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.
Cornucopian Renewable-Energy Claims Leave Poor Nations in the Dark
By Stan Cox, Resilience.org
Billions of people around the world need more energy than they can afford, while billions of others can buy far more energy than is required to meet their needs. Global 100-percent renewable scenarios are based on these distortions...
Is Greenhouse Warming a Good Pretext for Selling Driverless Cars?
By Stan Cox, Resilience.org
The automakers and IT giants are predicting that autonomous vehicles (AVs or “driverless cars”) will play a big role in reducing America’s currently extravagant emissions of greenhouse gases. In this claim (as in the assertion that flying cars will be more energy efficient than helicopters), climate mitigation is serving not as a goal but as a selling point for a lucrative new technology that society doesn’t need.