The readings for my "Political Ecology" unit at the local university suggest that capitalism itself is at the base of our environmental degradation. Degradation happens as a result of focusing on labour productivity rather than land productivity.
To solve environmental problems we probably need to go beyond renewable energy etc. We actually need to break the system?
#livingDemocracy @timhollo

Looking for a stimulating podcast? I had a great chat recently with another Tim (this one a Collings) about #LivingDemocracy. It’s just gone live on his podcast, Better World Leaders.

Have a listen:

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/tim-hollo-charts-pathways-towards-living-democracy/id1510713219?i=1000609129102

#Democracy #ecology #anarchism

Looking forward to the Green Institute online seminar this Thursday evening. With @timhollo and others.
#greens #restoredemocracy #livingdemocracy
https://www.greeninstitute.org.au/events/webinar-living-towards-transformation/

New from me at Green Agenda - on #transformative politics and #LivingDemocracy.

How do we turn that age-old challenge of seeking to change the system while operating within it from an uncomfortable contradiction into a creative tension?

https://greenagenda.org.au/2023/04/transforming-towards-living/

How does #change for the better happen? Can our political system deliver the huge changes we need, as urgently as we need them?

I’ve long argued that, in order to tackle the #ClimateCrisis, we need radical political, economic and cultural #transformation. And I’ve always been told that we don’t have time for that.

This week, we’ve seen the real-time impacts of the environment movement’s refusal to think outside the box of existing political power. And the Greens’ failure (thus far) to build the social movements necessary to support our parliamentary negotiations. And, most starkly, the complete corruption of our mainstream politics - the fact that Labor and the press gallery act as mouthpieces for the fossil fuel industry and believe political manoeuvring is more important than stopping omnicide.

I thought this would be a good time to re-share this essay I wrote a couple of years ago, explaining my #TheoryOfChange in this moment of #polycrisis.

It draws on ideas of #ecologicalDemocracy and #EcoAnarchism, and forms the basis of a chunk of the last chapter of #LivingDemocracy.

Here it is: https://arena.org.au/theres-no-time-left-not-to-do-everything/

I don't think either side came out of the #PosieParker rallies in Australia looking very good.
It is easy to stir up fear and anger in supporters and then set them on each other. All it results in is theatre for the media.
Those not informed about the issue just see two radical groups going at it.
@timhollo writes that the way to resolve issues for the better is to not force people to take sides. These types of confrontations give observers only two choices, pick a side or leave the battle field. Historically conservatives thrive on this, as reasonable people tend to leave the battle.
A better way to oppose would be to mark out a space with pink and blue banners and hold a fun gathering with music and food. Confront the fear and anger of the anti-trans tirade with community and joy.
Show, by example, that the anger and fear has no basis.
#transrightsarehumanrights
#livingdemocracy

This could be a period of incredible, progressive reform.
With Labor now in govt across mainland Australia, Greens & Pocock balancing the Senate, likely a progressive NSW Upper House, a Labor/Greens government in the ACT, imagine what could be achieved if Labor chose to govern from the left?
We could get a swift transition to 100% renewables, phase out fossil fuels while supporting workers through the transition, raise welfare above the poverty line & make it unconditional, increase taxes on extreme wealth, make housing a human right instead of an investment, properly fund schools & healthcare for all, build urban mass transit & high speed rail, end gambling advertising & slash the number of pokies, end native forest logging & make laws that respect the fundamental rights of the natural world…
But we won’t. Because, in our weak #democracy, Labor doesn’t have the impetus to do any of this. The voices of powerful corporations and people drown out the voices of the masses. The siren song of the extractivist capitalist economy still has Labor in its thrall.
We need to be out on the streets, in our neighbourhoods, in our communities and workplaces, campaigning our hardest for all these crucial steps. But we need to be doing that not because we think this system will deliver, but in order to prove its failure, and help people imagine that real, transformative change is truly possible.
Politics-as-usual is a dead end street. We need to be building new roads towards #LivingDemocracy.

My #TEDx #Canberra on #TransformativeChange #panarchy #moths #LivingDemocracy and more is now live! I’d love thoughts and feedback, particularly from #EcologicalDemocracy folks, but anyone, really :-)

https://youtu.be/GtlZydpQGc0

#Audiobook here we come! Finally in the studio recording the first chunk of #LivingDemocracy. Don’t hold your breath, but it’ll be out there soonish…

Hey, #Canberra mastodonians, on April 6, I’ll be at Big River Distilling Co at Dairy Road, to talk about #LivingDemocracy as part of their fun #Ginsights program.

