Home » Posts tagged 'sustainability' (Page 4)

Tag Archives: sustainability

An agricultural barn of the 1800’s located at Falls Mill, Belvidere, Tennessee

Agriculture is a technology (like fire and the wheel) and a system of extracting minerals and nutrients from the soil through photosynthesis. The industrial method of agriculture adds the use of fossil fuels through the Haber-Bosch process for fertilizer, many different chemicals such as herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and other toxic chemical treatments (including GMO seeds), and of course diesel-powered equipment such as tractors and all the equipment to plow, plant, spray, water, harvest, and transport crops today. The technology of agriculture is what allowed for today’s cities to exist, and it became possible only with the stable climate of the Holocene, which is now disappearing rather quickly. The recent events over the past 6 months in British Columbia, Canada (first the wildfires [especially around Lytton] and now the floods), should be more than enough to convince anyone of this; although plenty of events throughout the rest of the world are also proof.

The one thing which is rarely mentioned about agriculture or the Green Revolution is that it is all entirely unsustainable. Every civilization (which is based upon the bedrock technology of agriculture) which has existed has also collapsed and this current set of living conditions is in the process of collapsing as well, all due to the unsustainable practices upon which civilization is founded. These unsustainable practices eventually lead to overshoot and eventually the landbase surrounding said civilization is unable to support those living upon it. This causes collapse which results in those living there to scatter. Some people may remain in the general vicinity, but a large portion of the population must find new locations for habitat in order to continue to exist.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Prepare developed democracies for long-run economic slowdowns

November 26, 2021

Prepare developed democracies for long-run economic slowdowns

Developed democracies proliferated over the past two centuries during an unprecedented era of economic growth, which may be ending. Macroeconomic forecasts predict slowing growth throughout the twenty-first century for structural reasons such as ageing populations, shifts from goods to services, slowing innovation, and debt. Long-run effects of COVID-19 and climate change could further slow growth. Some sustainability scientists assert that slower growth, stagnation or de-growth is an envi-ronmental imperative, especially in developed countries. Whether slow growth is inevitable or planned, we argue that devel-oped democracies should prepare for additional fiscal and social stress, some of which is already apparent. We call for a ‘guided civic revival’, including government and civic efforts aimed at reducing inequality, socially integrating diverse populations and building shared identities, increasing economic opportunity for youth, improving return on investment in taxation and public spending, strengthening formal democratic institutions and investing to improve non-economic drivers of subjective well-being.

Modern liberal democracies—with broad economic and political freedom and stability—predominate in today’s developed world, but they are a historical anomaly. Before the Industrial Revolutions, there was both little per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth and little democracy (Fig. 1a). Since the Industrial Revolutions, most countries have escaped the ‘Malthusian trap’—where land productivity growth led to growth in population but not affluence1—and global affluence has increased by more than a factor of ten1,2. This unprecedented global growth has temporally coincided with the global proliferation of democracy (Fig. 1a). In the early nineteenth century, less than 1% of the world’s population lived in a democracy, compared with about 55% today3. There is some evidence of bidirectional causality: on average (with some exceptions), open, democratic institutions promote growth4–6, and long-run growth and affluence promote the formation of democratic institutions7,8…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What is The Venus Project and Why Can It Never Be Attained?

November 17, 2021

What is The Venus Project and Why Can It Never Be Attained?

Something which is difficult to get away from when it comes to the predicament of ecological overshoot and all of its offshoots such as climate change is the wide array of different plans for so-called “solutions” for these predicaments. Perhaps, ironically, the most humorous part is that predicaments don’t have solutions, so each one of these ideas can be quickly unpacked and debunked. I’ve made quite the habit of finding these ideas and then researching how effective (or the lack thereof) each one is at tackling the issue it is supposed to solve.

