Environment Archives – Page 10 of 30 – Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy

[Book Review] Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline

September 19, 2019/4 Comments/in Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Environment, Population, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czech

by Max Kummerow

In Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline (Crown Publishing Group, New York, 2019) Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson argue that population decline will bring many social and economic changes—some good, some bad. They assert that “In three decades, give or take…global population starts to decline.”

Note that their title is a bit misleading. World population will probably rise to over 10 billion before the slow decline would begin.

The Connection Between Population, Income, and Health

July 3, 2019/5 Comments/in Consumption, Economic Growth, Environment, Population, Poverty, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Technology /by Brian Czech

by Max Kummerow

For hundreds of years, economists have debated whether population growth is good or bad. Malthus said exponential population growth increases labor supply, so wages fall until starvation, war, or plague stops growth in numbers. Marx said capitalism causes poverty and hunger, so population growth is good, because “every stomach is born with a pair of hands”, bringing revolution and justice closer.

Nearly 200 years later, Garrett Hardin and Julian Simon were still debating the same question.

“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.

The Green New Deal: What’s Really Green and What’s Really New

February 14, 2019/11 Comments/in Climate Change, Consumption, Corporate Reform, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Politics, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czech

by Brian Czech

Ask Americans what the Green New Deal is all about, and you’ll get two basic answers. Most often you’ll hear, “It’s about moving to renewable energy in order to fight climate change.” You’ll also hear, from a camp further right, “It’s all about socialism!”

Either way, the really green, really new feature is overlooked. What the Green New Deal is really about is the transition to a steady state economy.

Population and the Steady State Economy

October 25, 2018/2 Comments/in Consumption, Environment, Jobs and Employment, Population, Poverty, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czech

By Max Kummerow

Sir David Attenborough remarked in a 2011 presidential lecture to the Royal Society that “every environmental and social problem is made more difficult and ultimately impossible to solve with ever more people.” Wherever women’s status has improved and societies modernized, he said, birth rates have fallen. He begged his audience to “talk about population.”

Gross Domestic Problem On World Animal Day

October 4, 2018/1 Comment/in Animal Welfare, Biodiversity, Brian Czech, Economic Growth, Endangered Species, Environment, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald /by Brian Czech

By Brian Czech

If you like animals, your feelings may have been nurtured by “Hedgehogs Being Adorable,” “Baby Hippo Has Won Our Hearts,” and other such gems. The Huffington Post, The Animal Blog, and various animal-lover media take a heartfelt approach to the appreciation of animals—wild as well as domesticated—reminding us of the needs and vulnerabilities of our fellow creatures. It’s a refreshing approach compared to the stodgy science and economics of conservation.

NGOs Challenged to Back Up Their Rhetoric

September 18, 2018/5 Comments/in Biodiversity, Brian Czech, Economic Growth, Environment, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czech

The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE) has sent a letter to the presidents of the top ten environmental NGOs challenging them to a debate. The debate will center around one question: “Is there a conflict between economic growth and environmental protection?”

Unfurling the Banner at the Steady State Herald

April 29, 2018/0 Comments/in Brian Czech, Economic Growth, Environment, Herman Daly, Politics, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald /by Brian Czech

~Steady State Herald Premiere~

By Brian Czech

It’s been quite a run with our CASSE blog, the Daly News. Regular readers will recall a consistent weekly column from March 2010 through late 2015. Then for a couple years it was hit-or-miss, for reasons already explained (in a Daly News entry, naturally.) Now we’re back to blogging regularly under a new banner: the Steady State Herald!

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.