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Yeah, even the best-known anarchoprimitivist eventually denounced the label, noting nearly all of them have no idea what that life involves.
bsky.app/profile/yard...

The scientific/policy space is very different. I.e. does anyone here look like an anarchoprimitivist?
steadystate.org/meet/our-sta...

November 28, 2025 at 6:08 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

I use Ecosia for basic searches when I don't think I'll need high precision, and DuckDuckGo for when I think I do. For historical/generalist information, I often just search Wikipedia directly from the browser, then follow the best references.

Altogether, it seems to work well enough!

November 28, 2025 at 6:00 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

Could we ask for a second opinion? Particularly, one which does not involve crashing through ever-more boundaries?

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

Transgression of planetary boundaries by human activities have now brought humanity well beyond a “safe operating space.”

www.science.org

November 28, 2025 at 5:41 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

Where do you draw the line between "hardcore" and "softcore" degrowth?

(I agree that anarchoprimitivism is stupid.)

bsky.app/profile/yard...

YARDCG @yardcg.bsky.social · 14d

Nearly all the hunter-gatherers who survived long enough for early anthropologists to come into contact with them did so on marginal lands.

Even the Unabomber, of all people, wrote a LONG missive from prison saying "living like this kinda sucks, actually".

theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-...

Several LONG paragraphs from an even longer work: the alt-text is too short to quote more than half of it. Best excerpt.

"Supposedly, prehistoric hunter-gatherers who occupied fertile country must have worked far less than recent hunter-gatherers living in deserts or other unproductive environments. [33] This may be true, but the argument is speculative, and I’m skeptical of it.

I’m a bit rusty now, but I used to have considerable familiarity with the edible wild plants of the eastern United States, which is one of the most fertile regions in the world, and I would be surprised if one could live and raise a family there by hunting and gathering with less than a forty-hour work-week. The region contains a wide variety of edible plants, but living off them would not be as easy as you might think. Take nuts, for example. Black walnuts, white walnuts (butternuts), and hickory nuts are extremely nutritious and often abundant. The Indians used to collect huge piles of them. [34] If you found a few good trees in October, you could probably gather enough nuts in an hour or less to feed yourself for a whole day. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Yes, it does sound great — if you’ve never tried to crack a black walnut. Maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger could crack a black walnut with an ordinary nutcracker — if the nutcracker didn’t break first — but a person of average physique couldn’t do it. You have to whack the nut with a hammer; and the inside of the nut is divided up by partitions that are as thick and hard as the outer shell, so you have to break the nut into several fragments and then tediously pick out the bits of meat. The process is time-consuming. In order to get enough food for a day, you might have to spend most of the day just cracking nuts and picking out the bits of meat."

November 28, 2025 at 4:17 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

The funny thing is that her website had been critical of degrowth - and by extension, supporting or at least agnostic to infinite growth. I had a thread trying to discuss this with another follower the other day.

bsky.app/profile/yard...

YARDCG @yardcg.bsky.social · 1d

What if the same logic is extended to the problem of indefinite growth on a finite planet?

Paul Crider brought up a lot of arguments for your publication, but still ended up looking away from the fundamental question with all-too many sleights of hand.

www.liberalcurrents.com/degrowth-nei...

Degrowth: Neither Left Nor Right, But Backward

Degrowth. The word itself is shocking. For anyone accustomed to the assumptions of positive economic growth in public policy and the fear and hardship associated with economic contractions—reces...

www.liberalcurrents.com

November 28, 2025 at 4:13 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

I mean, it was only 11 years ago that 2C was considered the guardrail, so no wonder - for the longest time, we weren't even trying to hit 1.5C! Granted, IPCC's best scenario in 1990 would have had us at 1 C rn, giving us a good chance, but well...

www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti...

Is 2 Degrees the Right Limit for Global Warming? Some Scientists Say No

We've come to think of it as the threshold of catastrophic global warming—but it's the wrong limit to set, two researchers argue.

www.nationalgeographic.com

November 28, 2025 at 4:07 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

Full transition is generally believed to require much larger levels of warming - and has a relatively limited contribution anyway.

bsky.app/profile/yard...

YARDCG @yardcg.bsky.social · 12d

By now, even Wikipedia has a table showing none of those cause anywhere near that much warming. There's no excuse for ignorance!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping...

Large and extensive table of tipping point characteristics.

November 28, 2025 at 3:52 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

I wonder how such people would react to finding out that according to some researchers, this is the best possible lifestyle everyone on Earth can lead without exceeding environmental limits.

bsky.app/profile/yard...

