Category Archives: Environment
Solar power is becoming insanely cheap
The cost of solar power has fallen by a factor of 5 since 2010, and it will keep falling for decades to come. That’s the gist of a May 14, 2020 blog post titled Solar’s Future Is Insanely Cheap (2020) … Continue reading
The Optimist’s Telescope
The Optimist’s Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age By Bina Venkataraman Riverhead Books, New York, 2019 As I write this in late March 2020 in Seattle, the world is gripped by the coronavirus epidemic. It feels like everything everywhere … Continue reading
Dematerialization in The Cloud
Whenever you log on to Facebook or YouTube or your bank or your favorite online game, you’re connecting to computers in some data center somewhere on the planet. All those servers and all those data centers consume a huge amount … Continue reading
Doughnut Economics
How do we shift our economy from a focus on never-ending GDP growth to living within the “Doughnut?” Continue reading
No growth, slow growth or green growth?
In the February 10, 2020 issue of The New Yorker magazine, journalist John Cassidy has a very interesting article called Can we have prosperity without growth? (In the print version, the article is titled “Steady State.”) Cassidy surveys a wide spectrum of … Continue reading
The Case for Growth: An Interview with Marc Andreessen
In my last few posts I’ve been looking into the relationship between economic growth and environmental sustainability. Can we find a healthy balance between them? Or are they fundamentally at odds? Well a couple of weeks ago I was listening … Continue reading
A Safe and Just Doughnut
Today’s post is about the doughnut. I’m not talking about an ordinary sugar-glazed, jam-filled, deep-fried doughnut. No, this is a safe and just doughnut we can all live in together. If safe and just aren’t the flavors you normally look … Continue reading
Is Decoupling GDP Growth from Environmental Impact Possible?
Can we have economic growth while reducing our impact on the environment? Some people believe growth is incompatible with sustainability and that we need to move to a “no growth” or even a “de-growth” economy. Others think we can still … Continue reading
Peak Stuff
I’m going to try something different in this post. Instead of reviewing a book, I’m going to look at a research paper called “Peak Stuff — did the UK reach a peak in material consumption in about 2001-3?” Sounds pretty … Continue reading
More From Less
More From LessBy Andrew McAfeeScribner, New York, 2019 More From Less is a book about dematerialization Demawhat? No, it’s not some sort of Star Trek transporter technology. Dematerialization is the phenomenon of producing the same goods from less material and … Continue reading
