Doughnuts and Degrowth

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Writing in a recent Capital Letter about degrowth — an ideology revolving around the reorientation of the global (particularly in richer parts of the world) economy away from the pursuit of growth — I wanted to stress that this is not an outlier viewpoint shared only by the straitjacketed, which could be safely ignored.

And so I modestly repeated a point I had made in an earlier article on degrowth:

[D]egrowth has made inroads into the thinking of a significant cohort of scientists, economists, NGOs, activists, and writers. Signs of interest in it, if only at the periphery, can be detected in both bureaucratic and political circles, including the European Union and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…[F]ormer Obama energy secretary (and Nobel laureate) Steven Chu…has argued for “an economy based on no growth or even shrinking growth.”

On July 2, the Guardian published an article by Olivier De Schutter. He is a Belgian academic, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. He wants us to “shift our focus from growth to humanity.”

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Electric Vehicles: Fisker Fails (Again)

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Early-stage electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Fisker, Inc. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Of itself, that’s no scandal. Early-stage companies fail all the time. But the rise and fall of Fisker (and that of its predecessor) is a story of our times, and worth a closer look. Fisker’s predecessor, Fisker Automotive,was founded in 2007 by, to quote his X header, a “risk taker, innovation loving, protocol challenging designer and entrepreneur who turns dreams to reality & never gives up.” This modest fellow is a Danish designer well-known for his work with Aston-Martin and BMW. His name — guess — is Fisker, Henrik Fisker.

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Degrowth and De-Democracy

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The word “degrowth” was probably coined by an Austro-French philosopher — words to be thrilled by — during the eco-panic of the early 1970s, the time of The Population Bomb and all the rest. But the thinking behind the word contains elements that are far older, fantasies of timeless appeal and unchanging stupidity. There is a yearning for a lost Arcadia, a fetishization of “nature” (sorry, “Nature”), and a rejection of modernity. Some on the interwar far right with their faith in “organic” food, dislike of the urban, and distrust of free markets would have understood. Make of that what you will.

This nonsense is infinitely more toxic when intertwined with millenarian belief, another ancient failing. Our sins — overconsumption, greed, and technological overreach — have led to the “boiling” of the planet. Punishment is underway, with more to come unless averted by penance and the restoration of a more virtuous order.

And that’s where degrowth comes in.

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Those Crazy Cosmonauts

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On Oct. 12, 1964, three smallish men, shrunk still more by a strict diet, squeezed into an aluminum sphere 8 feet in diameter. Earlier in the year, Nikita Khrushchev learned that the Americans were planning to send the first two-man capsule into orbit, and he wanted a Soviet trio in space ahead of them. The red team had neither a three-man craft nor a rocket powerful enough to shoot such a craft into space. The idea that they could quickly build both was ridiculous, but not so ridiculous as thinking that the Soviet leader’s demand could be ignored. So this particular sphere, a Vostok tailored for one (smallish) man, had been all but emptied out, given the minimum necessary refitting and relabeled Voskhod 1. The crew, according to author John Strausbaugh, had to do without bulky space suits and helmets and wore woolen leisure suits instead.

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Chef's Surprise

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In 2006, Peter Pomerantsev, a British writer born in Soviet Ukraine (his parents emigrated shortly after his birth), moved to Moscow, wanting to work in television. As set out in his Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible (2014), most media programming there was organized to entertain, beguile, and distract, to preserve the illusion of freedom even as its remnants were being dismantled. His latest book, How to Win an Information War, revolves around the World War II activities of Sefton Delmer (1904–1979), a British propagandist dedicated not to preserving illusions but to whittling them away. His most remarkable project (probably) was using GSI, a “radio station” purportedly based in Germany (in reality in the south of England), not to win over his German listeners but to unsettle them in ways that the Nazis would not welcome.

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Lost worlds

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The remarkable An Ordinary Youth (now available for the first time in English in a translation by Michael Lipkin), an autobiographical novel by Walter Kempowski (1929–2007), opens with a fictionalized version of his family moving into its new apartment in Rostock, a formerly Hanseatic port on Germany’s Baltic coast. The plants on the balcony include “Jew’s beard geraniums.” It is 1938.

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Electric Vehicles: Cellphones, EVs, and Pete Buttigieg

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Something tells me that those forever talking up the qualities of electric vehicles (EVs) are becoming a little anxious. With clear signs that the growth in EV sales is failing to meet central planners’ expectations, Pete Buttigieg appeared on Fox News with a new tactic to persuade reluctant buyers to jump on the EV, uh, train. The new tactic was mockery, vaguely reminiscent of the tack taken by candidate Barack Obama in 2008, when he talked about those “bitter” Rustbelt folk “clinging” to their guns, religion, or worse.

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The Green Road to Serfdom

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Deciding who has been the worst British prime minister of the 21st century (so far) is tough, but Theresa May (2016–19) strengthened her strong claim to this title shortly ahead of her ignominious departure from office. Desperate to secure a “legacy,” she saw to it that Britain became the first major country to legally bind itself to reaching net-zero greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. That is, the nation committed itself to releasing no more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than it removes. Quite how this ambition could be fulfilled or what fulfilling it would cost was unclear, but no matter: This potentially enormous commitment passed into law with support across the political spectrum, astonishingly little scrutiny, and a great deal of self-congratulation. The 2050 target date reflected a widely held view that this is what it would take to contain the increase in the average global temperature since pre-industrial times to a more or less bearable 1.5 degrees Celsius.

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Electric Vehicles: The EPA’s Fast Track to Fiasco

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Helmuth von Moltke (1800-91), the greatest of Prussia’s nineteenth century generals, so the old (unreliable but enjoyable) story goes, laughed only twice in his life. Once when told that a certain French fortress was impregnable and once when told that his mother-in-law had died.

He would surely have at least permitted himself a smile at the over-confidence with which the EPA is attempting to reorder the American automobile industry….

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