YARDCG @yardcg.bsky.social · 14d

I think Kemp is wrong in general, BUT there was an influential paper which suggested that the only way for every human to live reasonably well without exceeding the environmental limits is for everyone to live no better than this - WELL below the $10M cap.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Paragraph text:

"What the current work does offer are answers to broader questions. To avoid catastrophic ecological collapse, it is clear that drastic and challenging societal transformations must occur at all levels, from the individual to institutional, and from supply through to demand. From an energy-use perspective, the current work suggests that meeting these challenges does not, in theory, preclude extending decent living standards, universally, to a population of ~10 billion. Decent living is of course a subjective concept in public discourse. However, the current work offers a response to the clichéd populist objection that environmentalists are proposing that we return to living in caves. With tongue firmly in cheek, the response roughly goes ‘Yes, perhaps, but these caves have highly-efficient facilities for cooking, storing food and washing clothes; low-energy lighting throughout; 50 L of clean water supplied per day per person, with 15 L heated to a comfortable bathing temperature; they maintain an air temperature of around 20 °C throughout the year, irrespective of geography; have a computer with access to global ICT networks; are linked to extensive transport networks providing ~5000–15,000 km of mobility per person each year via various modes; and are also served by substantially larger caves where universal healthcare is available and others that provide education for everyone between 5 and 19 years old.’ And at the same time, it is possible that the amount of people’s lives that must be spent working would be substantially reduced."

November 28, 2025 at 3:47 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

Funnily enough...the associate editor of the same Liberal Currents which Will has endorsed recently appears fully onboard with that website's economic agenda - at least on international economics.

I received no answer when I chose to ask the below. Take it as you will.

bsky.app/profile/yard...

‪Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li‬ - 11d

"i continue to be on the boat that says the "exorbitant privilege" of a persistent trade deficit isn't actually good for us

the question is just how painful the adjustment to balanced trade would be"

(Link to "interfluidity")

"conversation with waldman over here, including the radical-but-reasonable proposal of an international capital transfer tax"

"Link to 30th episode of Neon Liberalism"

November 28, 2025 at 3:04 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

Not exactly;

"After removing the internal variations, a steady increase in the warming rate remains. We find no evidence of an additional acceleration of global warming due to the high temperatures in 2023–2024" - i.e. no anomalous acceleration trend, just a fluke which made it look that way.

November 28, 2025 at 1:05 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

On the other hand, their -2%/yr scenarios would have apparently resulted in about 1-1.1C by now, which actually would have placed us into a good position to stop at 1.5C 🫠

"increase in global-mean temperature of...just above 0.1 °C per decade (Scenario C) and about 0.1 °C per decade (Scenario D);"

"Stabilization of atmospheric concentrations.
Reductions in the human-made emissions of greenhouse gases
required to stabilize concentrations at present day levels:
Carbon Dioxide
>60%
Methane
15—20%
Nitrous Oxide
70—80%
CFC-11
70—75%
CFC-12
75 85%
HCFC-22
40—50%
Note that the stabilization of each of these gases would
have different effects on climate, as explained in the next
section.
(a) continuing global emissions at 1990 levels; (b) halving
of emissions in 1990; (c) reductions in emissions of 2% per
year (pa) from 1990 and (d) a 2% pa increase from 1990-
2010 followed by a 2% pa decrease from 2010"

November 28, 2025 at 1:01 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

So, we actually DID reduce emissions relative to year 1990 expectations...of CFCs and methane, that is. Right now, we effectively have IPCC 1990 BAU levels of CO2, but scenario C levels of methane (1927 ppb) and of CFCs. The IPCC BAU would have higher warming than now (as 1990 was already at ~0.7C)

"Based on current model results, we
predict:

under the I P C C Business-as-Usual (Scenario A )
emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of
global-mean temperature during the next century of
about 0.3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of
0.2°C to 0.5°C per decade); this is greater than that
seen over the past 10,000 years. This will result in a
likely increase in global-mean temperature of about
1°C above the present value by 2025 and 3°C before
the end of the next century. The rise will not be steady
because of the influence of other factors;"

The important thing is that in 1990, "present-day value" was at about 0.7C above preindustrial - and thus, their BAU would have meant 1.7C this year.

November 28, 2025 at 12:53 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

My logic was that since stopping at 2C is a much easier goal than stopping at 1.5C, actions done to reach the former probably would not have been enough for the latter anyway.

That said, I checked the original IPCC report from 1990, and it's more complicated. (1/2)

www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/...

The original IPCC graphs from 1990 of the four projected emission scenarios of CO2, methane and CFC11s (ozone layer-destroying gases) between then and 2100. Unlike the modern scenarios, the CO2 continues to increase in all four of those - albeit so gently in the lowest one that it only reaches present-day levels of ~430 ppm around midcentury, and only reaches 450 ppm in 2100. Instead, year 1990 Business-as-Usual scenario seems to match today's CO2 levels pretty well.

On the other hand, that scenario implied a MASSIVE jump in methane - at >2500 ppb, it's >25% as large as the present-day levels, and "scenario B" is also slightly higher; the second-best scenario C seems to match real-world methane trajectory the best. Both BAU and B have massive increases in CFCs, while C and D have the same trend of reductions.

November 28, 2025 at 12:45 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

I.e. events like this do not appear to have made climate change more salient in Florida - at least not in terms of making its voters turn towards the party trying to address the overarching problem.

www.governing.com/community/mi...

