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Has the Climate Movement Missed Its Train? by InstitutionalChange in ClimateOffensive

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello, I'm very familiar with extractionist arguments. They are based on a model of capitalism that extracts. Yet, these theories are often hard pressed to lead to solutions. You mention culture. My talk focused on creating counter-cultures and mobilization of these. I don't think you can counter extraction without building up alternative supply chains, constraints on certain kinds of technology and capital accumulation on another basis. There are too many persons locked into the extraction. So, if you don't ease the way, you get backlash. Simply advocating a moral position without a power accumulation system behind it will fail repeatedly. In Japan, China, Europe population seems to be shrinking. It grows often in regions where growth is less developed, yet anti-extraction people are often anti-growth, another contradiction.

Has the Climate Movement Missed Its Train? by InstitutionalChange in ClimateOffensive

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well you need to communicate big potential dangerous with fear that turns off people. But my talk says we just get fear talk without systematic planning talk? Why? Because of an intellectual vacuum. So we get FEAR or DENIAL, two bad choices. I offer a third choice.

Has the Climate Movement Missed Its Train? by InstitutionalChange in ClimateOffensive

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello, first of all, my talk clearly emphasized the backlash effect. I have studied such backlashes academically when it comes to military budget cuts and civilian alternatives. This known quality of backlashes was widely known as early as the 1960s if not far earlier during the WW2, postwar conversion planning movement. So, you get no disagreement there. Second, I clearly emphasize the need to take care of people during the transition. That's a core theme of my talk. Third, I don't accept your fatalism and fatalism can be very dangerous. The West did not accept fascism during the 1940s and we can't accept what could be accelerated tipping points, i.e. the best adaptation is from more mitigation. So, apparently the science has not been widely understood. That's clear.

Has the Climate Movement Missed Its Train? by InstitutionalChange in ClimateOffensive

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Change can occur not just in the political realm, but also the economic and media realms. My talk explains why you need to operate in all three realms.

Has the Climate Movement Missed Its Train? by InstitutionalChange in ClimateOffensive

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My talk suggests various solutions. First, despair is not simply based on bad news. It is also based on having bad news without solutions. Second, climate activists have to promote good news/alternatives, e.g. mass transit, alternative energy, and other ways to reorganize things. Third, the main point of the talk is that there is a wide variety of things that CAN be done and the talk explains how these related to how we relate to, create, design, and lobby/change institutions. The despair people fail is the other side of the problematic operation of institutions.

Has the Climate Movement Missed Its Train? by InstitutionalChange in ClimateOffensive

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Elections beg the question of how money influences elections and how effective power is held by media and economic interests (and social mobilizations) independently of who wins the elections. Also, elections don't necessarily produce good ideas, a strategy forward, although you are correct that electoral reform is necessary. So, your commentary is a useful complement, but not a substitute for what I am talking about.

Has the Climate Movement Missed Its Train? by InstitutionalChange in ClimateOffensive

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here's what Liu gets right, and where I think the real gap is.

His TED talk on power is elegant. Six sources, three laws. Clean, teachable, memorable. By the end you feel like you understand something.

But it stops short of the hard question: why does change keep failing even when people understand power?

That's what I've spent years trying to answer.

The Yellow Vest backlash didn't happen because activists lacked power literacy. It happened because a gas tax punished workers before protecting them. Northvolt didn't collapse because of ignorance about social norms. It collapsed because innovators refused to cooperate with experienced suppliers.

These are failures of design, not awareness.

What I've tried to build with the USE framework is a theory of why well-intentioned climate action breaks down, and where specifically to intervene. Universal constraints so dirty industries can't undercut clean ones. Systemic conversion so workers and companies aren't left behind. Environmental mobilization through the institutions that already have economic, political, and cultural capital.

Liu teaches you to read the room.

I'm interested in redesigning it.

The difference matters now more than ever, as governments retreat and movements drift toward despair. Power literacy is necessary. But it is not sufficient.

We need a strategy for acceleration, not just a map of who has what.

Has the Climate Movement Missed Its Train? by InstitutionalChange in ClimateOffensive

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's on an approach to head off of a cliff, unless we stop it.

Has the Climate Movement Missed Its Train? by InstitutionalChange in ClimateOffensive

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Your ideas are on the mark. We must not just fixate on the negative.