One idea in particular which has come up time and again over the years is The Venus Project. I had thought that this idea had faded into irrelevancy, but noticed that the idea popped up in conversation in a thread a couple weeks ago. The RationalWiki page gives this description, quote:

“The Venus Project is a communist cult that promotes architect Jacque Fresco‘s vision of the future, which involves an economic structure known as a “resource-based economy.” Basically it’s stock-standard central planning, except with computers!“

There are still many people who believe in the Venus Project (TVP), but because of the core beliefs of the actual plans, one can very easily see that the so-called “plan” is unsustainable due to its reliance on civilization (unsustainable) and technology (unsustainable). Even before actually getting into details, the very first paragraph of this section tells the story, quote:

“It is far more efficient to build new cities as self-contained systems from the ground up than to restore and retrofit old ones. New cities can take advantage of the latest technologies and be clean, safe, and desirable places to live. In many instances, a circular arrangement will be utilized.“

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Mining the Planet to DeathThe Dirty Truth About Clean Technologies

November 10, 2021

Foto: [M]: Hedi Xandt; SABarton / Getty Images / DER SPIEGEL

Mining the Planet to DeathThe Dirty Truth About Clean Technologies

The poor South is being exploited so that the rich North can transition to environmental sustainability. Entire swaths of land are being destroyed to secure the resources needed to produce wind turbines and solar cells. Are there alternatives?

There’s a dirty secret hidden in every wind turbine. They may convert moving air cleanly and efficiently into electricity, but few know much about what they are made of. Much of the material inside wind turbines are the product of brutal encroachments on our natural world.

Each unit requires cement, sand, steel, zinc and aluminum. And tons of copper: for the generator, for the gearbox, for the transformer station and for the endless strands of cable. Around 67 tons of copper can be found in a medium-sized offshore turbine. To extract this amount of copper, miners have to move almost 50,000 tons of earth and rock, around five times the weight of the Eiffel Tower. The ore is shredded, ground, watered and leached. The bottom line: a lot of nature destroyed for a little bit of green power.

A visit to the Los Pelambres mine in northern Chile provides a clear grasp of the dimensions involved. It is home to one of the world’s largest copper deposits, a giant gray crater at an altitude of 3,600 meters (11,800 feet). The earth here is full of metalliferous ore. Just under 2 percent of the world’s copper production comes from this single pit.

Dump trucks, 3,500-horsepower strong, transport multi-ton loads down the terrace roads that line the mine. The boulders are transported by conveyor belt almost 13 kilometers (8 miles) into the valley, where the copper is extracted from the rock. This processing requires huge amounts of electricity and water, a particularly precious commodity in this arid region.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Increasing Our Gardening Resilience

November 8, 2021

Increasing Our Gardening Resilience

Thoughts on increasing our gardening resilience

It feels like the world is moving faster and faster in directions I never would have thought possible just a couple of years ago. We knew resilience was important, but now it has become essential, critical to our well being and perhaps even survival. I am going to share some thoughts about pushing a garden to be more productive in ways within the capabilities and finances of most of us. My solutions reflect my agricultural zone (8b) and microclimate, but it is surprising what can be accomplished with very little.

Three resources I lean heavily upon, and will reference here, are: the books written by Eliot Coleman (Maine), Lynn Gillespie’s courses and information found at thelivingfarm.org (Colorado) and the interviews with Singing Frogs Farm (California) found on this website. All three provide a wealth of ideas and processes that those of us growing in residential areas can adopt on a “micro-sized” basis to be quite successful.

It takes knowledge and experience to be successful growing food on a small lot in a residential area, year-round, but it can be done! We can get a general idea of what we need to do through resources like those mentioned and seed company charts, but only dedication, season after season, brings us the knowledge and feeling that we need.

In the garden with the mini greenhouses with peppers and an A frame trellis for tomatoes behind

My garden is about 2000 square feet of actual growing area. It is divided into 40 beds, most of them raised. In this area over the course of a year 140 varieties of 40 vegetables and at least 20 different herbs are grown. Scattered around the rest of the property (a total of about 2 acres) we grow 15 different berries, 10 varieties of grapes, and trees for plums, peaches, pears, apples, cherries, hazelnuts and almonds….

click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Donella Meadows: Sustainable Systems

November 6, 2021

Donella Meadows: Sustainable Systems

Path to a Greener Future: Tax Kids or Just Ban Them Outright

October 22, 2021

Path to a Greener Future: Tax Kids or Just Ban Them Outright

The Greens need to step up to the plate with some truly sustainable proposals. I have a couple of ideas.

