I have been following this Red/Green movement as a lightning rod for my REAL GREEN platform. I am seeing the Red Greens run into inconsistencies with their Socialist calls to action. They are honest with the science but dishonest with the results. Basically my Real Green position is Eco honesty. We can’t reform what we have and save the planet but we can do deep adaptations to mitigate the worst. The fake green of the Red Green movement is a distraction from focused efforts. The Red Greens will sacrifice all for an idea and in the end do more damage than good in my opinion. The only way forward is managed decline and it appears the only managed decline can be properly applied locally and in small groups. It means a hybridization of old and new technology. It also means triage and relinquishment of assets and lifestyles. It means collapsing in place in localism and thereby beating the rush.
The beauty of my REAL GREEN platform is it is an “add-on” to your existing political and spiritual positions. I say “MY” but really it is many ideas from very smart people I have gathered together in my version of meaning. I am not telling you to change what gives you meaning. I could give recommendations because I have my own but that does not mean they will adapt to yours. I am telling you to add-on REAL GREEN to your existing way of life. Real Green calls for relative sacrifice that jettisons existential guilt as well as the blame game. These emotions and personality tendencies just cloud the focus needed. This call is not to say guilt and blame are not justified it is saying at this point they are fruitless uses of your energy.
The focus needs to be on negotiating the unsustainable with technics that make you more resilient and sustainability. This is only about “more or less” not “is”. Relative sacrifice is the key because it “fits” you into the status quo as you attempt to leave it. You are stuck with family, friends and community. You cannot change them and you cannot leave them without dramatic efforts in many cases. Often drastic actions have negative outcomes. Some of the young and the lucky ones can make dramatic change and should. They should because they can and the goal is ultimately meaning. The status quo is meaningless so it should be left. Science is telling us what is wrong. Honest Real Green science says we are trapped. Relative sacrifice says live your status quo life but with an ulterior motive that is Real Green of leaving it.
The ulterior motive is meaning. The basics of intelligent human activity is meaning. Our existential predicament of the duality of the ego drives a quest for meaning. Many cannot attain this level and those who are within your group need to be supported with relative sacrifice. Only 10% or less of the population is awakened to real meaning with many being followers, not smart enough, and or psychopathic narcissists. If you are smart and awakened then you do not feel superior or you are not Real Green. The reason being ultimately Real Green is planetary meaning not your meaning. This means if you are awakened and ready for action you will have to do things that go against Real Green meaning because of relative sacrifice. You have no choice but to be less than you could be because of your significant others or your compromised local. A few can bug out and find remarkable meaning. Those who can’t this means tiny steps with sacrifice.
If you are going to lower your foot print then Real Green calls for you to sacrifice with less affluence. The sacrifice also is with not lowering your footprint because of your family, friends, and community and this time the sacrifice is Real Green meaning. You will engage in activity that makes you feel bad because it is meaningless. You will feel like you are going against your Real Green values. This is where you reflect on relative sacrifice to jettison guilt and avoid the blame game. Ultimately Real Green is about planetary meaning found locally and with significant others. Many of the significant others and your local will not be Real Green. It then becomes your meaning to make meaningless a little more Real Green.
“Ecosocialists debate the Green New Deal (continued)”
“Continuing our discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of the Green New Deal proposal, and how the left should respond.”
https://tinyurl.com/y4lwpuo9 climate and capitalism
“Citing Vaclav Smil, Bernes states that replacing current US energy consumption with renewables would require at least 25-50 percent of the US landmass being devoted to solar, wind, and biofuels. Considering the encroachments on land by ranchers, farmers, timber companies, home developers, et al, it appears that capitalist growth—even made kosher by renewables—will hit a brick wall before long. At the heart of the Green New Deal, there is a Sisyphean contradiction: “The problem is that growth and emissions are, by almost every measure, profoundly correlated. The Green New Deal thus risks becoming a sort of Sisyphean reform, rolling the rock of emissions reductions up the hill each day only to have a growing, energy-hungry economy knock it back down to the bottom each night.”
“Without using the term “de-growth”, Bernes’s conclusion certainly is consistent with what Jason Hickel and others have written. I find it to be eminently reasonable: “We cannot keep things the same and change everything. We need a revolution, a break with capital and its killing compulsions, though what that looks like in the twenty-first century is very much an open question. A revolution that had as its aim the flourishing of all human life would certainly mean immediate decarbonization, a rapid decrease in energy use for those in the industrialized global north, no more cement, very little steel, almost no air travel, walkable human settlements, passive heating and cooling, a total transformation of agriculture, and a diminishment of animal pasture by an order of magnitude at least.”
“In the DSA magazine for Winter 2019, Huber’s article “Ecosocialism: Dystopian and Scientific” took aim at the “de-growth” current within the ecosocialist movement that he described as a dire threat “to scare us into action.” “Our dystopian future is seen as a product of industrial civilization. For many ecosocialists or left green thinkers, the science is so dire the only option is a wholesale rejection of industrialism This, I would argue, leads to some fanciful (even utopian) ideas of what comes next. Degrowth theorists imagine a ‘decentralized’ future society, ‘where resources were managed by bio-region—a participatory, low-tech, low-consumption economy, where everyone has to do some farming…’ “Richard Smith argues for a socialist program of ‘managed deindustrialization’ without fully explaining what that would actually mean. Last year in the New Left Review, Troy Vettese argued for austerity (or what he called ‘egalitarian eco-austerity’): the program includes energy rationing, compulsory veganism and turning over half the planet to wild nature (a proposal he takes from reactionary sociobiologist, E.O. Wilson).” un:yes’>
REAL Green Adaptation 