremely dissatisfying for someone who is aware of the literature and wanted to see, finally, a good response to it.Second, the book is actually worryingly colonialist. There are two mentions of indigenous people: one is to wave them off as a poor model for alternative ways of living, mocking leftists who are inspired by indigenous struggles as essentialist; the other is to briefly mention that yes indigenous people are sometimes affected by capitalism and economic growth. At another point, Phillips scoffs at Buen Vivir, which is actually derived from an indigenous cosmology and has made its way (for good or bad) into the Ecuadorian constitution. On the whole, however, Phillips totally waves aside any postcolonial (or decolonial) critiques of modernism, alternative conceptions of what "good" might mean, any possibility of difference or struggle to maintain different livelihoods, and repeatedly assumes that all people in the world want to get the benefits of massive infrastructure projects. There are lots of people who outright refuse to engage with the benefits of these projects, not least because massive infrastructure tends to displace large amounts of people. This boils down to his implicit assumption throughout the book that "bigger is always better"--we need dams, hydro power, nuclear power, and even coal would be great if it just didn't have the side-effect of pumping carbon into the atmosphere. These assumptions squarely put Phillips on the side of the centralist communists, where the argument is that the bigger the infrastructure, the bigger the state control, the bigger the benefits. If you make these claims you're going to have to grapple with the decolonialist critique of the state, acknowledge that imposing modernity on the whole world is an incredibly colonialist thing to do, and also engage with the vast (communist) literature that has proposed alternative models to centralisation, many of which are now coming from the Global South.To be fair, there are two sections that I thought were quite worth reading. First was his critique of the Limits to Growth discourse, which I agree with and found valuable. His basic argument is that Limits to Growth and ideas of scarcity tend to depoliticize environmental issues, as they often stress population and scarce resources rather than the way by which capitalism makes scarcity possible through institutions like private property and undermining women's rights. However, if you read this section, you'd get the idea that he came up with this critique--either he has not done his homework and researched the dozens of others who have explored these issues (in many cases much more convincingly than he does), or he was lazy and didn't think it was necessary to mention where he got these ideas.Another section I appreciated was his critique of the anti-GMO camp. Problems once again include his straying toward the modernist idea that more technology is always better (there are lots of valid critiques of GMOs that actually it seems like the solutions they provide dwarf other kinds of improvements); in addition he is once again self-contradictory (like employing discourse that "we gotta feed the 10 billion" with larger and larger farms, which actually uses same argument that he criticizes in his critique of scarcity discourse). But on the whole I appreciated his critique of the anti-GMO activists as being focused on the wrong things, again, though, I've seen it articulated much better elsewhere.In the end, I enjoyed the experience of reading this book, if only as a litmus test of how shoddy some responses are to the degrowth movement. Many arguments were strong, but more were poorly researched and shoddily constructed. I know lots of degrowth scholars that have already thought of his critiques, maybe it might be a good idea for him to engage with them in debate. He does know an impressive amount of stuff, but he commits the sin of making his task too big, then failing to achieve it. Because of this, the book collapses into self-contradictions, betraying his inner colonizer and white-guy-savior complex. I'd like to see a proper leftist critique of degrowth, but this wasn't it.
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful. A necessary antidote to eco-doom By MEM For years I've watched in dismay as environmental doom narratives push people away from viable solutions and constructive action on important issues of climate and natural areas. Many people end up in a fetal position and retreating from the challenges in unhelpful ways. Phillips shows that it doesn't have to be this way.In addition to hilarious assessments of "turnip whisperers" and "scythe-botherers" who demand an end to civilization as we know it—in complete disregard to some neighbors on our planet who haven't had the chance to try out the health and wealth that the doom-sayers have been lucky to enjoy while growing up—there are helpful critiques of contemporary philosophical claims of the enviro thought leaders. The inconsistencies and half-baked conclusions become apparent. The rejection of technology these leaders demand, which could help us address our challenges, is framed in these misconceptions.It was also illuminating to me to see the connections between some very conservative (even facsist) ideological roots of anti-growth, anti-immigrant, anti-urban, and sepia-toned rural nostalgia perspectives that provided foundational concepts for today's greens and organizations like the Soil Association.It was a fun read, yet provided important awareness of the bleakness and unhelpful calls of retreat that drown out effective actions.Edit to add: I should also say I found this very hopeful. If the enviro leaders managed to wrest the direction of the narrative in the past away from influences like the anti-immigrant strains, those of us who think technology can benefit the planet have a chance at turning the current tide in constructive ways going forward. Let's do it.
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful. Phillips reminds us that we cannot shrink our way out of climate change By W. Hathaway Phillips provides one of the few voices to outline what I call a "climate-stabilized modernity". Today we have denialists on the right, and on the left many who would seek to undermine modern society altogether. In contrast Phillips calls for a centrist and democratic activism designed to maintain and extend the best of civilization, while rapidly installing the infrastructure of a post-carbon world.His use of the "democratically planned economy" concept needs study and perhaps revision. Intensively planned economics can become stifling, but that is not to say governments cannot or should not attempt to tailor market activities to foster low-carbon outcomes. Definitely a nexus for vigorous debate.Overall an important addition to the literature related to climate action. Highly recommended.
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