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 lineage; they serve their purpose to inspire the community and anchor it in non-ordinary thinking, perceiving, and relating. The first thing to make a deep […]
Cities 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, etc. – has plummeted. This is because, as we pack into cities, we are consuming more materials as measured by absolute volume. The totality of […]
A Degrowth Perspective on the Coronavirus Crisis
The coronavirus (covid-19) has caused upheaval across the world, deaths of the most vulnerable, closed borders, financial market crashes, curfews and controls on group gatherings, and many more devastating effects. Despite observations that pollution and emissions have reduced, the sudden, un-planned, and chaotic downscaling of social and economic activity due to covid-19 is categorically not degrowth. Instead, it’s an example of why degrowth is needed: it shows the unsustainability and fragility of our current way of life. Additionally, the response […]
5 ways coronavirus could help humanity survive the ecological crisis
The human tragedy of the coronavirus is immense. Thousands have died, hundreds of thousands have been infected globally, and millions more have been affected. Whilst infectious disease has always been a part of the human experience, the expansion of industrial civilization has inexorably amplified the risk of new diseases. Uncontrolled industrial expansion also dangerously heats the planet and drives the collapse of ecosystems worldwide. Experts like Professor Jem Bendell and philosopher Rupert Read have argued that societal collapse is near […]
Iowa, Pseudo-Events, and Hyperreality
The Iowa caucus affair last night was a masterclass in hyperreality. The relevant facts are as follows. It was the long-anticipated kickoff to the primary season in an ever-expanding election cycle that now seems more or less co-terminous with the president’s four-year term. Iowa has an outsized place in this process, as it traditionally holds the first-in-the-nation caucus. Last night, under intense media scrutiny and pressure for immediate results, a complex system buckled, a new app made everything worse, results […]
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, […]
Step Aside Agribusiness: It’s Time for Real Solutions to the Climate Crisis
The recent UN Climate Action Summit was tricky for agribusiness CEOs. With forest fires raging in the Amazon, a damning new report about the food system by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and millions of young people out in streets clamoring to shut down fossil fuels and factory farming, it wasn’t easy for the world’s largest food and agribusiness companies to get away with another round of voluntary pledges to reduce their gigantic emissions. At the last UN […]
Local is Our Future
[The following is an excerpt from the first chapter of Local is Our Future: Steps to an Economics of Happiness, a new book by Helena Norberg-Hodge, published by Local Futures in July 2019.] For our species to have a future, it must be local. The good news is that the path to such a future is already being forged. Away from the screens of the mainstream media, the crude ‘bigger is better’ narrative that has dominated economic thinking for centuries […]
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. Once upon a […]
Growthism: its ecological, economic and ethical limits
We have many problems – poverty, unemployment, environmental destruction, climate change, financial instability, etc. – but only one solution for everything, namely economic growth. We believe that growth is the costless, win-win solution to all problems, or at least the necessary precondition for any solution. This is growthism. It now creates more problems than it solves. A journey of no return, not a circular economy The economic process is not a mechanical analog that can be run forward and backward, […]
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