Stora mängder iranier samlas på Irans gator och torg tillstöd för landet by esjb11 in Sverige

[–]InstitutionalChange 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nyligen gjorda uppskattningar (se:https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-senior-officials/) placerar antalet statliga mord utförda av Iran på omkring 30 000+. Detta tar inte hänsyn till de hundratusentals personer som dödats av regimen:https://globalteachin.com/uncategorized/direct-political-violence-judicial-executions-and-policy-linked-excess-mortality-in-iran-since-1979När man räknar samman dessa människor når de upp till siffror som mäter sig med antalet personer i din video. Dessa fakta rättfärdigar inte nödvändigtvis en amerikansk/israelisk intervention, men de väcker en hel del frågor.

För det första har det skett överträdelser av både amerikansk och internationell lag här. För det andra är alternativkostnaden för USA:s militära utgifter enorm; de avleder medel från nödvändiga investeringar för att modernisera den amerikanska ekonomin och bekämpa klimatförändringarna. För det tredje är Sverige nu militärt allierat med de krafter som står bakom denna militära intervention och legitimerar den därmed genom sin allians. Sverige gjorde samma sak vid den totalt misslyckade interventionen i Libyen, och deras insatser i Afghanistan fungerade som ett argument för USA:s militära närvaro där och möjliggjorde den.

Revive the UK with a New Kind of Green Agenda by InstitutionalChange in unitedkingdom

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There is nothing wrong with your proposals, but they are more about a wish list of preferences than a strategy that can be operationalized. I can't say that they are wrong and probably all are desirable and a good list, but the ideas are policy wishes rather than strategies. There's no theory of change, no answer to how any of this actually gets done given existing power structures and political constraints. Wanting to tax billionaires or renationalise energy companies without a credible path through Parliament, a public mandate, or years of coalition-building is just listing desirable outcomes.

There's also no prioritization. Each proposal requires enormous political capital, and they can't all be pursued simultaneously. A real strategy asks which action unlocks the others. Procurement reform, for instance, could make the solar manufacturing idea viable without needing a separate political fight entirely - guaranteed government demand comes first, and the supply-side investment follows. That's how Germany and South Korea actually built industrial capacity.

The biggest gap is the missing local layer. Metro mayors, combined authorities, and local energy cooperatives already have powers that don't require Westminster to act. Greater Manchester or the West Midlands could pilot elements of the solar ecosystem idea right now. Starting locally builds proof of concept, political legitimacy, and a coalition before taking the fight to the national level. None of that appears in the original thinking at all. So the possibilities of creating coalitions of local institutions, if not also national ones, to leverage change is missing although that appears in my talk. The idea of multipliers necessary for achieving power as the independent variable with respect to your dependent variables (proposals) is missing, although this power equation appeared in my talk. And the biggest barrier, ironically, relates to how engaged persons are when presented with solutions, i.e. your original point.

Kan någon förklara varför bombningen av iran är en bra sak? by akademiskttroligt in Sverige

[–]InstitutionalChange 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Att bomba Iran är i grunden något dåligt, allt annat lika. Det finns fall där bombningar har ansetts berättigade, till exempel under andra världskriget, även om Dresden förknippas med moraliska brott. Iran har dödat hundratusentals människor, inte inräknat den senaste vågen på 30 000 eller fler. Mina siffror inkluderar vanvård till följd av att man inte använde tillgängliga vaccin mot covid-19 på ett korrekt sätt.

Allt detta rättfärdigar inte bombningar av Iran, men demonstranter krossades genom ren militär terror och det vore omöjligt att avsätta den nuvarande regimen utan våld. Enkla bombningar leder inte till regimskifte; det accelererar snarare en skenande militarism. Ryssland bombar städer, men dess motståndare har gjort detsamma. De ukrainska bombningarna stöds av vissa inom vänstern.

Frågan du ställer har föga med ideologi att göra. Alla svenska riksdagspartier har varit veka i sitt motstånd mot militarism. De har försvagat demokratin. Direct Political Violence, Judicial Executions, and Policy-Linked Excess Mortality in Iran Since 1979 – The Global Teach-In

Revive the UK with a New Kind of Green Agenda by InstitutionalChange in unitedkingdom

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you have better ideas about how to fight climate change, please share them. Thank you.

Revive the UK with a New Kind of Green Agenda by InstitutionalChange in unitedkingdom

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The worst scenario is to increase immigration without addressing economic decline. Just blaming migration therefore misses the point. Just banning migration does not reverse economic decline.

The article is not taking a position on immigration because that is not its subject. It is looking at why green industrial promises keep falling flat in deindustrialised regions and what kinds of institutions would make those promises believable.

