5 years later - Happy Birthday, Paris Agreement? | Heinrich Böll Stiftung | Washington, DC Office - USA, Canada, Global Dialogue

Great Transition - or Fortress Eco-Nationalism? from A People's Green New Deal on JSTOR

The Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement and the Addis Agenda: Neo-liberalism, unequal development and the rise of a new imperialism

The Big Con: How Big Polluters are advancing a "net zero" climate agenda to delay, deceive, and deny. - Friends of the Earth International

<aside> 💡 "The sustainability discourse remains entrenched within neo-liberal economic principles that favour global capitalism...We contend that the sustainable development discourse, as it is currently unfolding, is embedded within a capitalist agenda," write Evans and Musipwa in Neoliberalism, Imperialism and Unequal Development in the SDGs, Paris and Addis Agenda. I would like to draw attention to how the capitalist agenda has systemically contributed to the contemporary climate crisis through various sectors. The Big Con (GFC, FOEI, CAI, et al.) outlines the most common distractions that Big Polluters use though large-scale technology and market mechanisms: burning trees or biomass, carbon captures and storage (CCS), bioenergy and carbon captures and storage (BECCS), carbon markets, and direct air capture (DAC). The Ajl reading, Green Transition or Fortress EcoNationalism, notes that the aim of Green Social Control is "to preserve the essence of capitalism while shifting to a greener model in order to sidestep the worst consequences of the climate crisis...such plans emphasize the national security sector." Additionally, lobbying infiltrates the international public policy arena through corporate capture and shapes academic research to validate Big Polluters' "net zero" agenda (GFC, FOEI, CAI, et al.).

What gives me some hope is learning that multifaceted solutions already exist. Fuhr introduced Radical Realism, showed how legal action has been extremely effective in enforcing fundamental rights (including from a criminal law perspective), and gave an example of a multilateral climate policy with the "Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty" in Happy Birthday, Paris Agreement? Additionally, Evans and Musipwa "highlight opportunities that are open to higher and tertiary education institutions to contribute to redefining sustainability" through delinking knowledge systems and embrace local research and technology development. It leads me to wonder how other sectors or arenas could potentially be decolonized?

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