Book #22: Slow Down

What would "degrowth" look like?

Hi friends! This is Book Club for the Planet, an online community for us to read about the climate crisis in community. Looking for even more to read? Check out my new Substack where I write about writing, climate collapse and adaptation, sci-fi, speculative fiction, life on other worlds, and more.

Our book club discussions for The Quickening were spicy and grateful to the two dozen of you who showed up in-person and virtually to speak openly about climate change and the ethics of procreation. Our in-person gathering was the biggest yet, and we had to keep pulling out more chairs for everyone coming in the door! Thank you for bringing your anxieties, vulnerability, and trust.

Our next book is Slow Down by Kohei Saito. I first heard about Kohei Saito through his first book, but he popped up on my radar again through a New York Times profile. His latest book, Capital in the Anthropocene, isn’t new; it was published in 2020 in Japan and sold over 500,000 copies, but it’s just now being released in English this January. Saito joins a growing chorus of other writers interrogating capitalism’s goal of constant, endless growth and consumption and exploring how “degrowth” could actually be the key to climate solutions.

Book club dates: May 5 (virtual) and May 6 (in-person in Baltimore)! Also, if you’re in or near Baltimore, Red Emma’s will be hosting Kohei Saito on Sunday, April 21 to talk about Slow Down a week before our book club meet-ups. This was unplanned but very, very cool! RSVP here.

For continued reading, please check out Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy by Kohei Saito; Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel; Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe by Michael Löwy; and Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism by Aja Barber.

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Don’t live in Baltimore? Join us virtually via Google Meets!

If you live in or near Baltimore, join us at Greedy Reads' Remington location for an in-person meet-up!. Please register in advance so we know how many folks to expect.

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Happy reading and see you in May! ✨