Ironies of Build Back Better

President Biden wants free college education, free preschool for kids, and increased child tax credits.

All of these proposals subsidize the single worst thing we can do for the environment: have kids.

Kids eat, need medical services, eventually become teenagers and drive cars. And as shocking as this might seem, kids grow up and travel, eventually by airplane.

Poor Nations Say They Need Trillions From Rich Ones

Yesterday, I commented Hello President Biden, Poor Nations Say They Need Trillions From Rich Ones

It’s one thing for developed countries like the US to demand a cleaner future, but it’s another thing to attempt to force G7 goals on the rest of the world.

About Those Climate Change Goals

John Kerry was speechless when he learned Poor Nations Need Trillions From Rich Ones to meet climate change goals.

At a July global climate gathering in London, South African environment minister Barbara Creecy presented the world’s wealthiest countries with a bill: more than $750 billion annually to pay for poorer nations to shift away from fossil fuels and protect themselves from global warming.

The number was met with silence from U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry, according to Zaheer Fakir, an adviser to Ms. Creecy. Other Western officials said they weren’t ready to discuss such a huge sum.

Kids are the single most destructive thing to the environment. Their toys are mostly made of plastic, diapers are throw-away, and as they get older, litter is inevitable.

A tax on corporations is not the answer. Corporations don’t really pay taxes anyway. Consumers do.

Guarantee Living Wages

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Long Descent — Decline and Fall of Industrial Society

October 19, 2021

The Long Descent — Decline and Fall of Industrial Society

The title of this piece is borrowed from John Michael Greer’s 2008 book The Long Descent, the central thesis of which is threefold. Firstly, the industrial civilisation we take for granted is unsustainable and is in decline. The evidence for this is all around us but many choose to downplay or ignore the evidence. Secondly, “The roots of the crisis lie in the cultural stories that shape the way we understand the world.” Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, we simply told ourselves a story, created a modern myth, weaved the narrative that endless progress and increasing prosperity were inevitable. Despite a few little bumps on the road, the only way was up. Lastly, it is too late for industrialisation and technology to solve the problems that industrialisation and technology have created. And when we say ‘problems’, we should more correctly say ‘predicament’. Problems have solutions, predicaments have outcomes. We can respond to a predicament, but it cannot be ‘solved’, and our predicament is this: There is simply not enough easily accessible, affordable energy remaining to maintain industrial civilisation as we know it. In general, we are referring here to fossil fuels; the coal, petroleum, natural gas, oil shales, bitumens, tar sands etc. on which industrial civilisation depends. Equally, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that it will be impossible to replace these energy sources with either so-called renewables, or nuclear. Although fossil fuels continue to form within the Earth, only the most trivial use of them could ever have been deemed ‘sustainable’. As things stand, most of the high grade, easily accessible deposits have been extracted, so even using fossil fuels as a way to transition to an enduring and genuinely renewable energy base is no longer possible…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bonus: Galactic-Scale Energy with Tom Murphy

October 16, 2021

Bonus: Galactic-Scale Energy with Tom Murphy

…click on the above link to listen to the show…

The World’s Sustainable Development Goals Aren’t Sustainable

September 29, 2021

The World’s Sustainable Development Goals Aren’t Sustainable

There are big problems with the most important metric used to assess progress toward the U.N.’s environmental goals.

Art for the Global Goals campaign at Liu Bolin Studio in Beijing on Aug. 28, 2015.

In 2015, the world’s governments signed on to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a commitment to bring the global economy back into balance with the living world. Now, five years later, as the U.N. General Assembly convenes online to discuss the global ecological crisis, everyone wants to know how countries are performing.

To answer this question, delegates and policymakers have referred to a metric called the SDG Index, which was developed by Jeffrey Sachs “to assess where each country stands with regard to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.” The metric tells a very clear story. Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, and Germany—along with most other rich Western nations—rise to the top of the rankings, giving casual observers the impression that these countries are real leaders in achieving sustainable development.