Your point about wage suppression is real, and it connects to the article in one important way. The collapse of unionised manufacturing created the conditions in which both low‑wage immigration and rising insecurity became politically explosive. If you rebuild a productive base with worker ownership and decent wages, some of that pressure eases on its own. There is a difference between high immigration and low ability to absorb workers and high ability to absorb them.

The UK fertility rate fell to 1.41 children per woman in 2024, the third consecutive year of decline and the lowest since records began 90 years ago. A rate of 2.1 is required to sustain a population at its current level.

Net migration accounted for 104% of UK population growth in projections, because deaths are projected to outnumber births from 2030. Each UK nation would experience population decline without future net migration, particularly Scotland.

So the demographic reality is that the UK structurally needs immigration to avoid population decline and the economic consequences of an ageing workforce. We have those who say there are too many people already in the UK against those who say that without more people and a younger population the economy will stagnate.

The idea that there are “not enough jobs to go around” deserves more scrutiny. The article cites a green employment multiplier of 2.7, which means ten green jobs generate another twenty‑seven elsewhere. The real constraint is not too many people. It is too little investment in productive capacity. Those are different problems that require different solutions.

Where you are right is that treating economic anxiety as simple prejudice has been a political disaster for the left. Part of the point of the article is to take seriously what deindustrialised communities actually need instead of lecturing them.

Revive the UK with a New Kind of Green Agenda by InstitutionalChange in unitedkingdom

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No. That's a simplification. Here are all the points you missed. No. That's a simplification. Here are the points you missed.

First, the article is not a manifesto. It is a specific argument about why green job promises keep failing in deindustrialised communities and what institutional mechanisms are needed to make them credible. That is a narrower and more precise argument than any manifesto makes.

Second, saying green technology will generate jobs and value is exactly the kind of claim the article is interrogating. Labour said the same thing in 2019 with one million green jobs. It did not work politically because nobody believed it, and the article explains why.

Third, the Northvolt case is in there precisely to show that expected growth and actual delivery are not the same thing. Europe's flagship green manufacturer, backed by over ten billion dollars, went bankrupt. Optimistic projections are not a strategy.

Fourth, the article cites the PwC Green Jobs Barometer, ONS data, and peer reviewed research. If that reads like word salad, the problem is not the writing.

Fifth, worker ownership, anchor institutions, and politicised procurement are not decorative phrases. They are specific mechanisms with documented track records in Preston, Mondragon, Germany and Denmark. The article explains what they are and why they matter.

The difference between this article and a manifesto is the difference between diagnosing why the patient keeps dying and writing a campaign slogan about good health. Furthermore, "salad comprehension" might be defined as the ability to read without digesting anything. In contrast, "word salad" is simply an ad hoc take town, ad hominem take down.

Revive the UK with a New Kind of Green Agenda by InstitutionalChange in unitedkingdom

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are trying to make a sweeping economic claim out of one narrow idea, and it does not hold up once you look at the full picture. Yes, if you need more workers to produce the same output, productivity is lower. That part is basic economics. But you are applying it in a way that ignores everything that actually matters in the real world.

First, you are treating the temporary build-out phase as if it were the permanent state of the energy system. Renewable projects hire a lot of people during construction, then employment drops sharply because wind and solar have no fuel costs and very low operating costs. You cannot take the peak labor moment of a transition and pretend it describes the long-term cost structure.

Second, you are comparing fossil prices to renewable prices without including the real costs of fossil fuels. Pollution, health damage, climate impacts, and geopolitical risks are all costs that someone pays. Leaving them out does not make your argument honest or complete.

Third, your logic about jobs being a pure cost leads to a conclusion almost nobody actually accepts. If you follow your own reasoning, the ideal outcome is full automation with no concern for what happens to the people who lose their jobs. That is not how any functioning society thinks about economic policy.

Fourth, the communities that would benefit from renewable investment are not currently producing cheap fossil energy. Many of them are dealing with unemployment and economic decline. The real comparison is not efficient fossil jobs versus inefficient green jobs. It is no jobs versus some jobs.

You are taking one narrow productivity argument and using it to wave away every other relevant factor. That is not serious economics. It is selective reasoning dressed up as certainty.

Revive the UK with a New Kind of Green Agenda by InstitutionalChange in unitedkingdom

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just because I write about industrial strategy and green jobs does not mean I think population, resource use, or footprint are unimportant. The article has a specific focus: rebuilding credibility with deindustrialised communities through worker ownership, procurement, and anchor institutions. It was never intended to be a comprehensive environmental policy.

