Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
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.
Is there indeed “abundance” in the commons, especially ones based on natural resources? Or do such ideas amount to a denial of nature’s finite limits?
•Horror story •Gattopardo economics: The crisis and the mainstream response of change that keeps things the same •The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics •"Twenty-Something" Entrepreneurs Return To Northern Michigan •The Economy Of Tomorrow Project
I’ve stayed away from politics pointedly in posts, because voting for either party is still just voting for growth, with different labels applied. I do not believe that the current corporate giveaway that we call a political system is fixable unless we elect a leader who is ecologically and energetically literate. I doubt that will happen. That said, here is an earth day wish for real servant leadership which would fix our problems. The post is directed at a specific leader, Obama, since the United States is the worst offender in terms of extreme behavior and unsustainability.
Writing a book is like going on a journey. You explore the terrain, make discoveries, meet interesting people, and maybe learn new languages. The longer the book-writing, the longer the journey.
The difficulty for any person who goes to another country to talk about economic and political policy is that they are almost inevitably going to be, to some degree, out of touch and out of tune with on the spot realities.
What I am aiming to explore in this post is the pattern of the pulse – a pattern that seems to occur in all natural systems. I want to look at how it has flowed through human history in the form of energy production and consumption, and how it relates to a number of my interests.
In the first part of this series about "terminal capitalism," we saw a collection of evidence that the global system of capitalism, the organized basis for most world trade, is in deep trouble. The situation has become so serious and the problems so self-evident that the polls show many average American citizens are questioning the viability of capitalism itself.
Nate Hagens draws my attention to this recent interview with Dennis Meadows, lead author of the famous Limits to Growth series of books. Meadows is very pessimistic. I was particularly interested in his views on oil production and peak oil, in which he states positively that peak oil is in the past (which is very arguable at best, given that oil production is still making new monthly highs), and also that "Oil production will be reduced approximately by half in the next 20 years, even with the exploitation of oil sands or shale oil."
Economist Jeff Rubin and environmentalist David Suzuki might seem an unlikely pairing. But they’ve been touring Canada together, talking about the natural limits to growth from their very different perspectives. This event was staged as part of Calgary’s WordFest.
“The economic relationships between and among communities at the level of the biosphere are sympathetic and circumstantial,” LaConte writes.
By contrast, industrial capitalism has led to a perfect storm of problems — climate change, peak oil, overpopulation, species extinction heading the list — that LaConte has dubbed Critical Mass…
