Degrowth: If we don't dim the economy, we'll have to dim the sun

For decades, scientists have talked about dimming the sun...

"Dimming the Sun," Nova, PBS, April 18, 2006

TWIS: Should we dim the sun to mitigate climate change?, CityNews · Jan 21, 2022

"As 1.5C warming limit nears, interest in sun-dimming tech heats up," Laurie Goering, July 18, 2022

...which is only necessary if we can't dim the economy

See the thesis: "The Political Economy of Degrowth"

Wealth doesn't necessarily indicate value — sometimes it indicates the opposite

A.R. Moxon writes ("Channels of Rage," The Reframe (Substack), November 19, 2023) that Elon Musk became "one of the world’s richest people mostly by demolishing things of value, making claims he can’t back up, and not paying his bills" (emphasis mine).

Humans need to stop fighting each other and work together against the planet-ending threat

Bill McKibben today:

"The best reason for a ceasefire there is that the war is a humanitarian disaster; the macabre evil of the Hamas raid on Israel has long since been repaid by the industrial terror of Israel’s response. The proverbial eyes and teeth are attached to altogether too many literal and bloodied bodies. But if you need another reason: on a rapidly heating planet the world cannot afford to have its attention endlessly diverted. We talk about the “ancient” nature of the Mideast conflict, and indeed it’s been contested for several thousand years. But this year saw the hottest temperatures in 125,000 years—which is to say, we’re now experiencing in real time heating that outpaces anything from a very long ways before human history. We have almost no time to slow that heating—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we need to cut emissions in half in the next six years to have an outside shot at holding temperatures to anything like a livable level."
— It's So Hot: Maybe Cooling the War in Palestine Could Help. Bill McKibben. The Crucial Years (Substack). November 19, 2023.

McKibben adds:

"Even if all you cared about was this one region in the world, you’d want and need to do something about climate change. Because the land here, theoretically so sacred to all sides, is in danger of turning into an uninhabitable desert. At the moment, the region is warming twice as fast as the world as a whole."

Think of it as you'd write a sci-fi script:

"A longstanding conceit of science fiction is that something from outside—an alien invasion, say—would cause us to come together as a species, figuring out how to muffle our other differences so we could deal with that emergency. In this case the alien force is heat, pushing the temperature past the boundaries of human survival in ever more places. And so that script would require the world’s powers to leverage some kind of settlement—to do what they can to see the failed Netanyahu government off and actually insist on some kind of solution that respected the legitimate yearnings of everyone in the region."

Though some countries are challenged to recognize human rights:

"Hamas’s attack on Israel and Israel’s recent reaction against Palestine has put genocide back in the mainstream. Whether it is pro-Israelis drawing attention to the horrors of the holocaust to legitimise Israel’s actions or pro-Palestinians pointing to the effective ethnic cleansing currently happening in Gaza, which many experts characterise as genocide, both sides can firmly agree on one thing: Genocide is one of the most heinous crimes we humans can commit. With such atrocities dominating the news, other vital issues are being utterly drowned out, such as the upcoming COP28 summit, which stands as our last diplomatic chance to halt climate change before it’s too late. ...if you care at all about what is happening in the Middle East, this is why you should also profoundly care about climate change.

This horror started with a climate phenomenon known as desertification. Deserts are extremely sensitive to climate change... This changed many vital arable lands, on which countless subsistence farmers and nomads depended, to morph into inhospitable wastelands. These communities had two choices: stay and starve to death or migrate to better pastures."

— Climate Change Has Already Caused A Genocide. This is why I call it a self-made apocalypse. Will Lockett. Planet Earth & Beyond. November 16, 2023.

That's why everything's connected. When some people can't recognize the human rights of others, they don't find inspiration in a narrative of working together to save the planet so everyone can live. It just doesn't animate them.