Getcha tickets for G&Ts and #democracy here: https://bigriverdistilling.com.au/collections/new-arrivals/products/ginsights-author-event

@timhollo Blimey!
"without those profit gains, inflation since the pandemic would have risen much more slowly, at just 2.7%."

#capitalism #livingdemocracy

Inflation is being driven by price-gouging and profiteering by big corporations, and ordinary people are copping the blame as this extractive system takes takes and takes some more.

#Capitalism is a bad system. We need to replace it from the grassroots up. You’ll find a bunch of ideas and examples of doing so in #LivingDemocracy

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/24/an-economic-fairytale-australias-inflation-being-driven-by-company-profits-and-not-wages-analysis-finds

Back on the road!

Heading up the highway on the coach to visit the wonderful folks at the Sydney Environment Institute today before talking #LivingDemocracy with the Central Coast Greens this evening and Sydney Greens tomorrow evening, and National Council meetings with MEAA over the weekend.

Register for Gosford book event: https://www.facebook.com/events/gosford-regional-gallery-and-edogawa-commemorative-garden/living-democracy-a-conversation-with-tim-hollo/870371907518763/

Register for Bondi book event: https://contact-nsw.greens.org.au/civicrm/event/register?reset=1&id=12923

Hey folks in the greater #Sydney region interested in #ecological #democracy!

I've got two #LivingDemocracy events coming up in a fortnight with NSW #Greens folks.

Coz who says you can't advocate for radically reinventing democratic systems while also campaigning for an election in the current system? Contradication FTW. 😃

On Feb 15, I'll be at the Gosford Regional Gallery with the Central Coast Greens, in conversation with Jackie Pearson:
https://www.facebook.com/events/870371907518763

And on Feb 16, I'll be at the Bondi Pavilion in conversation with candidates Dominic WY Kanak, Nick Ward and Rafaela Pandolfini:
https://contact-nsw.greens.org.au/civicrm/event/register?reset=1&id=12923&

Hope to see lots of you there!

Please open this and watch it when you can give it a full 15 minutes.
This vid, by @bennjordan, is a brilliantly articulated and crucially important explanation of not just #Spotify’s appalling business model, but frankly what #PlatformCapitalism is doing more broadly.
As I’ve written elsewhere, #capitalism is eating itself. This model cannot survive, and will not survive very long.
Our task, as I put it in #LivingDemocracy, is to seed the alternatives, create the space for other alternatives to follow us, withdraw our consent from existing structures (like f$€king Spotify), and start to institutionalise the new way of doing things.
You up for that? Watch this video, even if only to see why musicians like myself cannot stand Spotify and use it with gritted teeth coz it’s so hard not to.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gDfNRWsMRsU

Couldn’t be more delighted to find that #LivingDemocracy is one of the Canberra Times reviewers’ picks books of 2022! Thanks, Ian McFarlane, for your kind words. You can still grab a copy in your favourite bookstore, or at www.greeninstitute.org.au

You’ve got 2 days left to support The Green Institute and get these three inspiring books of active hope!

Summer is coming, and you’ll need some great reading, and a bunch of gifts for friends and family. With our book pack, you get that AND you help the Institute deliver a big program of conferences and seminars and symposia and papers next year.

Here’s where you order: https://www.greeninstitute.org.au/green-summer-reading-pack/

#books #PoliticalEcology #LivingDemocracy #Green

How cool is this? #LivingDemocracy in action! #ParticipatoryDemocracy #DeliberativeDemocracy #Ecology #Biodiversity #PoliticalEcology
https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2022/11/27/citizens-assembly-on-biodiversity-loss-highlights-states-failure-to-address-crisis/

Wonderful and nourishing conversation for the #ClimateAction Network Australia with Claire O'Rourke and 1 Million Women's Natalie Isaacs about our three books, climate hope, community action and, above all, connection!
#LivingDemocracy
#TogetherWeCan
#RightHereRightNow

Today I had the pleasure and privilege of attending and speaking at the conference of the Independent And Peaceful Australia Network, IPAN. I was asked to talk about how the #climate and #peace movements can work together more, but ended up doing my usual thang of saying let’s stop being so instrumentalist and rethink what we’re doing. Traditional campaigning in both spaces is failing, because it’s refusing to grapple with the systemic blockers, and continuing to ask those in power to do things we know damn well they won’t do (what I call supplicant politics in #LivingDemocracy ). It was fabulous to meet Emma Shortis properly - she and others gave great presentations. But I was struck again by the tendency of some peace campaigners to get drawn into a slightly disturbing fascination with the theatre of war, by the predictable one speaker spouting problematic conspiracy nonsense, and by how old and white the crowd was. Gotta change that stuff. Will blog and share my speech in the next day or so.