Carbon-neutrality is dead.
So, now what?
After carbon-neutrality was declared an official goal in the 2015 Paris Agreement it became fashionable for governments and corporations to declare their intention to become carbon neutral by 2050 or soon thereafter. This was never more than an empty promise, however. The deadline was set far enough in the future to make immediate action unnecessary and few if any governments or corporations ever accepted a realistic plan to actually achieve carbon-neutrality. A decade later, they have largely given up pretense. Some have officially given up the goal; others have silently voided or discarded it. Of course, carbon-neutrality by 2050 was...
Uchiyama, Marx, and Gramsci on Ideological Superstitions
In 2019 typhoon Hagibis destroyed part of the railroad that leads to Hakone, a small town near a volcanic lake in Japan that has a long history as a resort town. One of the stops on the line that can no longer be reached by train is Εhiradai. About fifty meter south of the station there is a small and inconspicuous temple named Rinsenji. In 1909, during the railroadβs construction, the police searched that temple. They found dynamite used for building the railroad that was temporarily stored there. They also found an illegal printing press under the main altar. A...
Lessons from the Ongoing Disaster (for the Next One)
Presumably, you are aware that weβre in the middle of a disaster. Thatβs unpleasant β to say the least β but itβs also quite instructive. There is much we can learn from the ongoing disaster and humanityβs responses to it. But whether we can use those lessons to avert the even bigger disaster looming on the horizon is questionable. Rather, it seems that the most important thing that we can learn from the corona crisis is that we as a species may very well be incapable of avoiding catastrophy. ignore and deny For months, the general attitude of most governments...