Andrew Ahern
🌻 Ecological politics, philosophy and science
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- I'm in @jacobinmag.bsky.social today arguing for young climate activists to salt the just transition. "There must be the recognition that we cannot make the transformations needed if we don’t have an organized working class with a militant labor movement at its heart." jacobin.com/2025/11/orga...
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- Donald Trump is doing the Abundance Agenda legal-planet.org/2025/09/06/d...
- Reposted by Andrew AhernThe latest issue of the NACLA Report was co-edited by Breno Bringel and myself. NACLA is deeply committed to socio-environmental justice in the Americas, so we wanted this issue to provide insights into the state of ecological imperialism in the region, including its green capitalist facades.
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- “Degrowth should be understood as an element within a socialist transformation, as a corrective to productivist strains of socialist thought that are inadequate for our moment. The problem with productivism is that it ignores imperialism & ecology.” breakdownjournal.substack.com/p/interview-...
- I am honored to share my interview with @jasonhickel.bsky.social for the 5-year anniversary of his groundbreaking book, Less is More. Also very grateful to be the first feature for the @the-breakdown.bsky.social’s new newsletter. Go read & subscribe! breakdownjournal.substack.com/p/interview-...
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- “At the outset, we estimated that Long-term Carbon Dioxide Removal could cost $950 billion a year to capture an amount of carbon equivalent to 25% of the world’s 2024 emissions (9.5 gigatons), assuming $100 per captured ton of carbon” www.nature.com/articles/s44...
- “Our findings show a causal association between sanctions & mortality, with the strongest effects for US sanctions. We estimate that sanctions were associated with an annual toll of 564,258 deaths, similar to the mortality associated with armed conflict.” www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
- “At the All-India level the proportion of rural/urban persons unable to reach initial official nutrition norms of 2200/2100 daily calorie intake, rose from 56.4/49.2% during 1973-4 to 58.5/56% by 1993-4 and thereafter rose faster by 2011-12 to 67/62%.” thewire.in/economy/usin...
- “A new report by the OECD and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that the growth of farming and livestock production worldwide will increase the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions by 6% by 2034.” www.fao.org/newsroom/det...
- Was the Inflation Reduction Act a negative for climate emissions? Brett Christophers suggests it may have been in his essay in @the-breakdown.bsky.social “Between 2021 & 2023 investment in fossil fuels in as a whole increased more than investment in renewable energy(18%)” x.com/AndrewsonEar...
- “The initiatives in the Climate Realism launch are the initiatives of giving up. Investing in adaptation is needed in any scenario, but tying this to notions of protecting our borders reeks of discredited lifeboat ethics, which only leaves others to suffer for our sins.” heatmap.news/ideas/climat...
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- Reposted by Andrew AhernLAUNCHING…. The first issue of our new journal – now available to pre-order on The BREAK—DOWN website 👇 linktr.ee/breakdownradio
- This is not climate realism. It is climate delusion. The new “centrist consensus” on climate is emerging and its highly nationalistic, flirting with more military involvement, and expecting at least 3 degrees of warming, thereby justifying geoengineering. www.axios.com/2025/04/07/c...
- Mahmoud Khalili’s Letter to Columbia from jail: “The student movement will continue to carry the mantle of a free Palestine. History will redeem us, while those who were content to wait on the sidelines will be forever remembered for their silence.” mondoweiss.net/2025/04/mahm...
- "One thing was immediately clear: a warm year across the planet causes lower global growth. We found if the Earth warms by more than 3°C by the end of the century, the estimated harm to the global economy jumped from an average of 11% to 40%." theconversation.com/global-warmi...
- “researchers found that the amount of freshwater available for lithium extraction is about 10x lower than previous estimates. Lithium demand, which is expected to grow 40x by 2040, could outpace the limited supplies of freshwater to the Lithium Triangle.” www.yahoo.com/news/water-s...
- Reposted by Andrew AhernNew research finds that trade is impacting biodiversity much more than previously thought. This is why consumption matters. “international trade has caused more than 90% of loss that occurred between 1995 & 2022 due to conversion of natural areas into agricultural land” phys.org/news/2024-12...
- It’s a funny time for “abundance” to be on the agenda when literally the first source of any kind of abundance - species abundance - is rapidly declining across all species and ecosystems. Of course, this is not part of Klein/Thompson’s analysis. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
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- “But the debates regarding transition are being depoliticised, reduced to investment packages & socioeconomic adjustments that try to normalise the absurd notion that it is possible to change everything to stop global warming while leaving power structures intact” alameda.institute/dossier/to-d...
- I have now read several reviews on the Abundance book & I don’t think anyone is actually taking the climate or ecological crisis seriously. It’s an afterthought. If you think these problems boil down to: liberals aren’t allowing us to build more you don’t understand the problem.
