Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Albert Bartlett might have been another obscure physics professor had he not put together a now famous lecture entitled "Arithmetic, Population and Energy"in 1969. The lecture begins with the line: "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
Everything pulses, and pulses maximize the flow of power in systems. I pulsed in a big way this year.
How would a non-growing economy function?
Sometimes considered a taboo subject, the issue of population runs as an undercurrent in virtually all discussions of modern challenges.
Today’s global economy is causing shortages of natural resources (both renewable and nonrenewable) as we come to the end of what might be called the Age of Extraction.
A sustainable future remains within our grasp but – thanks to the way human brains work – only governments can implement many of the necessary strategies.
The heart of “Snake Oil” is directed at countering the optimistic projections for production of oil and gas by hydraulic fracturing (fracking).
Heinberg makes four points in the book, each of which could usefully be put on the business end of a branding iron and applied to the tender backsides of pundits and politicians alike.
Does a new extractive technology arrive before or after limits to growth in resource throughput are in place?
We have both a moral obligation and practical reasons to work for justice and sustainability.
Since the principal advisors to government are economists, we need either economists who can think like ecologists or more ecological advisors. Otherwise, market behavior—including its failure to include the indirect costs of goods and services, to value nature’s services, and to respect sustainable-yield thresholds—will cause the destruction of the economy’s natural support systems, and our global Ponzi scheme will fall apart.
In this keynote presentation Richard surveys three over-arching global trends that provide the context for smart local economic development and planning.
