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Tag Archives: sustainability
Bonus: Galactic-Scale Energy with Tom Murphy
Bonus: Galactic-Scale Energy with Tom Murphy Take it from astrophysicist Tom Murphy. Sure, lightsabers, dilithium crystal warp drives, and Mars colonies are a lot of fun to consider. But a physics-based perspective on energy tells us that we need to accept the limits to growth, stop chasing sci-fi fantasies, and get to work building a […]
The World’s Sustainable Development Goals Aren’t Sustainable
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. JAMES WASSERMAN/GETTY IMAGES FOR GLOBAL GOALS/UNITED NATIONS In 2015, the world’s governments signed on to […]
What Should We Want to Hold Onto?
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 […]
Sustaining the Unsustainable: Why Renewable Energy Companies Are Not Climate Warriors
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, […]
Grappling with growth
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 […]
What is the Root Issue of Our Unsustainability?
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 […]
Beyond the Growth Imperative
Beyond the Growth Imperative 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 […]
The Necessary Climate Solution No-one is Talking About
The Necessary Climate Solution No-one is Talking About For all the talk of renewable energy, electric vehicles and plant-based diets, there’s a gaping hole in the way we’re trying to solve accelerating climate change. We will not stay below 2°C of warming while pursuing economic growth – yet barely anyone talks about it. Since the end of […]
TSHTF
TSHTF You just know everything’s going pear shaped when the venerable acronym TSHTF, well known in our circles, hits mainstream media….. The below article written by Fiona Blackwood from the Hobart ABC Bureau appeared on the ABC News website and it’s so full of ironies I just had to pull it apart. So please bear […]
New Zealand rated best place to survive global societal collapse
New Zealand rated best place to survive global societal collapse Study citing ‘perilous state’ of industrial civilisation ranks temperate islands top for resilience Bunker repurposed for a US ‘doomsday’ community. A study proposes that countries able to grow food for their populations, protect their borders from unwanted mass migration and maintain an electrical grid, are […]
To Be Sustainable, Green Energy Must Generate Adequate Taxable Revenue
To Be Sustainable, Green Energy Must Generate Adequate Taxable Revenue What allows any type of energy to be sustainable? I would argue that one of the requirements for sustainability is adequate production of taxable revenue. Company managements depend upon taxable revenue for many purposes, including funding new investments and paying dividends to shareholders. Governments depend upon […]
If It’s Profitable, Is It Really Sustainable?
If It’s Profitable, Is It Really Sustainable? That an economic activity has to be profitable is considered a truism, something taken for granted and not reflected upon. But what if the opposite is the case? When I first took up small-scale organic farming in the 1970s, I spent a lot of energy in developing new methods […]
Teaching (or Cultivating) Sustainability (or Inhabitance), Ten Years On
Teaching (or Cultivating) Sustainability (or Inhabitance), Ten Years On For ten years now, I’ve been teaching one version or another of a class on personal simplicity and economic and environmental sustainability here at Friends University, a formerly Quaker, non-denominational Christian, small liberal arts college in Wichita, KS. Though I teach at a religious university, I don’t teach religion […]
Not just another drought: The American West moves from dry to bone dry
Not just another drought: The American West moves from dry to bone dry The American West is having a drought. So, what else is new? And, that’s just the point. The American West has been in an extended drought since 2000, so far the second worst in the last 1200 years. Here is the key […]
Fixing overfishing
Fixing overfishing As with many other aspects of government policy, overfishing and other fishing-related environmental issues are a real problem, but it’s not clear that government intervention is the solution. Over three billion people around the world rely on fish as their primary source of protein. About 12% of the world relies on fisheries in some […]