- “Alarmingly, water consumption in resource production surpassed sustainable levels with 24% of global demand exceeding the carrying capacities of resources. This threatens to restrict the availability of minerals necessary for advancing green technologies” phys.org/news/2025-03...
- “Billions of people will lose their livelihoods and economic output reduced by up to 34% if the Earth is allowed to warm by 3 degrees Celsius this century, but investing less than 2% of GDP now could eliminate most of those losses, a groundbreaking new report found” www.forbes.com/sites/davidr...
- “A growing number of philosophers, physicists & biologists say that, instead of continually admitting new creatures into the category of intelligence, the new findings are evidence that there is something wrong with the way we understand intelligence itself.” www.noemamag.com/a-radical-ne...
- “Under a 1.5C warming scenario, more than half of the 30 crops analysed would see a net decrease in their global potential cropland area. The most affected crops are wheat, barley, soya beans, lentils and potatoes.
- “Unfortunately, many high-profile climate change risk assessments are significantly underestimating risk because they exclude many of the real-world impacts of climate change, such as tipping points, migration, sea level rise, human health or geopolitical risk. actuaries.org.uk/document-lib...
- “According to a new report by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) in collaboration with the University of Exeter, global GDP could contract by 50% between 2070 and 2090 if climate change remains unchecked.” www.forbes.com/sites/we-don...
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- “The key message is stark; transformative change is urgent, necessary and challenging. However, fundamental shifts in how people view and interact with the natural world can help accelerate the system-wide changes needed for a more sustainable world.” phys.org/news/2025-01...
- “The pursuit of agricultural productivity has made it possible to feed a global population. However, research suggests the efficiency of food production comes at the cost of robustness. Nature's biodiversity has floundered under these uniform landscapes.” phys.org/news/2025-01...
- Very few studies show how countries outsource their biodiversity loss. New research finds that developed countries are increasing biodiversity loss in poorer nations, thereby externalizing their environmental impacts. This is why consumption & internationalism matter www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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- Reposted by Andrew AhernColombian President Gustavo Petro's full post ordering an increase of import tariffs on U.S. goods, says he doesn't really like traveling to the U.S. because it's “a bit boring” and invokes the ancestors
- Experts say that the top four most pressing risks for humanity are all related to the environment. Pretty amazing to me how much there is a bipartisan consensus on treating our life supporting systems as just another “issue” and not a matter of survival
- “Mainstream economic ideas about the relationship between the biosphere and the economy are founded on assumptions, conjectures, and stipulations that have contradictory evidence, or no evidence, to back them up.” newrepublic.com/article/1905...
- Two of the most important tasks for the enviormental and climate movement are to: 1. Ensure renewable energy is publicly/community owned, & 2. Reduce energy consumption. A new survey from @cmmonwealth.bsky.social finds the public supports both of these efforts www.common-wealth.org/publications...
- Imagine that. When it comes to the real world and the decision has to be made whether the priority is the environment or growth, leaders choose growth over ecology. Funny b/c I have been told that there is no conflict between endless growth & the environment 🤷♂️ www.theguardian.com/business/202...
- Add this to the growing number of studies that show how climate will impact growth: “Without urgent action to accelerate decarbonisation, remove carbon from the atmosphere & repair nature, the hit to global economies would be 50% in the two decades before 2090.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...
- My review of Andreas Malm & Wim Carton’s Overshoot is now available at Spectre. “Overshoot leaves us with important strategic questions and conversations to have, none more important than building out the revolutionary arm of the global climate movement.” spectrejournal.com/overshoot-or...
- My new favorite study of 2025 thus far: there is a lot of support among the US public for ecosocialist (degrowthish) policy. “This study paves the way for new strategies for a transition that enhances well-being & reduces dependence on economic growth.” phys.org/news/2025-01...
- 1.5C is a limit if for no other reason than it was an agreed upon limit by basically every country on earth. We agreed to limit warming to 1.5C - backed up an unreasonable amount of carbon capture - and we failed.
- One of the things these climate disasters is teaching me is that climate denial never ended. It’s gone full throttle and conspiratorial. We are entering into an era of climate change denial on steroids
- “Some of the themes emerging are consistent: every wildfire is accused of not being a wildfire at all but a planned attack for some sinister end. This serves two purposes: casting doubt on climate change & finding a politically useful target to pin a disaster on.” www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
- “From 1965 to 1995, the typical adult gained six hours a week in leisure time. They could have devoted that time to community service, or basketball, or reading, or knitting. Instead, they funneled almost all of this extra time into watching TV.” www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
- "AccuWeather estimated damage from the latest fires could reach $57 billion: 'it may become the worst wildfire in modern California history based on the number of structures burned and economic loss.'" www.euronews.com/green/2025/0...
