Anne B. Ryan

The Economics of Arrival: Review

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I read The Economics of Arrival: Ideas for a grown-up economy (Katherine Trebeck and Jeremy Williams, Polity, 2019) during summer 2019 and have been dipping back into it ever since. To somebody who asked me what it’s about, I replied, ‘It’s Enough Is Plenty for the current decade; it’s all about how rich countries can share the wealth so that everybody can have enough, and how poorer countries can take varied trajectories that do not result in the maldevelopment we see in many rich countries today’.

Texas Petroleum Chemical Plant Explosion, And Our Petrochemical ‘Collective Suicide’

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A plume from the Texas Petroleum Chemical (TPC) plant hung over Port Neches, Texas on Thanksgiving as emergency workers continued to fight the fire following explosions at the plant on November 27. A mandatory evacuation that called for 60,000 people within a four-mile radius from the plant to leave their homes the day before the holiday was lifted yesterday.

What Survives a Drought?

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This year, my summer favorites like tomatoes, bell peppers, winter squash and cucumbers failed badly. This begs the question: What survives a drought? What thrives when the pasture grasses are baking and the thermometer sits at a hundred day after day?

The Town That Refuses to Drown

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In recent years, this remote pueblo of 400 full-time inhabitants in Jalisco, about two hours from Guadalajara, has stepped into the national spotlight, standing up to a total of eight governors in two different states over the years and taking their fight all the way to Los Pinos, the Mexican White House. If the townsfolk get their way, it will probably be the first time that a mega-dam will be dismantled before it is ever used.

It’s Time for a Moratorium on New Fossil Fuel Extraction

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New Mexico and other states that depend on fossil fuels need to wake up from the somnolence that oil wealth is bringing. The boom-and-bust cycle will continue, at least partly because the world is finally transitioning to renewable energy, though the more familiar fluctuation of global markets is also a factor.

Buzz Holling’s Resilient Universe

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Natural systems are most resilient when they showcase a lot of diversity — something our economic monocultures ignore.

A wild forest can absorb many surprises from fires to insects, for example, because its diverse ecosystem ensures robustness over centuries and allows for collapse and renewal.

Power, the Acceleration of Cultural Evolution, and Our Best Hope for Survival

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We humans are aggregating more power, and doing so more unequally across society, than in any previous period in history. Power is good; without it, we would be powerless. But it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and that’s an apt way of describing the human predicament in the early 21st century.