Energy Archives – Page 4 of 5 – Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy

Planet of the Humans Puts Sacred Cows Out to Pasture

May 1, 2020/73 Comments/in Brian Czech, Climate Change, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Energy, Environment, Population, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability, Technology /by Brian Czech

by Brian Czech

Planet of the Humans is a once-in-a-decade documentary for all concerned with the environment, the economy, and life on Earth. Directed by Jeff Gibbs and produced by Michael Moore, Planet is especially important for advancing the steady state economy. It is reminiscent of Pope Francis’ Laudato si’ in that it makes the case for a steady state economy—resoundingly—while never quite uttering the phrase “steady state economy.”

When viewing a documentary,

The Triangular Economy: Behind the Circular Flows

April 7, 2020/6 Comments/in Biodiversity, Brian Czech, Consumption, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Energy, Environment, Monetary Policy, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czech

By Brian Czech

The “circular economy” is a response to the environmental problems and resource shortages that arise as the human economy expands. The focus of the circular economy literature is on efficiency which, in terms of economic production, means more output per unit of input. All else equal, increasing efficiency means higher profits, too. That’s real motivation for the corporation.

Efficiency connects to the human propensity to innovate, too. From childhood on,

“Be Very Alarmed!” Introducing the Global GDP Meter

June 27, 2019/5 Comments/in Brian Czech, Consumption, Corporate Reform, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Endangered Species, Energy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Governance, Inflation, Jobs and Employment, Politics, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czech

by Brian Czech

Backed by an ominous sound clip and a rapidly churning GDP meter that comes out of nowhere, “Be alarmed… Be very alarmed!” are the opening phrases at CASSE’s new landing page. You’ll see what we mean shortly; please allow us an introduction to describe this new approach.

The landing page is actually a 30-second animation prefacing our “regular” website. It is designed to be three things:

Alarming
Crystal clear
Distinctive and memorable

Why Sound the Alarm?

A Journey of No Return, Not a Circular Economy

April 23, 2019/9 Comments/in Consumption, Economic Growth, Energy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Jobs and Employment, Population, Poverty, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability, Technology /by Brian Czech

By Herman Daly

The economic process is not a mechanical analog that can be run forward and backward, nor a circular process that can return to any previous state. Rather it is an irreversible and irrevocable process moving in the direction of time’s arrow of increasing entropy [1]. Finitude and entropy guarantee that the economic life of our species will be a journey of no return. Therefore even a stationary economy, in the classical sense of constant population and constant capital stock, is ultimately a journey of no return, because the metabolic throughput of matter and energy required to maintain constant stocks of people and physical capital, in the face of depreciation and death, is an entropic flow from ever less concentrated sources to ever filling sinks – and both sources and sinks are finite.

Neocornucopianism and the Steady State: Part I

November 9, 2018/0 Comments/in Consumption, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Energy, Population, Steady State Herald, Sustainability, Technology /by Brian Czech

By Josh Farley

Perhaps the main reason people reject the need for a steady state economy is some form of cornucopianism, the belief that technological progress will overcome all ecological and physical limits, allowing endless economic growth into the indefinite future. Cornucopianism has several flavors, and I will describe three: mainstream economics, eco-modernism, and singularity theory.

Conflict of Interest at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service? A Deal Some Couldn’t Refuse

March 20, 2018/4 Comments/in Climate Change, Corruption, Endangered Species, Energy, Environment, Governance, Money and Investments, Sustainability, Technology, The Daly News /by Brian Czech

By Richard McCorkle, Guest Author

As a fish and wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, I’ve been concerned about global warming and climate change for more than a quarter century. In the late 1990s, when I finally had the means to do so, I began privately investing in socially and environmentally screened mutual funds. I felt it was the right thing to do; I was putting my money where my mouth was.

The Future History of Political Economy – Part 2

June 10, 2015/8 Comments/in Energy, Steady State Economy, The Daly News /by Brian Czech

by Eric Zencey

Ecological Economics represents the extension into economics of the thermodynamic revolution of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In physics, that revolution dethroned Newton and brought relativity. In biology, it was midwife to the birth of ecology, the study of ecosystems as wholes in which energy networks—food webs—are a defining structure. In chemistry the laws of thermodynamics brought clarity and rigor to a science that struggled to bring theoretical unity to diverse phenomena.

Seismic Political Shifts Reveal Desire for Serious Change

May 28, 2015/0 Comments/in Corporate Reform, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Energy, Environment, Steady State Economy, The Daly News /by Brian Czech

by James Magnus-Johnston

If you demonstrate to people that the NDP [New Democratic Party] can win in Alberta, suddenly anything seems possible. —Paul Fairie, University of Calgary political scientist

On the problematic political spectrum, neither the right nor the left have become wholesale champions of the steady state economy. Then again, embracing something perceived as ‘new’ has never been the strong suit of the politician. It takes years of ideological evolution among the grassroots before seemingly new and different ideas become politically palatable.

Progress Toward a True-Cost Economy Comes from Renewable Energy

May 21, 2015/4 Comments/in Energy, Environment, Jobs and Employment, Steady State Economy, Sustainability, Technology, The Daly News /by Brian Czech

by Brent Blackwelder

A renewable energy revolution is sweeping the planet. This revolution has profound implications because it signals that the global economy is moving to stop the growth of our human carbon footprint.

The global economy has run for a century primarily on fossil fuels but is now undergoing a rapid transition to a global economy based significantly on rooftop solar, wind, and efficiency. This is a tangible movement toward a steady state economy because with wind and solar,

A Population Perspective on the Steady State Economy

January 15, 2015/9 Comments/in Consumption, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Energy, Environment, Governance, Population, Steady State Economy, The Daly News /by Brian Czech

The population problem should be considered from the point of view of all populations–populations of both humans and their things–if we are going to achieve a steady state economy.