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The World Needs A Recession. Forever

GDP is a dead end. We’ve got to go back and start over

indi.ca
6 min readJun 17, 2022
You can only delay the reckoning. The fossil fuel era is running out for everyone. Fuel queues in Sri Lanka, right now. Image: AFP

Y’all say we need to reduce emissions now, but I don’t think you understand what that means. My country has, out of sheer poverty, reduced emissions dramatically. Sri Lanka simply cannot get fuel, for cooking, for transport, for electricity, for anything. That’s what reducing emissions now actually means. It’s misery.

Hence at the end of the fossil fuel era, you see countries scrambling over fossil fuels even more desperately. The United States is proudly opening up more land for drilling. They’re begging for oil from allies like Saudi and even enemies like Venezuela. Russia is seizing coal and resource rich regions of Ukraine. These great powers give a fuck about climate commitments. They’ll huff fossil fuels until they OD.

Everyone is desperately trying to preserve their economic growth, which is like trying to preserve your cancer. People don’t get it. Economic growth is precisely what’s killing us. Infinite growth against a finite planet is just cancer. That’s all it is.

For the planet and life as we know it to survive, we need to see massive degrowth, controlled GDP recession in the rich north and controlled growth of human development measures in the south. That’s the only way to rebalance our relationship…

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indi.ca
indi.ca

Written by indi.ca

Indrajit (Indi) Samarajiva is a Sri Lankan writer. Follow me at www.indi.ca, or just email me at indi@indi.ca.

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