These are the CASSE blog articles on the steady state economy.
Let’s play a game of “who said it.” I’ll give you quotes from either For the Common Good (by Herman Daly and John Cobb), or Let Us Dream (by Pope Francis). You guess who wrote it:
May I offer you a pet peeve to chew on? I’m willing to share one for our mutual displeasure.
Here it is: Being told by academics and activists—nary a political expert among them—that “it doesn’t matter what you call it, as long as we’re all after the same thing.” With the possible exception of Donald Trump’s lips, nothing could be further from the truth. If common sense doesn’t suffice to illuminate the importance of name recognition,
In the ongoing and increasingly heated discussions about housing, urban planning, and zoning, I often return to Greta Thunberg’s seething indictment of our world’s decision-makers: “Here we are at the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can do is talk about money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.”
Greta may have been directing her remarks to politicians at the highest levels of government; but, neither should we forget as former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill once famously remarked,
In August steady staters enjoyed a victory worthy of reflection. Following May elections, the Scottish Greens struck a power-sharing deal with the Scottish National Party (SNP), bringing the Greens into a national UK government for the first time.
Buried beneath the media chatter about what this partnership could mean for Scottish independence (both parties are in favor) is the fact that a party explicitly against infinite growth is now in power in the UK.
In a 2021 landmark of ludicrousness, Jeff Bezos launched himself, cowboy hat and all, into space aboard a phallus-shaped rocket. But Bezos’ fruitless attempt to fill that gaping hole in his life was only the latest stupid reason to send something to space. Spaceship stupidity goes back to the SNAPSHOT program which, in 1965, sent a working nuclear reactor into space. Not surprisingly,
Labor Day, like other holidays of remembrance, is an opportunity to reflect on the past and critically consider the future. Our memory ought to include the foot soldiers of the labor movement, from the 10,000 coal miners who fought in the Battle of Blair Mountain to the steel workers who duked it out with the Pinkertons at Homestead mill. We owe our rights as workers to the bitter struggles of many who preceded us.
The first commandment of serious policy reform is: “Thou shalt not propose sweeping legislation without the drafting thereof.” So, if we’re going to get serious about banning flights, we better produce the legislative goods. In doing so, we strive to obey the second commandment as well: “Thou shalt not propose infeasible legislation.”
To be feasible, the Forgoing Flights for America the Beautiful Act (FFAB) must be presented as a logical sequence of reforms.
In a rational world, we’d avoid doing things that rot our teeth, cause traffic accidents, or…ruin the planet for the kids, grandkids, and millions of other species. Unfortunately, our rationality has been spotty at best. We’ve been rational enough to protect plenty of teeth and prevent numerous accidents, but we’ve done nothing to stop the global heating that is wrecking our spectacular Earth.
That’s why we need to ban flights now.
In my very first graduate statistics course, the professor often cautioned us about data collection: “Garbage in, Garbage out.” What she said, in no uncertain terms, was that mistakes in the measurement or methodology would invalidate our statistical analyses. I’ve consistently reminded myself of this mantra. My colleagues, students, and I double check the sources and methodology behind any data we’re testing. If we aren’t entirely confident in the integrity of the data,
I was born in the year 2000. Thus, for my entire life, human-caused climate change has been an ever-present, intensifying threat. Throughout my early education, I learned that we all just needed to “do our part” to combat climate change. “Do your part” lessons always culminated in the sentiment that you too could save the cute polar bears by following the motto “reduce, reuse, recycle,” and these were words I took to heart.