Posts Tagged ‘economics’
The 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 MoreA Localized Alternative to ‘Disaster Capitalism’
Like many disasters, Covid-19 shocked the world; like some disasters it changed the world economy in ways most of us did not predict. But let’s back up for moment. What if those post-disaster changes had indeed been predicted – planned even – by people long before the virus began its deadly spread? More than a…
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 MoreAn agribusiness greenwashing glossary
The global food system is broken. It is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and it is the leading driver behind the collapse of the world’s biodiversity. Meanwhile, 1 in 10 people around the world go to bed hungry, while hundreds of millions more suffer from diabetes, obesity, cancers and other health…
Read MoreSupply Chain Failures: Another Reason for Localized Economies
The mainstream media – television, print and digital – routinely cycle through the litany of crises gripping the world. One week they’ll tell us about the latest climate disaster. The next, the focus may shift to the war in Ukraine. A few days later, COVID-19’s latest variant might be trending. The hot topic of the…
Read MoreRepairing broken economies
Sepp Eisenriegler loves giving second chances: to the defunct electrical appliances awaiting repair or refurbishment, the hundreds of unemployed people he’s trained as skilled repairers over the decades and even the two rescue dogs that follow him devotedly around Reparatur-und Service-Zentrum (R.U.S.Z.), the repair and service center he founded in Vienna in 1998. It wasn’t…
Read MoreThe Flower of Transformation
With growing news of war and conflict, ecological and climate catastrophe, stark inequalities, health crises related to both poverty and affluence, the authoritarianism of governments, and the increasing stranglehold of mega-corporations in all aspects of our lives, it is understandable that there is deep anxiety about the present and future of humanity. On the brighter…
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 MoreIs resistance futile? The myth of tech inevitability
“There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.” — Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage The relationship between technology and narrative is long-standing. Indeed, some have argued that it is at the heart of human civilization. It was once fashionable to characterize human beings as…
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