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Tag Archives: resources
Welcome to the Era of Intensifying Chaos and New Weapons of Conflict
Welcome to the Era of Intensifying Chaos and New Weapons of Conflict Geopolitics has moved from a slow-moving, relatively predictable chess match to rapidly evolving 3-D chess in which the rules keep changing in unpredictable ways. A declining standard of living in the developed world, declining growth for the developed world and geopolitical jockeying for […]
Renewables Are Dead
Renewables Are Dead If I’ve said once that those among us who tout renewable energy should pay more attention to the 2nd law of Thermodynamics, I must have said it a hundred times. But I hardly ever get the impression that people understand why. And it seems so obvious. A quote I often use from […]
Vaclav Smil. Making the modern world: materials and dematerialization
Vaclav Smil. Making the modern world: materials and dematerialization Preface. I can’t believe I read this book, it is just a long litany of the gigantic amounts of materials we exploit, with no analysis, implications, or the meaning of what impact this will have on the planet. I certainly don’t expect anyone to read even this […]
Individual Preparations Have National Implications
Individual Preparations Have National Implications With the recent release of reports from government agencies that warn of potential risk from long term grid failure, it is only prudent to evaluate your readiness for potential problems in our future. Catastrophic events have a habit of showing up unannounced. When the population is capable of caring for itself […]
Industrial Forest Science: Industry’s Bitch
Industrial Forest Science: Industry’s Bitch Photo Source Gunvor Røkke | CC BY 2.0 “As soon as you are a scientist … you take a political side [because] you must necessarily choose to ask only certain questions. Many scientists … produce risk assessment for forest management [which] asks ‘how much can we cut, graze, salvage, spray, […]
Murdered for Sand
Murdered for Sand The world is running out of sand, and people are dying as a result “It is to cities what flour is to bread, what cells are to our bodies: the invisible but fundamental ingredient that makes up the bulk of the built environment in which most of us live.“ — Vince Beiser, author […]
Some Thoughts On Climate Change
Some Thoughts On Climate Change A new IPCC report written and edited by 91 scientists from 40 countries who analyzed more than 6,000 scientific studies says we’re looking at climate catastrophe as early as 2040 unless changes are made worldwide on a scale and speed which has no historic precedent. $54 trillion worth of damage is predicted […]
Paying the True Costs of Living
Paying the True Costs of Living We’re in trouble. We as in the people of the Earth, which is all the people there are, notwithstanding theories of extraterrestrials munching their popcorn equivalents while watching us flail about. Our planet is only so big and has only so much in the way of natural resources to offer […]
‘The Expanse’ is a story about systemic ruin
‘The Expanse’ is a story about systemic ruin “The Expanse” is a popular science fiction television series (based on a book series of the same name) that at first seems to follow a predictable storyline: essentially the Cold War revisited, only in this case with warlike Mars (previously settled by people from Earth) pitted against […]
Equality: A Beneficial Alternative to Collapse
Equality: A Beneficial Alternative to Collapse What future shall we choose? Equality or inequality? Deep democracy or more limited forms? Sustainability and wise stewardship of resources, or exploitation for profit? You have a good idea of where current systems are taking us. A viable alternative path exists, and that path is science based. InMarch 2018, Bloomberg […]
The next financial crash is imminent, and China’s resource crisis could be the trigger
The next financial crash is imminent, and China’s resource crisis could be the trigger Over three decades, the value of energy China extracts from its domestic oil, gas and coal supplies has plummeted by half Source: naturepost China’s economic slowdown could be a key trigger of the coming global financial crisis, but one of its core drivers — China’s […]
Is Capitalism Killing Us?
Is Capitalism Killing Us? Ecological economists, such as Herman E. Daly, stress that as the external costs of pollution and resource exhaustion are not included in Gross Domestic Product, we do not know whether an increase in GDP is a gain or a loss. External costs are huge and growing larger. Historically, manufacturing and industrial […]
Today we’ve consumed more resources than the planet can renew in a year
Today we’ve consumed more resources than the planet can renew in a year Our economies are operating a giant planetary Ponzi scheme: borrowing far more from the Earth’s ecosystems than they can sustain. Photo by Jenny Tañedo Today is Earth Overshoot Day, the date when we have taken more from nature than it can renew […]
The Commons, Short and Sweet
The Commons, Short and Sweet I am always trying to figure out how to explain the idea of the commons to newcomers who find it hard to grasp. Here is a fairly short overview, which I think gets to the nub of things. The commons is…. A social system for the long-term stewardship of resources […]