There’s only one problem. Despite its name, the SDG Index has very little to do with sustainable development all. In fact, oddly enough, the countries with the highest scores on this index are some of the most environmentally unsustainable countries in the world.

Take Sweden, for example. Sweden scores an impressive 84.7 on the index, topping the pack. But ecologists have long pointed out that Sweden’s “material footprint”—the quantity of natural resources that the country consumes each year—is one of the biggest in the world, right up there with the United States, at 32 metric tons per person. To put this in perspective, the global average is about 12 tons per person, and the sustainable level is about 7 tons per person. In other words, Sweden is consuming nearly five times over the boundary.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Should We Want to Hold Onto?

September 12, 2021

What Should We Want to Hold Onto?

The ongoing debates in many different groups (and on social media in general) are really beginning to show that some people have a good comprehension and grasp of the predicaments we face. On the other hand, I still see so many folks who want to try to hold onto things which simply cannot continue (with anything positive happening as a result). So many things which are sold as “solutions” don’t take reality into account and those who buy into these ideas are going to find out the hard way what constitutes sustainability and what doesn’t. Sadly, even things which are sustainable today may not be tomorrow. As the ecological systems we depend upon break down, options keep on narrowing.

As I wrote in It’s a Trap, Don’t Do It, focusing so intently on certain goals can sometimes be seen as foolish once one zooms out and looks at the bigger picture. Many of these goals often come as a result of fears, so looking into those fears more deeply should be undertaken BEFORE embarking on these certain goals. A perfect example is demonstrated in this site. This is yet another trap, although it might take one a while to come to this realization. From the owner regarding the water supply for the silo, quote:

“Water is a 2 inch main from the county water system. There isn’t consistent ground water in this area due to bedrock formations and we are high on a hill. This fact also keeps the facility from having a water problem leaking in like most other remaining silos have.“

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Sustaining the Unsustainable: Why Renewable Energy Companies Are Not Climate Warriors

September 8, 2021

Sustaining the Unsustainable: Why Renewable Energy Companies Are Not Climate Warriors

In the fight to address climate change, renewable energy companies are often assumed to be Jedi Knights. Valiantly struggling to save the planet, wind and solar interests are thought to be locked in mortal combat with large fossil fuel corporations that continue to mine, drill, and blast through the earth’s fragile ecosystems, dragging us all into a grim and sweaty dystopia.

In the United States and elsewhere, solar panels glitter on rooftops and in fields; turbines tower majestically over rural landscapes. The fact that, globally, the renewables sector continues to break records in terms of annual deployment levels is, for many, a source of considerable comfort. Acting like informational Xanax to ease widespread climate anxiety, news headlines reassure us that the costs of wind and solar power continue to fall, and therefore wind and solar is (or soon will be) “competitive” with energy from coal and gas. The transition to clean energy is, therefore, unstoppable.

By Any Means Necessary

Of course, wind and solar companies are not charities. They are, in a phrase, profit driven. They want to attract investment capital; they seek to build market share, and they all want to pay out dividends to shareholders. In this respect, renewable energy (and “clean tech”) companies are not fundamentally different from fossil fuel companies.

. . . [W]ind and solar companies are not charities. . . . In this respect, [they] are not fundamentally different from fossil fuel companies.

But so what? North-based environmental groups frequently point out that we have just a handful of years to start to make major reductions in emissions. Therefore, this is not a time, they insist, to split hairs or to make the perfect the enemy of the good…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Grappling with growth

August 18, 2021

Grappling with growth

Synergies and tensions between degrowth and people’s movements

We live in an age of converging crises. Only days ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a damning report on the state of the environmental crisis. At the same time, while a few countries are recuperating from the pandemic, an on-going third wave of Covid wreaks havoc across the Global South. In both crises, the economic imperative overrides other concerns and appears to render necessary changes illusory. Even among staunch proponents of our current economic system, calls for reform grow louder.¹ The health and environmental crises are illustrative of broader tendencies: environmental disasters, rising global inequality, political polarization, a strengthening of right-wing extremism, anti-immigrant policies, and accompanying human misery.

