Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Mark Burton If with possible independence or increased autonomy, Catalonia were to pursue degrowth, then the kind of regional policies we have been promoting would be relevant there too (and we have also learned from innovations there, not least from what the Barcelona in Common city government is attempting).
With daily headlines pivoting from the unparalleled flooding from Harvey in Houston to the devastation caused by Irma in Florida, it might seem like the United States has its hands full just dealing with our own climate emergencies. But meanwhile, multiply the damage from Harvey and Irma a hundredfold and you’ll get a feeling for the climate-related suffering taking place right now in the rest of the world.
By abandoning the duty of maintenance we owe to the objects in our lives, we are distancing ourselves from the physical world and essentially sending the entropy elsewhere for someone else to deal with, whether human or non-human.
Freelance workers are known to be intrepid by nature. But perhaps the bravest — and most vulnerable — among them are those who don’t have anyone to rely on for financial help, in case they become disabled or too ill to work. That problem appears to have been addressed in the Netherlands, thanks to a trio that came up with the idea for Broodfonds (English translation: Breadfunds), an alternative kind of disability insurance that can replace lost income.
America’s middle class is under assault. Since 1983, national median wealth has declined by 20 percent, falling from $73,000 to $64,000 in 2013. And U.S. homeownership has been in a steady decline since 2005. While we often hear about the struggles of the white working class, a driving force behind this trend is an accelerating decline in black and Latino household wealth.
And so to The Test. I make the basic case, and repeat the question that frustrates me so much. How can it be that, collectively, we are missing such an open goal? I am sure that the reasons are multi-faceted. But there is one simple over-arching answer. None of us are trying hard enough. Not governments, not companies, not international organisations, not non-governmental organisations.
In considering the essential problem of how to produce and distribute material wealth, virtually all of the great economists in Western history have ignored the significance of the commons—the shared resources of nature and society that people inherit, create and utilize.
The question of land is crucial to answer today’s ecological and social issues. Indeed, who owns it is usually a good indicator of the state of our societies, and has a deep impact on what is done on it. Once again, the physical and temporal factors are intrinsically linked. When people own the land, as is the case in community owned land that id being developed in the North West of Scotland, they feel a stronger connection to it and are therefore more keen on protecting it and securing it for future generations.
Back-to-back hurricane catastrophes have plunged the United States into a state of national crisis. We’ve already seen one worst-case scenario in Texas: For the moment, Hurricane Harvey stands as the most costly natural disaster in U.S. history. And now there’s Irma, which has wreaked havoc across the entirety of Florida, America’s most vulnerable state. In just two weeks, the U.S. could rack up hundreds of billions of dollars in losses. Make no mistake: These storms weren’t natural.
While the potential of wind and solar energy is more than sufficient to supply the electricity demand of industrial societies, these resources are only available intermittently. To ensure that supply always meets demand, a renewable power grid needs an oversized power generation and transmission capacity of up to ten times the peak demand. It also requires a balancing capacity of fossil fuel power plants, or its equivalent in energy storage.
Alastair McIntosh joins us via the wires to talk about growing up on an island community, experiencing Papua New Guinea, rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful and experiencing the poverty of affluence, and his life long work to emphasise the importance of cultures of place and his experience of rebuilding them after forcible displacement on the Isle of Eigg and in urban settings with his GalGael project. We also touch on the island Presbyterian heritage he shares with Rupert Murdoch, and Donald Trump who “was wrung from the loins of a woman from Lewis” and how the force can be turned to the dark side.
Modeling the future of our climate is a complex task that not too many people understand. What do we know about how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC) modeling actually works? Why has the modeling community decided to model emissions separately from socioeconomic scenarios?
