Editor’s note: This essay originally appeared December 23, 2020 and is slightly modified.
With Christmas one week out, folks are making tough decisions about Christmas presents. The public is rattled by inflation, credit card debt is through the roof, and gift-giving is a real strain for many. My advice for anyone stressing out over Christmas presents is simple: Take a break from the shopping!
The U.S. nonprofit sector is a $1.4 trillion industry. If it were a country, it would be one of the world’s largest economies. Wealthy individual donors, foundations, and corporations are the three largest sources of nonprofit funding. As such, these entities have tremendous influence over what kind of social, economic, and political change thrives or dies. Many large foundations and major donors have amassed wealth thanks to the very economic system that is pushing the world toward ecological collapse.
The Northeast Megaregion, also referred to as BosWash, extends from Boston to Washington, DC, and is populated by more than 55 million people. It is the largest contiguous urban area in the United States. BosWash has the largest population of the eleven U.S. megaregions, which together hold over 76 percent of the nation’s population. BosWash has the highest GDP of any megaregion in the world at some $3.75 trillion.
In its simplest sense, inflation is an increase in the prices of goods and services. For instance, if the price of a certain good is $10 and in the next month the price increases to $12, the inflation on that item over one month is 20%. Many economists consider low levels of inflation sustained over time to be normal in a functioning economy. However,
Almost half of humanity lives below $6.85 per day. This population does not consume goods and services at a rate exceeding Earth’s capacity. Yet here we sit, on the wrong side of six of the nine planetary boundaries identified by the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
How did we get here? Via the economic activity of the other half of humanity. The planet, and all its inhabitants,
We are in a brave new world, with an authoritarian as American president, a Senate ruled by his party, and a Supreme Court sidled up to them. This is a crushing defeat for the Democratic Party, immigrants, environmentalists, and women knocking on the glass ceiling. And it is truly bad for anyone concerned about their kids and grandkids, whether they know it or not.
The problem is not so much that our political leadership is Republican,
Allamakee County lies in the northeast corner of Iowa, bordering Minnesota and Wisconsin. It is part of a three-state region that, unlike most of the upper United States and Canada, escaped glaciation during past ice ages. This geological oddity is immediately obvious to visitors by the dramatic terrain of bluffs, hills, and valleys. Expansive plains characterize most of the rest of Iowa, where miles-thick glaciers moved over the land like a bulldozer,
Has Elon Musk finally lost his mind? Seeing him cavorting on stage with Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, pouring tens of millions of dollars into the convicted felon’s presidential campaign and declaring that the upcoming election could be the last one ever, one might think so. But Musk’s political drift rightwards has long had an air of inevitability about it. And there is much more behind his new support for MAGA politics than meets the eye.
With the core meetings of the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) starting next week, it’s time for a primer on the relationship between economic growth and biodiversity conservation. The last thing we want is a COP16 devoid of discussion about the conflict between growing the economy and conserving biodiversity. In fact, the “800-pound gorilla”—GDP growth—ought to be front and center.
Devoted Herald readers may feel a tinge of déjà vu,
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” The Western-led international development sector, born in the aftermath of World War II, has evolved according to this (ironically) Chinese proverb. To better reflect the status of international development, I would append the following sentences to the worn-out proverb: “Use advanced extractive technology to harvest all the fish from the man’s ocean,