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1. GDP is notoriously poor at capturing genuine social development and/or quality-of-life issues as perhaps most famously explored by the literatures on communist-led Kerala, which achieved human development levels on par with many wealthy countries with an incredibly low GDP. It is remarkable though, in discussions of climate and economics, massive redistribution from the top down globally is often painted as unpalatable in the North. But even with the extremely limited quantitative tools at hand it seems to escape scrutiny that such redistribution effectively aimed at eliminating the top 10 percent or even 20 percent of highest incomes to raise socioecological standards for the bottom 90 percent would clearly benefit majorities even in the United States. Median per capita wealth in the United States is $79,274 in 2021, far below the $100,000 that comprises the top wealth decile and even the $82,000 for the top 20 percent. This is not to disregard how US per capita GDP is rich by global standards but rather to show in even the most basic terms how much ground there is for converging interests in radical climate politics across seemingly unlikely global positions while at the same time underlining how income and wealth at US median levels does not translate to standard-of-living or quality-of-life conditions, a general problem with GDP as a concept and measure while reflected in critical development literatures.
2. The concept of "planetary boundaries" was proposed by the environmental scientist Johan Rockstrom et al in 2009 as a way to measure "a safe operating space for humanity with respect to the functioning of the Earth System." They would answer the question prompted by the Anthropocene: "What are the non-negotiable planetary preconditions that humanity needs to respect in order to avoid the risk of deleterious or even catastrophic environmental change at continental to global scales?" As later clarified and expanded by chemist Will Steffen et al in 2015, the concept of planetary boundaries does not draw lines at thresholds or tipping points where "a biophysical threshold" is "likely to exist" but "rather upstream of it — i.e., well before reaching the threshold." Planetary boundaries are not the only model of such a space but any real sustainable model requires this fundamental shift in conceptualizing and dealing with socioecological risk in ways entirely antithetical to the financialized, just-in-time, high-speed world of 21st century capitalism.
3. While some hallucinate a "good" Amazon or "socialist" Walmart as the backbone of a "Good Anthropocene", a 2019 public letter signed by nearly nine thousand Amazon employees detail the ways in which the company is in no way currently compatible with even the simplest necessities of climate mitigation and adaptation. For all its stark and brave honesty, the letter actually underplays Amazon’s ecological unsustainability in terms of climate and society. Amazon is paradigmatic of the extractive circuit; not only in terms of the structure of the firm but also in the ways it has shaped many intrinsically socially and ecologically catastrophic technologies, and, as explored further here, what the speed of such firms facilitate.