Climate Collapse, Imperialism, and Technological Solutionism - Truth & Reckoning Audio Episode 13

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In this episode, Climate Collapse, Imperialism, and Technological Solutionism in Academia, we speak with Aashis Joshi. Aashis lives in Kathmandu, Nepal, and is a fierce critic of imperialism and greenwashing. He was pursuing a PhD in climate adaptation at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands until recently, when he dropped out after increasingly recognizing that the technological solutionism and Eurocentric siloed thinking that characterized academia was leading to more problems than it was solving. He is now pursuing public education on these topics.

Our conversation explores these topics, weaving through the challenges and misconceptions in climate adaptation and ecological research, the scale of the ecological crisis, the imperialism and colonial violence inherent in technological approaches to solving these problems, and the political agency that’s available when we abandon these false solutions.

That violence is key to the functioning of the global industrial economy, and it’s not an accident. As Aashis recently wrote:
“The ruling class of the West & Global North knows that food & resource scarcities & unlivable conditions leading to mass migrations & geopolitical turmoil are inevitable & imminent. They know full well that there is no way to address climate & ecological breakdown & live with their consequences in a fair way that doesn’t involve redressing global power imbalances, i.e. without ending their economic & geopolitical hegemony.

As they have no intention to carry out real climate & ecological action, they hold climate conferences & peddle techno-consumerist greenwashing “solutions” to buy time to divert resources towards systems that help strengthen their imperial hegemony. It’s all distraction.

In a world woefully unprepared for the biosphere breakdown that’s just getting started, they are investing in their military & armed forces to control lands & resources abroad & their public at home.

They are fortifying their borders & developing advanced technologies & methods of surveillance, terror & deadly violence including AI & drones, which they are currently testing on the people of Palestine.

Their media, academic & cultural institutions are actively complicit in their imperialist agenda, helping run their propaganda to normalize colonialist & fascist atrocities & enforce a performative democracy where people protesting genocide & ecocide are brutalized & criminalized but universities have research & financial ties with weapons manufacturers & fossil fuel & other ecocidal corporations.

They will go to great lengths & cross many red lines to quash the global public’s potential to strive for a better, kinder system than the extractivist capitalist empire they helm, which lies at the root of our accelerating social-ecological polycrisis.

They have abandoned global cooperation on the climate, biodiversity & human rights & committed themselves to the vicious & insane vision of maintaining their imperialist, white supremacist domination at all cost instead.”

Aashis is a brilliant thinker and we are glad bring you his voice.

Links and Resources

The Global South’s Climate Aid Strategy is Flawed (https://www.sublationmag.com/post/the...) by Aashis Joshi (a relevant piece as COP30 is scheduled to begin on November 10th, 2025 in Brazil)
Facing Climate And Ecological Breakdown Requires A New Vision For Education And Politics (https://latitude.plos.org/2024/06/fac...) by Aashis Joshi
A discussion on degrowth and decoloniality (https://vimeo.com/1031069783) featuring Aashis Joshi and Erin Remblance
Decolonizing the Degrowth Movement’s Imaginary of Technology (https://maxwilbert.substack.com/p/dec...) by Max Wilbert (a response to Jason Hickel’s piece in Monthly Review titled “On Technology and Degrowth (https://monthlyreview.org/articles/on...) ”)

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