Consumption & Demand

The Next Decade’s Top Sustainability Trends

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The top ten sustainability stories of the past decade was my last post. What trends are likely the next ten years? One thing for sure, 2010 through 2019 will be one day looked at as 1.) the turning point for addressing climate change by using effective urban management strategies, or it will be remembered as 2.) the time when we collectively fumbled the Big Blue Ball.

Matters Arising From The Great Freeze of 2010

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Been a fascinating few days here in the UK in terms of the weather…It had been so long since we actually had a really actual snowy winter that thick snow has become the stuff of legend, banished to Doctor Who Christmas Specials and the top of Christmas cakes. Then it snowed, and boy did it snow, and almost immediately all the headlines were of ‘misery’ and ‘chaos’.

Peak oil & (and gas!), prices, and supplies – Jan 12

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-Interview with BP’s chairman of the board Carl-Henric Svanberg
-In New Gas Wells, More Drilling Chemicals Remain Underground
-Low-Carbon Recovery
-Is the United Kingdom facing a natural gas shortage?
-National Grid appeals for more gas as imports fail to arrive
-Saudi craving for oil comes at a price
-Iraq Could Delay Peak Oil a Decade

Jevons’ Law: Enforcing the Age of Energy Decline – Part 1

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In his 1865 book “The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of our Coal-Mines,” English economist William Stanley Jevons made the observation “Of the Economy of Fuel” that when improvements in technology make it possible to use a fuel more efficiently, the consumption of the fuel tends to go up, not down.

India’s decade of wheeled deities (updated)

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The veneration of the automobile is a custom that is gradually, steadily becoming more commonplace in urban India. The global auto industry’s major manufacturers are betting on it, India’s central government is betting on it, and tens of thousands of new customers in India are delivering that bet.

Who Will Grow Your Food? Part I: The Coming Demographic Crisis in Agriculture

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This is the beginning of a multi-part series on agricultural education, the farming demographic crisis and the question of who will grow our food – what the problems are, how we will find new farmers, how they will be trained. To me, this is one of the most urgent questions of our time.

Economics and Limits to Growth: What’s Sustainable?

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Much of the way that we conduct ourselves is based on habit. For example, we get into the habit of crossing our arms with our right hand (or left hand) on top. It is not that putting the right hand or left hand on top is better or worse. We have just developed a habit of crossing our arms in a particular way.