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 sustainability.
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.
A Country of Immigrants
/1 Comment/in Economic Policy, Jobs and Employment, Population, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian CzechBy Herman Daly
Historically, the U.S. is undeniably a country of immigrants. But why is this uncontested fact so repeatedly emphasized? Might the unremitting celebration of immigration as a policy (as opposed to the celebration of particular immigrants as people) obscure a dark side of our immigration history?
Neocornucopianism and the Steady State: Part I
/0 Comments/in Consumption, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Energy, Population, Steady State Herald, Sustainability, Technology /by Brian CzechBy 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.
Population and the Steady State Economy
/2 Comments/in Consumption, Environment, Jobs and Employment, Population, Poverty, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian CzechBy 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.”
A Not-So-Nobel Prize for Growth Economists
/10 Comments/in Brian Czech, Climate Change, Economic Growth, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability, Technology /by Brian Czechby Brian Czech
How ironic for the Washington Post to opine “Earth may have no tomorrow” and, two pages later, offer up the mini-bios of William Nordhaus and Paul Romer, described as Nobel Prize winners.
Without more rigorous news coverage, few indeed will know that Nordhaus and Romer are epitomes of neoclassical economics, that 20th century occupation isolated from the realities of natural science.
NGOs Challenged to Back Up Their Rhetoric
/5 Comments/in Biodiversity, Brian Czech, Economic Growth, Environment, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian CzechThe 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?”
Conflict of Interest at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service? A Deal Some Couldn’t Refuse
/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.
Thankful to be Back in the Steady-State Saddle
/4 Comments/in Brian Czech, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Steady State Economy, Sustainability, The Daly News /by Brian Czechby Brian Czech
One thing about American holidays – there’s no mincing of words. Thanksgiving Day is as self-explanatory as it gets. And from where I write, it happens to be easy, giving thanks this time around. For starters, it’s a crisp fall day in Virginia!
But I’ve a bonus to be thankful for. Twenty days and three hours ago, I turned in my retirement papers at U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service headquarters and immediately went to work as CASSE’s executive director.