The One Percent: Not Kristallnacht but Lebensraum
The talking points of conspicuous consumers can be just as obnoxious as their purchasing habits.
These are the CASSE blog articles on food and agriculture.
A Journey of No Return, Not a Circular Economy
/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 CzechBy 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
/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 Czechby 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.
Earth Day Message: Double the Native Forest Cover
/0 Comments/in Environment, Food and Agriculture, Steady State Economy, Sustainability, The Daly News /by Brian CzechThis Earth Day, Brent Blackwelder urges us to double the current amount of native forest cover.
A New Economy Will Help Save Rivers and Fisheries
/0 Comments/in Economic Growth, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Money and Investments, Steady State Economy, Sustainability, The Daly News /by Brian CzechMany activities that today damage rivers and fisheries would not occur in a steady state economy.
Crossroads on Global Infrastructure
/6 Comments/in Economic Growth, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Steady State Economy, Sustainability, The Daly News /by Brian CzechA momentous choice is before us. Will we choose more mega-highway projects, centralized electric power plants, and mega-dams, or more decentralized wind and solar investments?
Giant Mats of Green Slime in Lake Erie Signal a Need for New Economic Approaches to Pollution
/1 Comment/in Environment, Food and Agriculture, Sustainability, The Daly News /by Brian CzechWhat do we do when water supplies are cut off to a city of 400,000 people?
Fresh Water, Growth, Degrowth, and the Steady State Economy
/3 Comments/in Environment, Food and Agriculture, Steady State Economy, Sustainability, The Daly News /by Brian Czechby Geoffrey Matthews
In Our Common Future, the 1987 report of the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, sustainable development is described as a process of change which meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs and aspirations. To achieve this objective, the report suggests a series of goals that should underlie national and international action on development.
The Hidden Costs of Cheater Economics on Human Health & the Future of Life on Earth
/4 Comments/in Environment, Food and Agriculture, Sustainability, The Daly News /by Brian CzechBrent Blackwelder provides an overview of some of the ecological costs of economic growth, as presented in Tony Juniper’s latest book, What has Nature Ever Done for Us?
The One Percent: Not Kristallnacht but Lebensraum
/1 Comment/in Brian Czech, Consumption, Economic Growth, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Money and Investments, Steady State Economy, Sustainability, The Daly News /by Brian CzechThe purchase of expensive luxury goods requires an agricultural and extractive surplus at the base of the economy–this is the “tropic theory of money.”