Michael Shuman

Small Thinking About Small Business: A Rebuttal to Jared Bernstein

by

I like and admire much of Jared Bernstein’s work, but he really doesn’t understand the case for small business. Having spent much of his professional life in the labor-funded Economic Policy Institute, Bernstein comes to most economic discussions with a visceral skepticism about small businesses generally (because many have historically supported Republican policy agendas) and a comfort with large businesses generally (because they are more likely to be unionized). He appears to be largely unaware of new small-business groups like the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) that favor progressive change and embrace labor rights.

Is this group think, or is the U.S. about to be energy-independent?

by

One becomes nervous when a consensus begins to form around a Big New Idea — it starts to sound like group think. So what are we to make of the cottage industry developing around the notion that the U.S. not only isn’t facing an impending oil shortage — it is on the cusp of being nearly energy independent, short of a margin of barrels that will be imported from friendly Canada and Mexico?

Commentary: Americans deserve the truth about potential oil crisis

by

Last week we and other representatives of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas USA (ASPO-USA) stood on the steps of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to call for “Truth in Energy” concerning one of the most serious threats to our economy, national security, and environment: the prospect of an impending decline in world oil supply. The consequences of this milestone are far-reaching and potentially catastrophic. After a news conference at DOE, we delivered a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu summarizing our concerns and requesting answers to specific questions about DOE’s response to this monumental challenge.

Urban planning and food

by

With more than half the world’s population living in cities we have been told that cites are where humanities future lies. At the same time, awareness of the future challenges humanity faces are growing…The cry has gone out for “sustainable cities” and urban planners the world over are responding. In most people’s (and urban planners) minds cities primarily consist of people to accommodate and methods to transport them…The problem with answering this question is that urban planners have forgotten the fundamental reason thing that allows cities to exist and that will determine their existence in future.

Review: Songs of Petroleum by Jan Lundberg and Diamonds in my Pocket by Amanda Kovattana

by

At first glance, Jan Lundberg and Amanda Kovattana seem like unlikely kindred spirits. He’s a former oil analyst turned whistleblower and rock musician, while she’s a British-educated Thai émigré who makes her living helping people become organized. Yet their similarities run deep, beginning with a profound concern for the planet and a flair for writing. Indeed, both are indispensable contributors to one of the top news sites on energy and the environment, Energy Bulletin. Both also happen to be accomplished memoirists, and their memoirs offer rare insights into family relationships, the vicissitudes of wealth and the quandary of being an environmentalist in an environmentally apathetic age.

Occupy Wall Street: No demand is big enough

by

We protest not only at our exclusion from the American Dream; we protest at its bleakness. If it cannot include everyone on earth, every ecosystem and bioregion, every people and culture in its richness; if the wealth of one must be the debt of another; if it entails sweatshops and underclasses and fracking and all the rest of the ugliness our system has created, then we want none of it.

Escape routes: Fleeing Vesuvius – which way should we go?

by

The editors and I asked this books’ contributors to send us their recommendations for things that could be done on a personal, community, national and international level to help prepare for the future. Naturally enough, our request was interpreted differently by different people: some contributors focused exclusively on the subject of their articles in the book, such as the need to curtail greenhouse gas emissions or undertake financial reforms, whereas others took the opportunity to provide much more general advice.

The tyranny of comfort

by

Blind pursuit of comfort must take some blame for the quandary we find ourselves in. In America, we’re burning through an incredible bounty of fossil fuel, a bounty so energy-dense that most of us fail to comprehend its magnitude. This way of life is centered on comfort…Perhaps it’s only news to Mr. Cheney (and other politicians before and since), but “unsustainable” will trump “non-negotiable” every time. And America is about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not the pursuit of comfort.

Not so much: Shale gas shows its limitations

by

If you live in the United States and bother to turn on your television, it’s almost impossible to avoid ads telling you that natural gas from shale is both abundant and environmentally safe to develop. In these ads, so many happy people seem to enjoy burning natural gas that it would be difficult to imagine that their smiles might come to a premature end.