Miami Beach Lifts Roads Due to Sea Rise, Floods Nearby Homes

To combat threats of rising sea levels, officials have decided to raise roads to protect existing infrastructure. But some homeowners claim the elevated roads sent floodwaters into their property, mak...

www.governing.com

November 28, 2025 at 12:20 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

However, I think you are right the article only meant it as the developed countries protecting themselves, which WOULD have been counterproductive.

IMO, the one advantage of adaptation infrastructure is that its visibility keeps the problem in sight; granted, that logic seemingly failed in Florida.

November 28, 2025 at 12:14 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

I think our disagreement might have been due to considering different geographic areas. That is, my first thought went to the developing and least-developed states which are nevertheless getting hit already. In effect, securing loss and damage 20 years earlier.

www.carbonbrief.org/cop27-why-is...

COP27: Why is addressing ‘loss and damage’ crucial for climate justice? - Carbon Brief

For many the “loss and damage” caused by climate change is at its heart an issue of climate justice.

www.carbonbrief.org

November 28, 2025 at 12:06 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

And unfortunately, I don't think "we are barely using the resources this planet already gives us" is a realistic representation of what is now known about the state of planetary boundaries.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

Transgression of planetary boundaries by human activities have now brought humanity well beyond a “safe operating space.”

www.science.org

November 27, 2025 at 11:48 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

With all due respect for your work, I don't think you can accuse those climate scientists who endorse degrowth (or "post-growth" - perhaps to exclude the various primitivists) of "ignoring physics". As they note, even the IPCC is now open to exploring the concept!

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

"However, continuing economic growth along these lines may no longer be a viable strategy. Firstly, under present conditions many mature, affluent economies are faced with secular stagnation (low levels of economic growth over prolonged periods of time and practical limits to growth (Summers 2014, 2016, Storm 2017). This is despite extensive attempts by governments to boost growth (Jackson 2019). Second, intensifying climate shocks, energy, health and food crises, and an aging population may make it increasingly difficult for high-income nations to continue to pursue economic growth and maintain social and ecological stability (Kahn et al 2021, Pollitt 2022, Maestas et al 2023, Kotz et al 2024). Finally, to effectively address ecological degradation and ensure fast and equitable climate mitigation it may be necessary to decrease production and consumption levels in affluent countries (Hickel and Kallis 2019, Otero et al 2020, EEA 2021, Vogel and Hickel 2023). Consequently, IAMs insistence on continued economic growth may facilitate ‘the reproduction of types of economies that are simply not sustainable’ (Asefi-Najafabady et al 2021, p 1179).

Given the immense challenges posed by the climate crisis, modellers have a collective responsibility to evaluate a broader spectrum of future possibilities, including scenarios commonly deemed politically unlikely, or those envisioning radically different economic systems (McCollum et al 2020). Post-growth, which aims to reorient the economy from prioritising economic growth to emphasising ecological sustainability, equality, human well-being and enhanced democracy (Jackson 2017), is one potential alternative approach that has been gaining traction (Hickel et al 2021, Slameršak et al 2023). The case for exploring post-growth futures has been recognised by the IPCC who suggest that ‘sustainability worlds with low growth or even elements of degrowth in developed countries could also be explored.’ (IPCC 2022, p 1875)."

November 27, 2025 at 11:47 AM

YARDCG

@yardcg.bsky.social

Interestingly, @bretdevereaux.bsky.social had discussed fictional megacorps - noting that East/West India Companies were the closest counterpart, although even Roman (!) publicani come surprisingly close. Either way, reality adds limitations which make the trope unlikely.

acoup.blog/2021/01/01/f...

"I think it is worth stressing here, even in our age of massive mergers and (at least, before the pandemic) huge corporate profits, just how vast the gap in resources is between large states and the largest companies. The largest company by raw revenue in the world is Walmart; it’s gross revenue (before expenses) is around $525bn. Which sounds like a lot! Except that the tax revenue of its parent country, the United States, was $3.46 trillion (in 2019). Moreover, companies have to go through all sorts of expenses to generate that revenue (states, of course, have to go about collecting taxes, but that’s far cheaper; the IRS’s operating budget is $11.3bn, generating a staggering 300-fold return on investment); Walmart’s net income after the expenses of making that money is ‘only’ $14.88bn. If Walmart focused every last penny of those returns into building a private army then after a few years of build-up, it might be able to retain a military force roughly on par with…the Netherlands ($12.1bn); the military behemoth that is Canada ($22.2bn US) would still be solidly out of reach. And that’s the largest company in the world!

And that data point brings us to our last point – and the one I think is most relevantly applicable for speculative fiction megacorporations – historical megacorporations (by which I mean ‘true’ megacorps that took on major state functions over considerable territory, which is almost always what is meant in speculative fiction) are products of imperialism, produced by imperial states with limited state capacity ‘outsourcing’ key functions of imperial rule to private entities. And that explains why it seems that, historically, megacorporations don’t dominate the states that spawn them: they are almost always products and administrative arms of those states and thus still strongly subordinate to them."

November 27, 2025 at 11:39 AM

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