The IMF Tells a Half-Truth

By Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute

On May 18 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a report titled “How Large are Global Energy Subsidies?” The question is a bit misleading...

Peak Meaninglessness

By John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report

Last week’s discussion of externalities—costs of doing business that get dumped onto the economy, the community, or the environment, so that those doing the dumping can make a bigger profit—is, I’m glad to say, not the first time this issue has been raised recently.

The Externality Trap, or, How Progress Commits Suicide

By John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report

Economic life in the industrial world these days can be described, without too much inaccuracy, as an arrangement set up to allow a privileged minority to externalize nearly all their costs onto the rest of society while pocketing as much as possible the benefits themselves.