Why We Can’t Just Do It: The Truth about Our Failure to Curb Carbon Emissions
We’re at a crisis point. A sacrifice is needed. Only a sacred cow will do. Economic growth is our society’s most sacred of cows. And guess what? The cow is sick anyway.
economic growth
A road map that misses some turns
Mark Jacobson’s new book, greeted with hosannas by some leading environmentalists, is full of good ideas – but the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
Profits of Utopia
What led to the twentieth century’s rapid economic growth? And what are the prospects for that kind of growth to return?
The Final Doubling
Re-localize, reduce, repair, and reuse. Build resilience. Become more independent of the monetary economy in any neighborly ways you can.
Why the lights are going out on Britain’s asset-stripped nation
Electricity supply, one of the systemic flaws in the UK’s failing economy, looks increasingly like it could fracture this Winter – and without accepting why that model is broken that cannot be avoided.
How Fossil Fuels Made the Human Race Dependent on a Finite Resource
Carey King of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin discusses how the last 70 years of economic and population growth have been fueled by the transition to petroleum, how a decreasing supply of it has increased political polarization, and what the future might hold as supplies continue to dwindle.
Inflation, Scarcity and the Road to Survival
Those communities that reject business as usual and cut their energy spending and all the materialist values that go with it, just might survive the long emergency and write a different ending to this story.
Ukraine: Putin’s Lebensraum
At this point in history, war is inevitable as long as nations are determined to grow their economies. Economic growth starts at the trophic base; that is, with agricultural surplus. In other words, a bigger economy requires more lebensraum.
Climate change and the limits of economic growth
The only effective way to control carbon emissions, as well as related problems of pollution and biodiversity loss, is to address “overshoot,” the unconstrained use of energy and material resources well beyond planetary limits, particularly in the richer parts of the world.
The black elephant in the room
The Black Elephant In The Room, in this case, is that nothing grows forever. Unlike what our system – the Elephant in The Room – pretends to do, which is designed to do so and doesn’t know how to slow down.
If It’s Profitable, Is It Really Sustainable?
That an economic activity has to be profitable is considered a truism, something taken for granted and not reflected upon. But what if the opposite is the case?
From What If to What Next: Kate Soper and Tim Jackson
Might this be the time to forever do away with the idea that the only way to measure our progress, cultural, social, spiritual, economic, is purely by how much bigger our economy is than it was last year?