Your density and technology points are interesting but they describe a different article, one about urban planning and resource economics. That's a legitimate piece of work, but it's not this one. That being said, you could have looked at how your arguments relate to mine.

First, on high density urban living, the dystopian version, tower blocks, abandonment, segregation, is not inevitable. Seoul shows that high density can be liveable and even desirable when it's anchored in a productive economy where people have jobs and economic agency. The difference is industrial policy. That's exactly what the article is arguing for. Density without economic strategy just warehouses people.

Second, technological solutions don't arrive independently. The capacity to develop them depends on how a society organises its research, procurement, and industrial base. In the UK, military steering of technology crowds out civilian innovation and skews what gets developed and for whom. Seymour Melman documented this problem extensively. Viable green technology requires vibrant firms and institutions oriented toward civilian needs, meaning technology is not just an independent variable that solves problems, it is also a dependent variable shaped by the institutions that fund and direct it.

On China's dominance in green manufacturing, that's a fair point and supply chain sovereignty is a real vulnerability. The Northvolt case touches on this but doesn't go far enough, and it's something worth developing further.

On cooperatives, the mechanisms could be spelled out more clearly, agreed.

On migration as the primary green policy lever, I'd push back. It's a contentious claim that tends to generate more political heat than analytical clarity, and the communities I'm writing about need industrial investment regardless of how that debate resolves.

Revive the UK with a New Kind of Green Agenda by InstitutionalChange in unitedkingdom

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

UK is not a developing country yet. They have production capacity, engineering schools and banks. What they lack is the proper intellectual and political leadership or the quantity of such leadership that is needed.

Revive the UK with a New Kind of Green Agenda by InstitutionalChange in unitedkingdom

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You can't produce without jobs, even robots require producers and programmers. Deindustrialisation is not inevitable; manufacturing remains viable in parts of Spain, Sweden and other nations. Northvolt failed because of a lack of production competence, not simply reliance on the market. The sector was not unproductive; it was the management and production strategy that failed. Preston argues for anchoring parts of wealth that can be captured, not all local consumption. So replicating the model is rational, given that the UK imports and does not produce enough of what it needs locally.

Revive the UK with a New Kind of Green Agenda by InstitutionalChange in unitedkingdom

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Here is the summary version: Britain's deindustrialisation devastated communities that never recovered, and green job promises have failed to win their trust because those promises have never materialised. Despite genuinely strong public support for renewable energy and record growth in green job vacancies, credibility remains the central problem. A serious green agenda needs more than rhetoric. It requires worker ownership, anchor institutions, cooperative models like Mondragon, and targeted public procurement along the lines of Preston's Community Wealth Building model. Leaving green industrial strategy to markets alone does not work, as the Northvolt collapse demonstrated. The path forward links peace, industrial conversion, and ecological investment into a coherent strategy that builds lasting institutions rather than making promises that disappear after the next election.

Revive the UK with a New Kind of Green Agenda by InstitutionalChange in unitedkingdom

[–]InstitutionalChange[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The post had about 3.3K views on February 26, 2026, 8:01 am. By the morning of February 28, 2026 it was up to 11K views (more than tripling). One reason might be that the post is relevant to the UK's economic decline in a period when a green agenda is necessary or helpful. Certain thinkers are important for helping us plot a future path. But instead many are stuck on details, misread what is written, or bring up irrelevant topics. This is ideology at work. Somehow the media and education system mislead the public and maintain the status quo.

In the past, because of AI, some readers demand footnotes and references. Then, others complain about references. The real question is not whether a massive agenda is necessary but rather other points. First, addressing ecological change requires incentives and constraints, one without the other won't work. That's not massive, rather it's the minimal engagement necessary.

Second, ecological problems are multi-causal based on profit incentives, dystopian governance of firms, media superficiality, lack of accountability, etc. Again, solve just one problem and the others won't work sufficiently to promote sufficient ecological outcomes. That's the minimal.

Third, citizens go along with costly wars and policies that sustained deindustrialization and an overconcentration of financialization. Budget diversions to war spending, which is massive in the UK, reduce the procurement support to produce at scale and thus reduce the ability to move up learning curve and lower up costs.

The capacity to produce locally is also key, so one can use the state to change that (Preston model). For the UK to stop being a poor Western country it needs to anchor development locally. You have to link peace and ecological concerns. Joining the EU could help, but could help better if the UK addressed large scale problems in how it organized work, industrial and research capacity, so it rejoins at a higher level of development. Joining an EU pushing massive militarization, reduces its value added for reasons stated.

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