How to live a more sustainable life? This question generates a lot of debate that is focused on what individuals can do in order to address problems like climate change. For example, people are encouraged to shop locally, to buy organic food, to install home insulation, or to cycle more often. But how effective is individual action when it is systemic social change that is needed? Individuals do make choices, but these are facilitated and constrained by the society in which they live. … [Read more...]
Dammed Good Questions about the Green New Deal
Hydroelectric power from dams might be the thorniest issue that proponents of the Green New Deal (GND) have to grapple with. Providing more energy than solar and wind combined, dams could well become the key backup “renewable” if it otherwise proves impossible to get off of fossil fuels fast enough. Rivers and lakes are an integral part of human existence, with virtually all major inland cities being located next to one of them. They provide water for drinking, bathing, food, and medicine. … [Read more...]
Disaster localization: a constructive response to climate chaos
The moment I first learned about climate change will always stick in my mind. A seventh-grade ecology class led to a conversation between girls after school about what, back then, was being called “global warming”. Kicking at the snow while waiting for the bus in the depths of an upstate New York winter, it sounded like a good thing. Of course, we soon learned it wasn’t – and many of us became enthusiastic environmental activists, running school campaigns on decreasing electricity use, reducing … [Read more...]
What is ‘Energy Denial’?
The fiftieth anniversary of the first Earth Day of 1970 will be in 2020. As environmentalism has gone mainstream during that half-century, it has forgotten its early focus and shifted toward green capitalism. Nowhere is this more apparent than abandonment of the slogan popular during the early Earth Days: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” The unspoken motto of today’s Earth Day is “Recycle, Occasionally Reuse, and Never Utter the Word ‘Reduce.’” A quasi-taboo on the word “reduce” permeates … [Read more...]
The 9% lie: industrial food and climate change
The Climate Emergency is finally getting the attention of the media and the U.S. (and world) body politic, as well as a growing number of politicians, activists and even U.S. farmers. This great awakening has arrived just in time, given the record-breaking temperatures, violent weather, crop failures and massive waves of forced migration that are quickly becoming the norm. Global scientists have dropped their customary caution. They now warn us that we have to drastically reduce global … [Read more...]
Economics 101 and Ecological Collapse
"The collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon." – David Attenborough Today’s economics, especially Economics 101, is a major source of humankind’s denial of the possibility of the calamity of all calamities, which our economy is engineering. Annually, millions of students around the world are forced to study textbooks that indoctrinate them into thinking that there is no significant causal connection between our economy and the ecosphere. … [Read more...]
Why the “Anthropocene” is not “Climate Change”
“Anthropocene” is a widely proposed name for the geological epoch that covers human impact on our planet. But it is not synonymous with “climate change,” nor can it covered by “environmental problems.” Bigger and more shocking, the Anthropocene encapsulates the evidence that human pressures became so profound around the middle of the 20th century that we blew a planetary gasket. Hello, new Earth System. Hello, Anthropocene. The phrase “Earth System” refers to the entirety of our planet’s … [Read more...]
Groomed to Consume
With Christmas coming up, household consumption will soon hit its yearly peak in many countries. Despite homely pictures of tranquility on mass-produced greeting cards, Christmas is more about frenzied shopping and overspending than peace on earth or quality time with family and friends. As with so much of our lives, the holidays have been hijacked by the idea that satisfaction, even happiness, is only one more purchase away. Two generations ago, my Norwegian grandmother was overjoyed as a … [Read more...]
How Circular is the Circular Economy?
The circular economy has become, for many governments, institutions, companies, and environmental organizations, one of the main components of a plan to lower carbon emissions. In the circular economy, resources would be continually re-used, meaning that there would be no more mining activity or waste production. The stress is on recycling, made possible by designing products so that they can easily be taken apart. Attention is also paid to developing an “alternative consumer culture”. In the … [Read more...]
Why Growth Can’t be Green
Warnings about ecological breakdown have become ubiquitous. Over the past few years, major newspapers, including the Guardian and the New York Times, have carried alarming stories on soil depletion, deforestation, and the collapse of fish stocks and insect populations. These crises are being driven by global economic growth, and its accompanying consumption, which is destroying the Earth’s biosphere and blowing past key planetary boundaries that scientists say must be respected to avoid … [Read more...]