Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The situation in Asia shows the problem facing the global electricity sector; as rich countries struggle to peak or reduce emissions, newly industrializing countries are rapidly increasing fossil fuel usage as they move through the energy intensive early stages of industrialization.
There is a lot of speculation surrounding the Trump administration’s intentions toward clean energy and environment policies and programs. Rumors abound of slashing budgets, firing personnel, gagging anyone left standing and ultimately dismantling EPA and federal renewable energy programs at the Department of Energy and elsewhere.
Consumers increasingly care about where their food comes from, how it is produced and how it impacts their health. This is generating demand for sustainable food and has enabled the recent resurgence of small-scale farming that produces environmentally sound and ethical produce.
Even though, by definition, public spaces are open and accessible to everyone, for refugees and immigrants they often become sites of danger and exclusion.
2016 was a dark year for anyone paying attention to the gathering storm of climate change and social breakdown, and the change of calendar year does not mean a change of direction.
In late 2015 the CSIRO released its Australian National Outlook (ANO) Report (‘the Report’) which outlined 20 future scenarios for Australia, exploring various global and national sustainability challenges…our new paper argues that even the Report’s most ambitious “green growth” scenario is incompatible with long-term sustainability and global justice.
It’s not often that a scientist gets to use the words love, creativity, and wisdom in a paper, especially when writing about economics. Perhaps that’s because economics, the dismal science, is obsessed with dismal systems — make that abysmal systems, relative to need.
But while measures to curb emissions and reduce the impacts of rising temperatures will be good for the many, the few who work in industries affected by climate policies risk losing their livelihoods as the economy leans increasingly upon renewable energy.
If the first 17 days of the new administration foreshadow the next four years in the context of anticipated climate change, we will need to tap deeply into our own inner resilience, and most especially, we’ll need each other.
The recent Supreme Court ruling on Jessica Ernst in her case against the Alberta Energy Regulator demonstrates once again that Canada’s myopic legal system can easily lose sight of justice.
I take the point Joe Clarkson made – at root, this blog is supposed to be about farming. The trouble is, the shape of farming is driven by politics (we’ll know that agrarian populism has succeeded when and if it’s the other way around…) so inevitably writing about farming involves writing about politics.
From a Transition perspective, a shortening of trade distances has to be a good thing, right? Bringing manufacturing back closer to where people live, thereby reducing carbon emissions, enabling more money to cycle within the national economy rather than globally? So far, so Transition… And yet.
