Posts Tagged ‘economic growth’
Nurturing A Living Future
In the autumn of 2024 I spent most of a week with a set of remarkable women in Devon, England. Organized by Local Futures leader, Helena Norberg-Hodge (with assistance), our interdisciplinary group spent a day planning and then gave a daylong workshop and evening session to about 100, mostly women, participants. The focus was on…
Read MoreResisting US-India Agri-Imperialism
A “high-powered US trade delegation” recently visited India to “explore opportunities in the country’s huge agribusiness sector and further promote American products among India’s rising middle class.” So reads the opening line of one of a few recent articles (see others here and here) in the Indian elite press announcing this momentous visit, and in…
Read MoreThe Green Growth Delusion
In the annals of industrial civilization, the Green New Deal counts as one of the more ambitious projects. Its scale is vast, promising to reform every aspect of how we power our machines, light our homes and fuel our cars. At this late hour of ecological and climate crisis, the Green New Deal is also…
Read MoreWhen Idiot Savants Do Climate Science
William Nordhaus, who turned 82 this year, was the first economist in our time to attempt to quantify the cost of climate change. His climate-modeling wizardry, which won him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2018, has made him one of the world’s most consequential thinkers. His ideas have been adopted by the…
Read MoreEcological Economics
Herman Daly, who died in October of this year, was for 60 years a powerful and articulate critic of mainstream economic thinking. Along with an early stint working at the World Bank, Daly had a distinguished career in academia, authored numerous books, and was the 1996 recipient of the Right Livelihood Award. What follows is…
Read MoreThe inner dimension of climate adaptation
Capitalism in its earliest incarnation dates back to the end of Europe’s medieval period. ‘Growth’, such as it was, first manifested itself in the innovation and creativity of the Renaissance, while economic expansion in the commonly understood sense was to come later. The commercial revolution of the 16th century, the scientific breakthroughs of the 17th…
Read MoreAs we consider our future…
Ask not for energy or goods that depend on international supply chains. Ask not for solar power, wind power or battery electric storage (BESS). Ask not for e-vehicles (EVs) or smartphones. These can’t be manufactured without fossil fuels, extractions, deforestation, greenhouse gases, toxic waste and international supply chains. They can’t operate without backup from…
Read MoreIs Alternative Energy the Best Solution to Climate Catastrophe?
Environmentalists have known for decades that the “greenest” form of energy available is reduction of useless and harmful energy. Over 50 years ago, the first Earth Day embodied this with “Reduce; Reuse; Recycle.” Today, that seems to have been replaced with the slogan “Recycle; Occasionally Reuse; and, Never Utter ‘Reduce.’” Even mentioning the word “reduce”…
Read MoreSource Temple and the Great Reset
I recently visited a spiritual community in Brazil called Source Temple. Drawing primarily on the teachings of Adi Da and A Course in Miracles, it comprises about thirty people from about ten countries, mostly Brazil and South America, ranging in age from 20-something to 60-something. I will neither endorse nor criticize the spiritual teachings and…
Read MoreCities and Green Orthodoxy
As the world has urbanized rapidly since 1950, per capita carbon footprint has declined, and so has carbon intensity in economic output, defined as the amount of energy used to produce a unit of economic growth. But gross material throughputs and greenhouse gas production during this same period skyrocketed. Global natural capital – fisheries, topsoil, freshwater supply,…
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