Dan Neuman
Contacting Dan Neuman
Federation handle:
@dan613@ottawa.place
Dan Neuman's Information
Dan Neuman's Bio
🇨🇦Recovering engineer, ex-military (#RMC), ex-Jazz musician, triggered by injustice. Everyone should have the same rights and privileges that I have. Born 318.5 ppm CO₂. Raised in BC, but in Ottawa since 1990. Generation Jones, but never conservative. Joined Mastodon in April 2022.
Profile pic: myself (white middle-aged male with graying hair) against Canada's warming stripes
Banner: Cityscape of Cyberpunk 2077's Night City at twilight
Dan Neuman's Posts
Dan Neuman has 6 posts.
Dan Neuman
In response to this post@ChrisMayLA6 I'm glad this is going ahead. A bunch of EU-funded projects in Scotland got cancelled because of Brexit.
Mentions: @ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us @ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us
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Dan Neuman
In response to this post@SallyStrange @kawentzmann @gerrymcgovern GDP correlates strongly with poverty. The Gini index measures inequality within a nation. Regardless, degrowth means fewer hours worked to meet lowered needs. Maybe the two will go hand in hand, by everyone working fewer hours, but more likely it means fewer people with jobs, as it always has in the past.
@dan613 @kawentzmann @gerrymcgovern ~shrug~ You already said that. Just testing to see if you'd say anything new.
The accidental degrowth of a recession is not the same thing as planned degrowth. Fewer hours worked, per capita? Of course! That's a feature, not a bug.
Fewer jobs? Questionable, depends on how you define "job" but certainly there will be no shortage of tasks to be completed. Rebuilding cities after they get destroyed by an unprecedented fire hurricane, for example. In any case part of the point is to decouple having a job from surviving. That's how you decouple poverty from "lack of GDP growth".
by Sally Strange ;
Mentions: @SallyStrange@eldritch.cafe @kawentzmann@fairmove.net @gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green
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Dan Neuman
In response to this post@kawentzmann @gerrymcgovern Yes. Degrowth means lowered GDP, which correlates strongly with poverty. You have to first work out a way to decouple GDP and poverty. Then you can talk about degrowth.
Some things do work, though. Higher density urbanization uses fewer resources, and is therefore cheaper. Same with more public transit and bike infrastructure. Eliminating fast fashion (which is oil based). But if you can't convince people of those minor steps, how will you convince them to change every aspect of their lives? It would take a dictatorship.
@dan613 @kawentzmann @gerrymcgovern GDP was a wartime measure, never meant to be an ongoing measure/goal. Correlation is not causation. Degrowth is a method of decoupling poverty from "low GDP" which could mean anything from not enough hospitals to too many (from the perspective of a logging company) intact old-growth forests.
by Sally Strange ;
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Dan Neuman
In response to this post@gerrymcgovern The estimated cost of degrowth as a method to reduce carbon emissions is an order of magnitude larger than just putting in renewables. On the order of $1,750 per ton of COâ‚‚ emissions reduced. That's more expensive than even the worst method of carbon capture and storage.
#degrowth #ClimateAction
https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/covid-co2-drop
@dan613 @gerrymcgovern What is the connection of ad hoc COVID response and planned degrowth? Does this way of cost calculation still apply in a degrowth world?
by Lowtide ;
Tags: #degrowth #ClimateAction
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Dan Neuman
In response to this post@gerrymcgovern When we quickly dropped consumption in 2020, many people lost their jobs as a result. Dropping consumption quickly will cause immediate hardship. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMkUYFNqJ/
When we run out of easy-to-obtain resources, there will be a gradual decline in affordability. That will give us time to adjust.
@gerrymcgovern The estimated cost of degrowth as a method to reduce carbon emissions is an order of magnitude larger than just putting in renewables. On the order of $1,750 per ton of COâ‚‚ emissions reduced. That's more expensive than even the worst method of carbon capture and storage.
#degrowth #ClimateAction
https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/covid-co2-drop
by Dan Neuman ;
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Dan Neuman
In response to this post@gerrymcgovern Cutting fossil fuels without having renewables ready to replace the lost energy will result in energy shortages. And we know from recent experience in Europe that energy shortages harm the poor the most.
The solution is to push more renewables. We are getting very close to peak emissions with our current approach. That will happen when the growth in renewables exceeds the growth in energy demand. At that point, fossil energy will be a losing investment.
@dan613 We keep framing the wrong problem. We massively overconsume. Only a radical reduction in energy and materials gives us any chance. Renewables are in no way renewable. They have multiple harms. It's the Growth Death Cult full of false hope.
by Gerry McGovern ;
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