Here we are. It's DegrowThursday again.

Every week on this day I turn my focus toward the most important topic of all. Because if we are to have any hope of maintaining some semblance of a healthy human society going forward, our world must quickly and decisively commit to #degrowth.

We're talking real solutions here! Real answers to the many systemic problems that plague us and threaten our very extinction.

Now, I know unlikely it is that these solutions will be adopted by our present leadership. And I know how challenging they will be to achieve. I'm under no illusion that any of this will be easy.

But — if we don't know where we want to go, we'll never get there.

So today, I'll provide two resources for learning about degrowth. The first is simpler and more basic, while also offering a more hopeful and positive outlook. The second is a darker vision, presenting additional detail about the daunting challenges we face and the many hard steps that lie ahead of us. I hope you'll read both, or I hope you'll read at least one of them.

That's my intro. 1/3 The next two parts will follow soon...

No shit, my habit of collecting junk from around the neighborhood has probably saved us over $100 that would have gone to some horrible place like Home Depot. And that's just the stuff I've already used.

#upcycling is surprisingly easy!

A beautiful moss covered Western red #cedar #tree - still unprotected.
Only a human, with a compromised & unwell soul, would be OK killing an elder tree this magnificent. Some things are just plain wrong.

These ancient old growth trees are essential to fighting accelerated #ClimateChange. #OldGrowth ecosystems in our coastal temperate rainforests supports much biodiverse lifeforms. The naturally moist environment helps to lower impacts of wildfires & other natural disasters that have increased as our governments continue to fund & enable more ecocidal projects.

"Collectively, the 39 panels have a capacity of over 20 kilowatts — enough to power just one large, energy-intensive American household but more than enough for the lightbulbs, cooker plates and fans in the 180 households in Mbiabet Esieyere and Mbiabet Udouba."

Nigeria's minigrids smell like the future.

https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/technology/2025/nigeria-bets-on-solar-minigrids-for-climate-livelihood

We do have a much better choice than to go on living the way we are now.

The United States, and the whole world, could instead choose #Degrowth.

https://explore.degrowth.net/degrowth/demystifying-degrowth/

How do we ensure cooperation with future generations?

Researchers from Harvard university investigated this through an interesting experiment: groups of 5 were given a pool of resources they could either exhaust entirely or use less to ensure sustainability for future generations. Within just a few generations, the pool was always exhausted because, despite the fact that most individuals WANT to share with the future, a minority of selfish actors take too much and ruin the balance.

BUT... If the 5 individuals held a binding vote on how to apportion resources, sustainability was ALWAYS ensured.

I think there are 2 positive lessons here. First, most people are NOT selfish. Second: our vote matters. Check out the paper (it's pretty short).

https://lukemuehlhauser.com/wp-content/uploads/Hauser-et-al-Cooperating-with-the-future.pdf