Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Political elites, both on the Right and on the Left, seem to agree on the necessity of constant economic growth, even at the cost of ecological catastrophe. They say we need growth in order to deal with present social problems, but can it be that this narrative is a fallacy?
As long as we’ve had language—for tens of thousands of years, at last estimate—we’ve been able to formulate the question, “What will tomorrow bring?”
Climate change denial is often decried for its destructiveness. But energy depletion dismissal – and by Naomi Klein of all people – could have consequences just as bad.
With characteristic insight, the great American philosopher, John Dewey, once wrote: ‘Every generation has to accomplish democracy over again for itself.’
Faith in decoupling deflects attention away from the problems that lie at the heart of global environmental (and social) problems…
As economic growth threatens climate stability, biodiversity, planetary geochemical flows, and ecosystem health, humanity is creating a bottleneck for itself.
At this point most people appear to know that something is terribly, terribly wrong in the United States of America.
Does it make a difference if our models of energy and the economy are overly simple?
Speaking of Creation encourages humility, reminding us of humans’ relatively small, albeit disproportionately destructive, place in that larger world.
The three-century-long reign of the market economy is nearing its end whether we like it or not, wrote late British economist David Fleming in Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy.
$50 per barrel oil is clearly less impossible to live with than $30 per barrel oil, because most businesses cannot make a profit with $30 per barrel oil. But is $50 per barrel oil helpful?
In Vermont, a famously beautiful and progressive land that has also offered us a viable presidential candidate, there was virtually unanimous support in the legislature for recognizing limits to economic growth, the problems caused by growth, and the solutions inherent to a steady state economy.
