The Biophysical Tax Man Cometh
In this Frankly, Nate expands on our conventional definition of “taxes” to highlight nine other categories that will ‘tax’ our modern lifestyles.
How we could live well on far fewer resources: The Simpler Way video
The purpose of the video is to show firstly that very significant reductions on the demand side are necessary for sustainability to be achieved, and secondly that these can be achieved without hardship or abandonment of high tech, by shifting towards the kind of lifestyles and systems evident at Pigface Point and to settlements designed according to Simpler Way principles.
When science showed in the 1970s that gas stoves produced harmful indoor air pollution, the industry reached for tobacco’s PR playbook
When science showed in the 1970s that gas stoves produced harmful indoor air pollution, the industry reached for tobacco’s PR playbook
Painting By Numbers?
A living culture wouldn’t — doesn’t — refuse abstractions. It simply provides abstractions, like numbers, with a proper and limited focus and scope.
Back to the future through mixed farming
So it’ll be a case of back to the future with mixed farming as a key component of the food system (not everywhere, because we’re talking local context, not one size fits all solutionism … but mixed farming in its endless local variants will loom large).
AI: The information economy becomes ever more energy and resource intensive
The information economy was supposed to be light on physical resources compared to the old industrial economy. Turns out it’s not.
Surviving the Future: The Deeper Dive 2024
Autumn has always been my favourite season, and over recent years it brings additional succour, signalling time to start preparing in earnest for the winter’s Deeper Dive.
The Day of the Dead
It is the Day of the Dead. It is the end of yet another season of growth and the beginning of another season of decay. The spiral is turning… It is time to honor our debts to time. Without fear…
Cheap Climate Grace
We’ve tried tackling climate change through models that prop up the economically and morally crippled structures of the past, let’s try an approach that looks to the future with courage, vision, and imagination.
Rick Steves: What Americans Can Learn From Europe’s People-Friendly Places
I live in a beautiful community, and it’s so clear to me that beautiful communities don’t just happen.
Global Energy Transition: Race to the Bottom
Existing sampling technologies used to determine mineral density on the seabed estimate volumes 3-5x greater than all known land-based reserves. Yet studies on the environmental effects of creating plumes of sediment that will settle and cover (and smother) organisms on the sea floor or the effects of ploughing up large areas of the sea floor indicate that for all practical purposes, the damage is permanent.
Finding safe paths through suburbia
The post-WWII suburban settlement pattern assumes and reinforces car travel as the default transport choice for its residents. Do such settlements have a future when the temporary energy bonanza of the past 100 years falters? And can residents of suburbia begin to create that future today?