In light of this, movements are mobilizing. Beyond reform, they argue that systemic changes are needed. Their struggles take a holistic view, emphasizing how the individual crises are entangled and driven by underlying structural factors. A question moving increasingly to the center of attention is growth itself as a driver of social inequality and unsustainability. Critics of growth argue that reckoning with environmental devastation and social inequality is directly tied to leaving behind the growth-paradigm. Among the frameworks and movements criticizing growth, degrowth is especially prevalent.

Degrowth argues that environmental sustainability and social justice necessitate transitioning beyond growth-reliance. In order to address social and environmental issues, we have to transition towards societies that are not just smaller in size but also operate according to a different logic – a logic that is not determined by the market sphere.²

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What is the Root Issue of Our Unsustainability?

August 10, 2021

What is the Root Issue of Our Unsustainability?

Two pictures from Falls Mill, Tennessee, depicting life in the late 1800s. The mill now houses a museum and is open for tours and a bed and breakfast is also on site.

Last week, I updated the files here with over 250 new articles and studies (see this list). There were 59 new entries in the Climate Change and Collapse file alone. So many of these files now contain new studies which are increasingly worrying; some of these new entries are located in the Species and Biodiversity Loss, Extinction, Disease, Pollution Loading, Tree Decline and Deforestation, and Ocean Acidification and Marine Life files. As can be seen in these studies, this is a rapidly developing situation which is now beginning to gather speed and overwhelming existing infrastructure to deal with the ongoing disasters.

There is a new article regarding methane emissions through permafrost thaw which is rather chilling. Another version in the Smithsonian Magazine describes the “methane time bomb” and lists a paper from Andrew Glikson from July of 2018. Over the past several years, there has been a growing debate over just how much of a threat methane emissions pose to the growing climate situation. Methane emissions coming from hydrates (clathrates), permafrost thaw, thermokarst lakes, and even from behind dams in the thousands of reservoirs we have built are growing, and combined with other methane sources, provide about a quarter of effects contributing to climate change. Some scientists have argued that these pose no threat and that “all we have to do is cut emissions” and nature will solve the issue. This is, of course, pure lunacy, and designed to prevent panic…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Beyond the Growth Imperative

August 6, 2021

For 30 years, environmental economist Tim Jackson has been at the fore of international debates on sustainability. Over a decade since his hugely influential Prosperity Without Growth, the world is both much changed – reeling from a pandemic and with unprecedented prominence for environmental issues – and maddeningly the same, still locked in a growth-driven destructive spiral. What does Jackson’s latest contribution, Post Growth, have to say about the way out of the dilemma?

Tim Jackson’s new book, Post Growth: Life after Capitalism (Polity Press, 2021), follows his ground-breaking Prosperity without Growth (2009, updated in 2017). Whilst the previous work reflected, partly, the austerity-driven answers to the Great Recession, Post Growth falls into a different world. It is a world where the recognition of climate change as the greatest challenge facing humankind is moving towards consensus. In the United States, even the Republican Party’s younger members are looking for ways out of the corner into which the party has manoeuvred itself. It is also a world where the Covid-19 pandemic has not only taken many lives and destroyed many livelihoods, but – via the need for state intervention – has also dealt a blow to the gung-ho neoliberalism that is one of the main culprits of financial chaos and the looming breakdown of planetary life-support systems.

US President Joe Biden’s rescue plan as well as the EU’s Next Generation pandemic recovery fund are questioning the free-market paradigm that has held sway the since the Reagan-Thatcher area, and that had trickled down into centre-left politics as well. In parallel, from the Paris Agreement to the European Commission’s European Green Deal, environmental concerns that were condescendingly smiled upon until recently have now moved centre stage. The newly discovered role for the state and the emerging environmental consciousness might not be discussed at length in Jackson’s new book, but they are the backdrop against which it is to be read.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: sustainability

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Post navigation

Latest Posts