Peer Pressure? Too Little and Way Too Late for the Climate Emergency
By Stan Cox, Resilience.org
In a Washington Post opinion piece last month, Robert Frank sought to instruct us in how peer pressure can “help stop climate change.” He wasn’t very convincing on that point; he did help, however, to inadvertently make the case that collective efforts, ones much more sweeping than individual role-modeling, are necessary to staving off climate catastrophe.
Healing the Rift Between Political Reality and Ecological Reality: A Q&A with Shaun Chamberlin
By Stan Cox, Shaun Chamberlin, Green Social Thought
At the urging of Fleming and Chamberlin, TEQs were introduced, studied, and debated in the U.K. Parliament a decade ago but were judged by the government to be ahead of their time. Now, with a global climate emergency widely acknowledged, systems like TEQs warrant further serious consideration.
Cap and Adapt: A Failsafe Approach to the Climate Emergency
By Larry Edwards, Stan Cox, Resilience.org
Here, we propose a policy framework we call Cap and Adapt, to accomplish the resolution's proposed managed phase out of fossil fuels, and by design to do so at a speed matching the last-minutes-to-midnight urgency of our climate plight. Also, by design, it is inherently failsafe both for meeting any target end-date the final legislation may adopt for the phase out and for ensuring the needs of individuals, families, communities, and the national economy are met.
That Green Growth at the Heart of the Green New Deal? It’s Malignant
By Stan Cox, Green Social Thought
A burgeoning save-the-climate effort called the Green New Deal, explains Vox’s David Roberts, “has thrust climate change into the national conversation, put House Democrats on notice, and created an intense and escalating bandwagon effect. … everyone involved in green politics is talking about the GND. … But WTF is it?”
Maria in Puerto Rico: America’s Least Natural Disaster
By Stan Cox, Paul Cox, Green Social Thought
Heroes don’t blame others when calamity strikes; victims don’t manage to find a way out of their vulnerability. Those who suffer unnatural disasters do both, as required, and that is the way the world will heal.
The Air-Conditioning Debate Isn’t Really About Air-Conditioning
By Stan Cox, Green Social Thought
Phillips, like many AC fans before him, falls back on the sly trope that all “attacks” on air-conditioning are motivated by an “obsession with individual asceticism.” No, they’re not.
An Ecosocialist Reply to a Defender of ‘Green Capitalism’
By Stan Cox, Green Social Thought
The common goal of both the private and public sectors is rapid, sustained GDP growth, so the only climate actions that companies or governments are willing to take are those that will not risk slowing wealth accumulation.
An Engineer, an Economist, and an Ecomodernist Walk Into a Bar and Order a Free Lunch . . .
By Stan Cox, Green Social Thought
With the political-economic road to an ecological civilization seemingly blocked for now, too many of our allies are following detour signs toward dubious industrial and post-industrial fixes. The mother of invention is the quest for new markets, and, as Thorstein Veblen once quipped, it’s invention that’s the mother of necessity.