Consumption & Demand

Hope in a cold season

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A great many of those who insist that we can afford to ignore the head-on collision between industrial civilization and the limits of a finite planet justify that claim by talking about hope. As millions of people turn their eyes heavenward, waiting for the end of the Mayan calendar or some other prophesied event to bail humanity out from the consequences of three centuries of our own mistakes, it’s arguably time to ask whether everything that gets labeled “hope” deserves the name.

As economic growth fails, how do we live? Part II: Out with the old

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We cannot “set things right” in the sense of restoring things to the way they once were, but we must begin now to adapt to the new realities if we are to reduce suffering and continue an advanced culture. Today’s article, “Out With the Old”, discusses ending seven unsustainable practices.

Reclaiming Christmas, radical homemaker style

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Here’s the bitter truth. I’m my family’s biggest pain in the ass every Christmas. Most radical homemakers probably are….We’re sick of the consumerism, we’re sick of feeling sick after all the crappy food, we’re sick of being pushed around with our kids in an endless stream of command visits and activities, we’re sick of the over-stimulation wrought by endless, ecologically rapacious, quickly-broken toys.

How much dam energy can we get?

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Having now sorted solar, wind, and tidal power into three “boxes,” let’s keep going and investigate another source of non-fossil energy and put it in a box. Today we’ll look at hydroelectricity. As one of the earliest renewable energy resources to be exploited, hydroelectricity is the low-hanging fruit of the renewable world. It’s steady, self-storing, highly efficient, cost-effective, low-carbon, low-tech, and offers a serious boon to water skiers. I’m sold! Let’s have more of that! How much might we expect to get from hydro, and how important will its role be compared to other renewable resources?

Can we manage without growth? An interview with Peter Victor. Part Two

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There are many possible futures out there. I think that what I see is a huge amount of resources in our economy, both in terms of capital equipment, intellectual effort, finance, being directed towards the growth agenda. A different agenda, a different ambition for our society and our economy away from the pursuit of growth, would automatically free up, at least in principle, a lot of these resources.

Land Rights and the Rush For Land Report (excerpt)

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Originated by the rising concerns expressed by many International Land Coalition (ILC) members in 2008, the Commercial Pressures on Land research project is intended to go beyond the large-scale land acquisitions phenomenon, focussing on the wider set of converging drivers for investment interest in land, such as rising food consumption and predicted long-term food prices rises; demand for feedstock for agrofuels; increasing commodity prices; carbon-trading mechanisms such as REDD; and rent seeking and speculation practices on land by recontextualising them within longer term trends.

OPEC says, ‘Don’t count on us’ for more supply

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The results of OPEC’s latest meeting to set oil production quotas were announced this morning. Instead of production targets for individual countries, a group production ceiling of 30 million barrels a day was set. This amount is a bit less than OPEC produced in November 2011 (actual 30.367 mbd), according to its reckoning, and less than it would have produced most of 2011, if Libyan production had stayed on line, based on the amounts shown in its November Oil Market Report.