Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In the concluding installment of this discussion series, Tom Murphy and Dave Murphy wrestle with whether a just energy transition can truly be sustainable, or whether modernity itself is a dead end on a finite planet.
Despite three decades of COP climate talks and a boom in renewables, global emissions continue to rise, rooted in capitalism’s relentless drive to expand energy use. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations helps explain why renewable energy has grown without pushing fossil fuels out.
In this installment of an ongoing series, Tom and Dave Murphy explore what “sustainable” truly means and whether any disruption to natural ecosystems or energy flows by humanity is inherently unsustainable.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) are being promoted as cheaper, safer, and faster to build than older nuclear plants, winning support from some environmentalists and a more pro‑nuclear public. Amid an energy crisis and soaring AI‑driven electricity demand, SMRs seem promising, but many critics, rightly, still see them as a dangerous dead end.
Countries attending a first-of-its-kind summit have walked away with plans to develop national roadmaps away from fossil fuels, along with new tools to address harmful subsidies and carbon-intensive trade.
A critique of contemporary food and energy analysis, this essay argues that many proposed solutions to food insecurity and fossil fuel dependence remain trapped within the assumptions of growth and technological complexity. Instead, it calls for a more honest reckoning with ecological limits, inequality and the possibility of a lower-energy, more localized future.
The war in Iran has made the paradox inescapable. The pursuit of energy security through fossil fuels produced the very disruption it was meant to prevent. Instead, the transition to renewables offers the genuine insulation that oil never can: from global price shocks, from the geopolitical risks embedded in that dependence, and from the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis.
Can modern civilization survive for the long term within planetary limits? This dialogue pits optimism about renewable energy and human adaptability against a more fundamental critique: that modernity itself may be incompatible with ecological sustainability.
In this interview with 15/15\15 magazine, Richard Heinberg argues that current transition strategies ignore a central reality: replacing fossil fuels is not enough without reducing overall energy use.
Twenty years after a global proposal to limit oil extraction, Richard Heinberg revisits its relevance in this interview and argues that equitable rationing may be key to reducing conflict and managing resource decline.
If modernity cannot endure within planetary limits, what comes next? Dave Murphy and Tom Murphy debate the likelihood of collapse, the possibility of adaptation and what we owe each other in a time of ecological overshoot.
More than 50 countries are meeting in Colombia to explore how economies can move away from coal, oil and gas through “complementary” multilateral negotiations.
