Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The tie between energy supply, population, and the economy goes back to the hunter-gatherer period. Hunter-gatherers managed to multiply their population at least 4-fold, and perhaps by as much as 25-fold, by using energy techniques which allowed them to expand their territory from central Africa to virtually the whole world, including the Americas and Australia.
Darwin tells us we must evolve or die, and current circumstances bring that choice into stark relief. A lot of people evidently think that fitness and selfishness are the same…Yet it is our abilities to innovate socially and to cooperate in order to increase our collective fitness that have gotten us this far…
There will be at least 100 million more Americans by 2050, and likely 150 million more. Yet the cities that will house them are so spatially and economically unstable that it is impossible to do much beyond superficial sustainability planning. One solution is to anchor and recycle wealth in communities, using locally owned businesses as bulwarks against uncontrolled economic forces that have decimated regions like the U.S. Rust Belt. Cities built to last, as a community wealth building effort in Cleveland suggests, can offer a sustainable home for America’s population boom and point the way to a greener economy.
“Smart growth” is an urban growth management strategy that applies planning and design principles which are intended to mitigate the impacts of continued growth. If properly applied, these principles represent a positive contribution to new urban development. However, smart growth is part of the “culture of growth” that perpetuates the “endless growth model.” The rhetoric of smart growth is that population levels and growth rates are not the problem; it’s merely a matter of how we grow.
The novel describes a future in which humans have evolved into an entirely new species, the Neu-humans. They are distinguished by their short tails, freckled appearance and super-intelligence—along with a strong tribal sensibility that compels them to tread lightly upon the planet and always make decisions rationally. The story involves an archaeological journey to the “Lands of Oregon,” from what is now northern Canada, to discover the missing link between humans and Neu-humans. The year is 3100.
– The Return of the Demographic Crisis
– Gail Tverberg: Rentier Debt and the Collapse of Debt-Based Finance
– Eating the Seed Corn? Consumption in the American Economy Since 1929
– Former Hedge Funder Presents A Terrifying Vision of the End Game
– Steve Keen & Chris Martenson: Why 2012 is shaping up to be a particularly ugly year
– Fred Magdoff: Harmony and Ecological Civilization
– Commencement Address: You’re Not Special
– Population and Biodiversity: The Parable of Isle Royale
– Ehrlich et al: Securing natural capital and expanding equity to rescale civilization
Jeff Rubin is currently touring his new book, The End Of Growth. As the former Chief Economist for CIBC World Markets he brings an intimate knowledge of financial markets and how they work to the peak oil/end of growth community populated by other venerable thinkers such as Richard Heinberg, Chris Martenson and John Michael Greer.
– Don’t call me an environmentalist
– James Gustave Speth: America the Possible: A Manifesto, Part II
– Limits to growth, food security issues and the rapid growth in Australia’s population – Philip Adams interview
In virtually every institution in human society, we humans concern ourselves with the continuation of the species. We have children, we raise them in some sort of family, we educate them for the world of work and citizenship, and then we see them couple and start the cycle all over again. All the while we seek to defend ourselves from disease, violence, economic deprivation, in fact, anything that might cut short our lives or those of our children. It ought to be self-evident that human beings do care about the future. What I want to examine is whether they should and if so, how much.
This online tool allows you to estimate the number of people a certain area in Australia may be able to support at a national, state and bio-regional scale. Our aim is to raise awareness of the importance of carrying capacity assessment as a forward planning tool – to help establish a sustainable balance between people and their localised environment. Given the dependence of societal systems on biophysical health, it is vital that land-use planning initiatives have the ability to more clearly define potential future demands on the environment. Carrying capacity assessment offers a way to assess our resource needs and also determine how best to meet these needs.
As a contribution to this ongoing refinement of the concept, I recently formulated five axioms (self-evident truths) of sustainability. My goal was simply to distill ideas that had been proposed previously and put them into a concise, easy-to-understand form.
