Justin Ritchie

Surviving Progress

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In Extraenvironmentalist #41 we speak with Ronald Wright about his book A Short History of Progress which chronicles the idea of progress through human history and has been adapted into a new film, Surviving Progress. Then we hear from Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks who directed and wrote Surviving Progress. We ask them about the challenges of adapting the story of our complex civilization into a succinct and slick film. Last of all, we report back from Montreal about the Maple Spring uprising and our interviews with numerous ecological economists at the Montreal Degrowth conference as our civilization attempts to redefine our economic priorities.

The Heroic Works of Jerry Mander

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When I was a rookie economic activist in the fall of 2008, having become the director of CASSE only a year prior, I met Jerry Mander. At the time I had no idea how many heroic things he had done to both conserve natural areas and support the transition to a better economy.

Irrefragable Justice

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The concept of “odious debt” has been related to debt acquired by regimes that have been regarded as illegitimate in international law either because they were oppressive, or undemocratic, or because a change in state regime rather than just government had taken place, in the case of Cuba and Iraq due to external invasion. But might we extend this concept to stable western democracies, whose citizens are now struggling with oppressive debts? Recalling Sack’s two conditions–that the debt was incurred without the consent of the people and was not for their benefit–can we apply these conditions to our own situation in the UK?

Information storms and the limits to information

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Odum often drew an analogy between the way meteorological storms such as hurricanes disperse heat and the way that other systems do, including information systems. After Tom Abel’s excellent post last week on trends in education in a world in transition, it is a good time to share Odum’s analogy linking storms of information and weather storms. But to make that analogy, we first need a meteorology lesson, starting with the second law of thermodynamics.

Fukushima update – May 29

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-Fukushima radiation higher than first estimated
-Fukushima gets mixed radiation report from WHO
-Weakened Fukushima nuclear pool is not unstable, Japan insists
-Japan’s radiation found in California bluefin tuna
-Reform the Japanese power system. Nationalize Tepco

Global scarcity: Scramble for dwindling natural resources

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National security expert Michael Klare believes the struggle for the world’s resources will be one of the defining political and environmental realities of the 21st century. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he discusses the threat this scramble poses to the natural world and what can be done to sustainably meet the resource challenge.

Review: Jeff Rubin on The End of Growth

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Jeff Rubin is currently touring his new book, The End Of Growth. As the former Chief Economist for CIBC World Markets he brings an intimate knowledge of financial markets and how they work to the peak oil/end of growth community populated by other venerable thinkers such as Richard Heinberg, Chris Martenson and John Michael Greer.