July 2004 ASPO newsletter is online

The facility calls for 456 small nuclear reactors, nuclear fuel production and nuclear waste storage. On the same day it surfaced, Sen. Ron Wyden introduced legislation that would ban new data centers.

It is true that no high-energy society has ever halved its material throughput and existed at that level across generations. But an absent precedent for an unprecedented situation merely tells us the situation is new, not what people will do.

With age, I’ve become more aware of the world’s complexity but also better equipped to come to simple, albeit painful, conclusions: We need to replace fantasies of endless growth with ideas about managing the contraction.