Throwing our energy at impossible dreams…
“as mankind proceeded to get bigger and bigger we silently crossed a threshold”
Population
Family planning for the planet
Youâll get no argument from me that less humans would in general be better for the health of the planet. But: “A world of difference exists between services that treat women as population targets and those based on a feminist model of respectful, holistic, high-quality care.”
Bottleneck by William Catton – A Review
First I should confess to a strong bias toward the content of this book. As readers of my blog, Question Everything, will realize, I have been moving inexorably toward the same conclusion as the author, so you will perhaps forgive me if you think I may be suffering from a lack of sufficient critical thinking. Put bluntly, I think this is a book every thinking human being should read, and then consider for themselves.
Solutions & sustainability – Nov 19
-Go forth and multiply a lot less
-The new wave of urban farming (and fresh food from small spaces!)
-Urban farms a fertile idea
-Summary Presentation for Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
-The next Industrial Revolution will be people-powered
-Sustainability and Social Justice: Do the Math
-Greening Portland – Your City How To
Immigration and our ecological predicament
Much of the migration we are seeing today is from countries which export resources to wealthy nations. In other words, we are seeing mass migrations from resource exporting countries where carrying capacity is being systematically undermined toward countries that are importing that carrying capacity.
Dr. Albert Bartlett’s “Laws of Sustainability”
At the Denver ASPO conference, I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Albert Bartlett. Afterward, Dr. Bartlett e-mailed me some material he had written over the years. The “Laws of Sustainability” were included in this material. They are part of Al Bartlett’s contribution to the anthology The Future of Sustainability by Marco Keiner, published in 2006.
Climate & environment – Oct 22
-China’s ‘carbon intensity’ commitment means nothing
-Let’s Try Cap-and-Trade on Babies
-Illusions on the edge of a precipice
-How to stop doubting and love the climate models
-Baffin Island reveals dramatic scale of Arctic climate change
-The Economic Case for Slashing Carbon Emissions
-The Cold we Caused
World Food Prize Conference – Oct 22
-Green Fields: Economist’s advice to Big Food: Change or face fate of GM
-Global leaders gather in Iowa for World Food Prize, talks on food, agriculture security
-Bill Gates reveals support for GMO ag
-Gates gives $120 million to help poor nations farm
Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue: World Food Day and the Problem of Equity
Yesterday was World Food Day, and the media dutifully paid a tiny bit of attention to the 1 billion plus people who suffer from chronic hunger. All the usual problems were trotted out, including multiple quotations in many media from the Australian National Science Director Megan Clarkâs observation that to feed a growing population, we will have to produce more food in the next 50 years than we have in all of human history.
Resources and anthropocentrism
Evolution demands short-term thinking focused on individual survival. Most attempts to overcome our evolutionarily hardwired absorption with self are selected against. The Overman is dead, killed by a high-fat diet and unwillingness to exercise. Reflexively, we follow him into the grave.
National parks and the idea of conservation in the fossil fuel age
As the fossil fuel age winds down, will the public be so amenable to setting aside additional landscapes, keeping them out-of-bounds to extractive industries? Will it even be willing to defend the national parks we already have?
Population – Oct 1
-Population Growth Steady in Recent Years
-Stop blaming the poor. It’s the wally yachters who are burning the planet
-The coming Population Wars: a 12-bomb equation
