I think that the everyday material concerns are indeed key, and there might be some fairly “easy” victories in the fields of affordable energy, housing and public transport. However, I think there is a real clash between the current desire of the working classes to accelerate their consumerist lifestyles, and the ecological boundaries. For all their sins, the predicament is not just the fossil fuel industry being evil, it’s bigger than that. Getting the obvious things sorted out is a beginning in the right direction, but actual sustainability requires a deeper change of orientation.
I don’t believe we’ll get very far in this transition in the next decades unless we begin to break capital’s control on all the essential aspects of our lives. The accumulation of capital would continue to drive the resource allocation, the political system and the meaning we grant our own existence, to the detriment of life upholding earth systems and the majorities of the world. And there will be no political consciousness to break the control of capital in a consumerist society where people are estranged from how life is recreated and upheld, where democracy means just voting in an election and where work is done just in exchange for a paycheck.
How can this begin to change? Heron, Millburn and Russel have one pretty convincing proposal and example in their book Radical Abundance. An intentionally designed institution that brings workers, local communities and the public sector together to deliberate on and control matters of production and consumption that are directly relevant to the participants.
The best part? It does not require prior legislative or electoral victories to start building these kind of institutions. It would directly counter some growth dependencies. Ideological motivations are not assumed to be the driver of participation. The hardest part? To get people involved and organized of course. But it starts from seeing the promise in this kind of action.
While there are so many different tracks of action required, this is one with great promise, that I’ve seen too little discussion and action on.
I want to point out a few major issues with these calculations, and how to arrive at a more reasonable result.
First, 150 g of protein per day is a big amount, something that you could recommend to a 100 kg person who does a lot of sports (if you assume 1.5 * bodymass in kg rule, which would be a mid-range estimate). 70-100 g would be more fitting to the average person. Second, you make the calculation as if tofu was the only source of protein. Eg. Menno Henselman, a muscle growth researcher, has stated that our bodies are actually remarkably good at combining amino acids from different protein sources digested throughout the day. His recommendation is to increase protein intake by 10-20% if you swap animal proteins to plant proteins (note that the amounts in his presentation are for bodybuilders). A balanced diet would include a fair amount of grains, even vegetables and mushrooms that have protein. So all of this would bring the amount of protein required from the main protein sources way down.
Let’s say that your main protein-rich foods would cover 70 percent of the total protein intake of a 100 g + 15% = 115 g (still quite a lot), that means 81 g of protein from tofu. With 14 g / 100g this would mean eating ~580 grams of tofu, or 145 g per meal over four meals, a very reasonable portion.
Now, in reality, I would not recommend eating just tofu as your main protein four times a day, but of course use some of the other great plant-based protein sources mentioned, like seeds, beans, lentils etc. Personally, I even throw in some sustainably fished local fish.