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The Bulletin: September 17-23, 2025
The Bulletin: September 17-23, 2025 This past week’s articles of interest… CLICK HERE If you’re new to my writing, check out this overview. How to think about the prospects of truly green growth | Aeon Essays UN Sessions on Solar Geoengineering Trigger Unease – Inside Climate News Book Review: Small is Beautiful – by Shane […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CXCVII–‘Renewable’ Energy: See, Hear, and Speak No Evil, Part 3
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CXCVII–‘Renewable’ Energy: See, Hear, and Speak No Evil, Part 3 In attempting to bolster the mass rollout of supposed ‘clean/green/sustainable’ ‘renewable’ energy technologies (and the necessary ‘investments’, particularly in terms of finite resources–especially energy), the marketers of these industrial products and their enthusiastic supporters have created and pushed a narrative/mythos […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLXXXIII–Complexity and Sustainability
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLXXXIII–Complexity and Sustainability I believe that in many ways the past is a prologue to our future. Every experiment our species has attempted in the development of complex societies (from small to large ones) has eventually ‘failed’ to sustain the systems that make them complex and simplification/decline/collapse has followed. Regardless of […]
Could We Do Civilization Better?
Could We Do Civilization Better? Photo by Willian Justen de Vasconcellos on Unsplash There seems to be a persistent mental bug preventing us from building a sustainable civilization. So far I have been focusing on the cultural, technological and political aspects of how and why each and every technological civilization ended up in ruins, and why ours is […]
How to Make Wind Power Sustainable Again
How to Make Wind Power Sustainable Again If we build them out of wood, large wind turbines could become a textbook example of the circular economy. Illustration: Eva Miquel for Low-tech Magazine. For more than two thousand years, windmills were built from recyclable or reusable materials: wood, stone, brick, canvas, metal. When – electricity producing […]
Getting to the other side of the biodiversity crisis
Getting to the other side of the biodiversity crisis A 4-pronged strategy can turn the tide of species extinction. Source: Shutterstock/Open Art Unless you’ve been hibernating, you know that planet Earth is in the midst of a full-blown, global-scale biodiversity crisis. Biodiversity refers to the total number of organisms across the planet that are present […]
Post-Modernity
Post-Modernity As sketched in the previous post, I believe modernity to be an unsustainable flash that will not persist into future millennia. Uncomfortable with untethered speculation, I have said little about what might come after, but feel I owe something in this vein. Semantically, what follows the modern age must be the post-modern age, right? Except […]
Unsustainable Goose Chases
Unsustainable Goose Chases As we look toward the uncertain future, it may occur to some among us that we’ll need energy on Mars. How are we going to get it? Presumably Mars has no fossil fuels—although on the plus side its atmosphere is already 95% CO2, compared to Earth’s 0.04%, so they’re likely to be […]
Ignorance, Hubris, and Stupidity
Ignorance, Hubris, and Stupidity Artwork from Ken Avidor As I frequently point out, we face a series of predicaments all brought to us as a result of our own behavior of using technology, which has produced the predicament of ecological overshoot. When a species goes into overshoot, it always faces the same outcome: collapse. There is quite literally no way to […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh LXV–Capitalism: One of Several Predicament Catalysts
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh LXV Tulum, Mexico (1986). Photo by author. Capitalism: One of Several Predicament Catalysts Today’s contemplation is prompted by an article posted recently in a Degrowth Facebook group I am a member of. The author presents the argument that capitalism and the greed it inspires is the root of our inability to address climate […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLXXVII–Despite Warnings We Have Continued Business-As-Usual and Doubled-Down On Our Avoidance Behaviours
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLXXVII Rome, Italy (1984). Photo by author. Despite Warnings We Have Continued Business-As-Usual and Doubled-Down On Our Avoidance Behaviours The following is my comment on The Honest Sorcerer’s latest piece that highlights the impossibility of bypassing thermodynamic laws (especially Entropy) in our quest for the Holy Grail of a sustainable civilisation; in this […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh LXII–Magical Thinking About the Energy Transition
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh LXII July 31, 2022 (original posting date) Athens, Greece (1984). Photo by author. Magical Thinking About the Energy Transition A really short contemplation prompted by an article posted in Resilience.org from The Rapid Transition Alliance regarding sustaining long-distance trade via electric ships. The entire narrative around ‘electrifying’ everything is primarily about the marketing […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XLIV–The Ruling Class: Chasing Growth Regardless Of the Consequences
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XLIV Tulum, Mexico (1986) Photo by author The Ruling Class: Chasing Growth Regardless Of the Consequences Today’s contemplation is in response to an article by the Honest Sorcerer whose writings I discovered not long ago and have enjoyed for their insight and clarity. I recommend reading them[1]. If only the tragedy that is […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XLII–Criticising ‘Renewables’ is Not a Sin
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XLII March 1, 2022 (original posting date) Tulum, Mexico (1986) Photo by author Criticising ‘Renewables’ is Not a Sin The following ‘contemplation’ follows on the heels of a discussion I began with another within a Facebook group I am a member of. The post and dialogue can be found here. Suffice it to […]
