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Economics and the environment
Economics and the environment This is the text, including slides, from a talk given on October 28 2020 during an online event organised by University College Cork’s Economics and Environmental Societies. (I didn’t follow the text word for word during the talk, but it covered the same ground) Thank you very much, I’m delighted to […]
Aggregate green growth is a mirage: we need to take a more scientific approach to societal wellbeing
Aggregate green growth is a mirage: we need to take a more scientific approach to societal wellbeing In the spring of 2020, the new Irish government announced its desire to develop new measures of well-being and progress in Ireland. The idea was given some prominence in the Programme for Government, ‘Our Shared Future’. This is exactly […]
Bringing disaster preparedness into resilience politics
Bringing disaster preparedness into resilience politics Introduction Most discussion of “sustainability” for the last 30 years has been about how to ensure that what we do today is not at the expense of future generations. This is supposed to be so that future generations are safe from the damage done when current generations over-exploit the […]
Keystone attitudes and policies of enough
Keystone attitudes and policies of enough In the previous blog post, I asserted that states and international governance bodies need to make systemic or upstream interventions to foster stability and security in economy and society. where they have high leverage potential. Then, governance needs to continue to respond intelligently to what arises. In Enough is Plenty, […]
The school of economics as a suicide academy?
The school of economics as a suicide academy? “Anyone who thinks that economic growth can continue for ever on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist.” Kenneth Boulding The Limits to Growth Study of 1972 In 1972 economists became embroiled in a controversy with a group of systems scientists from the Massachusetts Institute […]
Speed and localism
Speed and localism This is an extract from Patrick Noble’s new book, Reclaiming Commons, which can be ordered online here. SPEED What of fossil-powered speed – the borrowed muscular lives of fossilised years? Do we forget ourselves in consequence? What of two people walking side by side? They are more or less equal until they […]
Money: the silent killer
Money: the silent killer In Sweden, which is famously on the way to becoming cash-free, you can find signs in shop windows that say ‘we don’t take cash because electronic payments are better for the environment’. Since cash does require a certain amount of resource use for its production process and transportation, and since in […]
Culture and climate
Culture and climate My purpose is to show that if cultures are to end further acceleration of the climate change they are causing, then new ways of life must be found, which no longer cause it. Tinkering with improvements to our current ways of life is futile. We must each of us change how we […]
The Punishment of Nemesis
The Punishment of Nemesis “Heraclitus, the inventor of the notion of the constant change of things, nevertheless set a limit to this perpetual process. This limit was symbolized by Nemesis, the goddess of moderation and implacable enemy of the immoderate.” A story that gets repeated over and again – hybris. Certain stories recur in the […]
The tales of history are a dead-end road
The tales of history are a dead-end road Culture is what people do. It decays when people stop culturing. Changing a culture means changing what we do. Often, that will need a step by step transition as we negotiate obstacles. Even though we follow some backward meanders, the river may flow on. But there are […]
The ninety percent and the tithe
The ninety percent and the tithe I think it likely that 90% of our working time creates what we don’t need and also damages work to preserve what we do need. That is: most of our time is not only wasted but destructive. Of course, I’m speaking of the so-called First World and of the […]
Cursed to live in interesting times
Cursed to live in interesting times In this article I connect the fall in the growth rate, with its roots in the rising costs of energy extraction and generation, to declining resilience in the economic system. These are in turn related to a more conflict ridden geo-politics. There is an increased vulnerability to shocks which […]
The great agricultural resettlement or the next chapter of the fall
The great agricultural resettlement or the next chapter of the fall Here’s my own picture. I am a farmer and that is where my world begins. What is an agriculture? I say it is a culture of cities, towns and villages, bridges, roads, canals, harbours – of trades’ people and the trades, which have been […]
The real lesson of the Energiewende is that the German economy uses too much energy to be sustainable and needs to degrow…
The real lesson of the Energiewende is that the German economy uses too much energy to be sustainable and needs to degrow… Implications of a study by Hans Werner Sinn, ifo Institute Munich For a long time Germany’s attempt to grapple with atomic power, climate change and energy issues through its so called “Energiewende” (Energy […]
