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ALTERNATIVES

New Zealand’s ‘well-being budget’ and the unnecessary evil of economic growth

5th March 2020

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has presented a pioneering national budget where spending is dictated by the “well-being” of citizens, rather than productivity and economic growth. But as long as other major economies continue to prioritise growth, New Zealand may become a lone wolf trapped in an increasingly hungry bear pit, writes Jack Peat….

Development/Growth

Nine competing geoeconomic projects that will shape Asia’s future

13th February 2020

From Great Game India: A global contest with at least 9 geoeconomic projects is underway in and around Asia. Regional powers are putting forward ambitious plans for building roads, railways, and other hard infrastructure across the region. A preview of a competition as wide-ranging as the region itself; whose long-term ecological cost will be incalculable….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Oil is the new data: How Big Tech and Big Oil collaborate

3rd December 2019

From Logic Magazine: Despite the climate crisis, Big Oil is doubling down on fossil fuels. At over 30 billion barrels of crude oil a year, production has never been higher. Now, leading oil companies are forging a lucrative partnership with tech giants like Microsoft, building a new carbon cloud that just might kill us all….

CLIMATE CRISIS

A carbon atom’s plea

9th October 2019

Hello. Allow me to introduce myself. I am a Carbon atom, writing in the hope that the intelligence operating here might be able and willing to come to our aid. In particular, I am acting on behalf of the many Carbon atoms – who are contently resting in peace, unaware that they’re in great danger….

Bookshelf

Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t realise that’

17th September 2019

Over more than 40 years, Vaclav Smil has grown in influence, and is now seen as one of the world’s foremost thinkers and a master of statistical analysis. Bill Gates says he waits for new Smil books the way others wait for the next Star Wars movie. Smil’s latest is Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities….

Rahul Gandhi, President of Indian National Congress, along with Jairam Ramesh

ALTERNATIVES

Rahul Gandhi’s cash transfer scheme could be a revenue neutral Carbon Tax

23rd April 2019

“Carbon tax” is a tax on fossil fuels to reduce their consumption. A revenue neutral carbon tax is “the fairest, most effective, most efficient single policy tool in the fight for a habitable climate,” says Charles Komanoff. The term “revenue neutral” simply means the tax revenue is returned back to the public in some form….

Ruchira Petkar/The Wire

Conflict/Dispossession

Thousands in Maharashtra are opposing what could be ‘globe’s largest’ oil refinery

8th February 2019

From The Wire: The Rs 3 lakh crore oil refinery project, planned by oil majors over an expanse of over 15,000 acres of land in Maharashtra’s Konkan region, if it takes off, will inevitably displace farmers and fisherfolk from 17 villages – 15 villages in Ratnagiri and two in neighbouring Sindhudurg along the western coast….

Development/Growth

Nafeez Ahmed: This is how UN scientists are preparing for capitalism’s demise

19th December 2018

From The Independent: Capitalism as we know it is over. So suggests a new report commissioned by a group of scientists appointed by the UN secretary general. The main reason? We’re transitioning rapidly to a radically different global economy, due to our increasingly unsustainable exploitation of the planet’s environmental resources and the shift to less efficient energy sources….

Bookshelf

Carbon Ideologies: ‘The most honest take on climate change yet’

27th November 2018

From Vox.com: “For a long time I was a climate change denier,” says William T. Vollmann, the award-winning American author, journalist, and war correspondent. Yet, he has just completed a sprawling, two volume polemic called Carbon Ideologies, which explores the ideology of energy consumption, and is addressed to humans living in a “hot dark future.”…

ALTERNATIVES

Why growth can’t be green

12th October 2018

Jason Hickel, Foreign Policy: Many policymakers have responded to ecological breakdown by pushing for what has come to be called “green growth.” It sounds like an elegant solution to an otherwise catastrophic problem. There is just one hitch: New evidence suggests that green growth isn’t the panacea everyone hopes for. In fact, it’s not even possible….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Memo to The New York Times: How not to talk about climate change

31st August 2018

From Jacobin Magazine: The New York Times’ blockbuster story on climate change concludes that democracy and human nature are to blame for the climate crisis. They’re wrong. You cannot tell the story of climate change without telling the story of twentieth-century capitalism. This isn’t just a missed opportunity or a partial story—it’s the wrong story….

ALTERNATIVES

How the Great Transition was made: A brief history dated 2050

5th August 2018

“The core issues would’ve gone on being ignored until the system broke down irretrievably. It should’ve been obvious that there had to be a shift to radical localism and simpler ways, but as long as rich world supermarket shelves remained well-stocked no one would take calls for downshifting seriously.” A futuristic vision from Ted Trainer….

CLIMATE CRISIS

The incredible story of how (and why) Big Oil conquered the world

12th June 2018

Oil. The 20th century was shaped by it. The 21st century is moving beyond it. But who gave birth to the oil industry? What have they done with the immense wealth and power it granted them? And what are they planning to do with that power in a post-carbon world? The Corbett Report finds out….

CLIMATE CRISIS

How much ‘carbon budget’ is left to limit global warming to 1.5C?

18th April 2018

Limiting global warming to 1.5C requires strictly limiting the total amount of carbon emissions between now and the end of the century. However, there is more than one way to calculate this allowable amount of additional emissions, known as the “carbon budget”. In this article, Carbon Brief assesses nine new carbon budget estimates released recently….

ALTERNATIVES

J.M. Korhonen: I’m no longer advocating for clean energy; here’s why

9th March 2018

We’re not going to get a decarbonized energy system by 2050. We’re going to fail the climate targets, probably by a large margin, and I suspect that a warming of about 3 degrees centigrade is going to be almost inevitable. It’s perfectly possible that self-amplifying feedback mechanisms under way will amplify this change even more….

ALTERNATIVES

Seven lessons on starting a worldwide movement for change

22nd February 2018

“There was no name for what we were proposing. It was bold, imaginative, and beyond what most folks thought of as environmentalism. It wasn’t environmentalism, it was much more than that.” A blog by Naresh Giangrande Co-founder of Totnes, the world’s first Transition-Town, as he signs off after a ten-year adventure in global social change….

ALTERNATIVES

Is it possible for everyone to live a good life within our planet’s limits?

12th February 2018

Daniel O’Neill writes: If everyone on Earth were to lead a good life within our planet’s sustainability limits, the level of resources used to meet basic needs would have to be reduced by a factor of two to six times. These are the sobering findings of our research, recently published in the journal Nature Sustainability….

Mural by 'Green Flower'

Culture/Cognition

Ecologise Foundation course in Energy and Energetics of Nature and Human Society

9th February 2018

Most courses on energy deal with it in an instrumentalist manner, as if it were another substance that humans can tap and use for their benefit. Platform for Sustainability and Equity and Ecologise are pleased to announce an online course that places energy at the centre of all transformations— abiotic, biotic and in human society….

ALTERNATIVES

Module 8: Think Resilience – Explore the interrelated crises of the 21st century

18th January 2018

Ecologise has consistently driven home that humanity needs to prepare for unprecedented environmental, economic and socio-political upheaval and uncertainty in the 21st century. In this new series, we showcase free short-duration online courses that focus on these various emerging crises and possible responses. Created by the world’s leading universities, they offer a good starting point to explore these complex challenges….

ALTERNATIVES

Dr. Amory Lovins on India’s ‘sustainable energy future’

11th January 2018

Amory Lovins, Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, is one of the world’s leading energy experts and a key figure behind China’s ongoing transition to renewable energy. His appointment as a strategic advisor to NITI Aayog suggests that India’s top development policy agency maybe finally be rethinking the country’s present fossil fuel-based energy path….