Writers notes: "Enshittification" is a thing + trees debunk the growth myth

some additions and edits to the 20 chapters so far

Per my original commitment to this Book Serialisation project, I regularly update each chapter with bits and idea and quotes that you lot alert me to, or that pop up about the place. This is a fast-descending subject! I have been adding in some of your suggestions and corrections as we’ve been going along. But below are some of the more substantial ones.

Brutal revealing of shadows

Not so much an update, but a building on: In the last chapter, I touched briefly on the Jungian thesis of the Apocalypse Archetype. The idea is that our unconscious (both individual and collective), once it’s reached a certain level of spiritual maturity, seeks to reveal its shadow. It surfaces all its mistakes, absurdities, narcissistic behaviour, violences etc to force the Self into a reorientation.

Anyway, the idea has been haunting me.

This macabre, speeding up - or kamikaze-esque heightening - of all that is wrong fits very well with collapse patterning (witness the decadence and abuse of resources at the close of the Roman Empire). It also fits what I’m observing around us. I mean, the phenomenon of Trump, as a starting point. Then there’s his perfume, called Fight Fight Fight (tagline - “The fragrance your enemies can’t resist”) that he released a few days ago - nope, it’s not a joke. There’s also the fact he has stacked the leadership with felons-slash-billionaires - insta-oligarchy. Add to this, the whole Luigi Mangione affair. I find myself saying, “You couldn’t make this shit up” a lot. And yet here we are.

At my micro level I was at a fancy restaurant in Paris with friends last week and I gave the couple at the table next to us one of my “talks” about food waste (they’d barely nibbled at their meal). Anyway I wound up taking home their leftovers, which I ate over the course of three days. Now, the couple turned out to be the CEO of one of the largest global investment firms (and his wife? mistress?). Totally absurd, and yet I am no longer surprised by any of it.

Enshittification:

I used the word enshittification somewhere along the way, after I read Cory Doctorow’s OG piece where he coined the term. Emma Young pointed out that the Macquarie Dictionary just named it word of the year. It refers to the gradual deterioration of a service of product and the selection committee said, “It is what many Australians feel is happening to so many aspects of our lives at the moment.”

Something to ponder:

Ellen posed something in response to the chapter Collapse won't be like in the movies something that struck me as quite a perfect - if macabre - fix to many - if not all - things:

"Every year the richest person in the world should be sacrificed and their wealth distributed to the poorest amongst us. The rest of the year would see billionaires scrambling to distribute their wealth in an attempt to ensure they avoid being the target the following year."

The source of that “collapse = living like the person who grows your coffee” quote:

The wonderful writer

Jody Day

pointed me to the OG quote (I’d flagged I couldn’t recall where it came from). Apparently

Dougald Hine

quotes the futurist Vinay Gupta in a 2019 essay who said, to be more precise about things,

“What you people call collapse means living in the same conditions as the people who grow your coffee.”

Nature debunks the growth myth

We have this misguided belief that growth is what all of life does. But life does a hell of a lot of restraint, too. Trees, for example, have both growth hormones and hormones that restrain growth. Growth hormones are very potent and can cause damage to cells, so almost as soon as they are formed, the tree produces other hormones to lessen their effects.

In The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben explains a tree shares growth with other trees, plants, animals and microbes and will inhibit its own growth to benefit younger trees and other species, and itself - so these hormones will be released to ensure the whole tree only grows so far as the available light, water and nutrients allow. It grows only so far as growth helps it and life flourish!

Further climate unravelling:

Things have been declining in the six months since I started this project.

• According to the latest emissions gap report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), even in the most optimistic scenarios, where all countries deliver on their emission-cutting pledges, “there remains about a 3-in-4 chance that warming will exceed 1.5C.” Of course, no country is delivering on their pledges. And, indeed, with Donald Trump as President of the US, who has declared he will pull out of all climate agreements, existing policies will be rolled back globally.

• I added into the chapter about where climate activism now sits, this update post-COP29 which was attended by 1,700 fossil fuel industry executives and lobbyists, while China’s Xi Jinping and top European leaders skipped the whole thing (and the US paid no attention). Christiana Figueres, who founded the COP process was moved to declare COP “no longer fit for purpose”.

• I also added in a stat about carbon credits: A recent report found over 90 per cent of forest carbon offsets (the most common type on the market) are essentially worthless.

• Meanwhile, planet-warming pollution in the Earth’s atmosphere hit the highest levels in human history, scientists announced at the end of October.

• Also in October, fourteen climate scientists from the world’s top institutions published an article titled The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth, that opened with:

“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.”

• Further to the resources cost of the energy transition, it has been found that the as the first generation of wind towers are retired, the blades are going to landfill or being incinerated because they cannot be recycled. The estimated annual blade waste is going to be in the order of 200,000 tonnes a year. In its most recent report, the OECD optimistically anticipates a further doubling of material resource use by 2060.

Sufficiency v efficiency

Per Jevons Paradox, efficiency tends to lead to more energy consumption. Sigh. And it fails to address any of the other collapse-y issues, like inequality. Sufficiency, however, aims to avoid demand for energy, materials, land and water, and ensure wellbeing for all humans, while staying within planetary boundaries.

A recent Conversation article written by Australian scientist David Angus Ness who founded the Paris-based World Sufficiency Lab argues sufficiency is a policy approach gaining momentum around the world. France enshrined sufficiency in its energy law in 2015. French energy authorities say sufficiency measures, such as lower energy use in households and less travel, may enable emissions cuts of 10% by 2030. In March, 83 organisations in Europe released a manifesto urging the European Union to make sufficiency central to its agenda.

I’ve added a bit about this into the Ungrowth chapter after someone in the comments mentioned the term.

Finally, three quotes that speak beautifully to where we have got to

1.

“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.”

- Mary Oliver

2.

3.

And this one that Madeleine Urion pointed to in the comments:

“I read something this morning by Gavin Van Horn: The earth is a verb.”

---

Thanks to you all for the feedback, the love, the kindness and the robust chats in the comments. They make my day. Every day.

Sarah xx