Thus we come to the root of the problem for all too many activists responding to the Climate Crisis including  Greta Thunberg, who has become a celebrity thus a vessel for projections, both slanderous and hagiographic. The Greta phenomenon, by its nature provokes, emotional responses from climate denialists (and rightwing soreheads in general) freaked out by a smart, passionate young woman and from those on the left driven by a compulsion to provide paternal protection to her due to her child-like appearance and aura of innocence.

What should be requested of her, to avoid the taint of, inadvertently, playing the role of marketing icon for greed-headed, Davos denizens, who, it is claimed, are deploying the kid, in her toxic naivety, in a high-end, greenwashing bait-and-switch advertising roll out for what the captains of faux green industry have branded, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” — a venture designed to co-opt vehemence for the fate of the earth into adherence to for-profit schemes contrived to circumscribe responses to the Climate Crisis within capitalist models.

Richard Seymour points out that “To me, it’s straightforward. Class is a social relationship that is structured by race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and a whole range of other determinations. Race is the modality in which millions of people inhabit their class experience. Their “identity politics” will often be the precise way in which they fight a class struggle.”

I think that Seymour is correct.

The emergence of interest in degrowth can be traced back to the 1st International Degrowth Conference organized in Paris in 2008. At this conference, degrowth was defined as a “voluntary transition towards a just, participatory, and ecologically sustainable society,” so challenging the dogma of economic growth. Another five international conferences were organized between 2010 and 2018, with the latest in Malmo in August.