Category: Less of What We Don’t Need
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Degrowth Is About Global Justice
Who’s driving the ecological crisis? It is overwhelmingly the rich countries of the Global North: the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. These countries are collectively responsible for 92 per cent of excess emissions…. Rich countries consume on average 28 tonnes of material stuff per person per year – which is…
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Bright Green Lies Torpedoes Greens
Bright Green Lies (Monkfish Book Publishing, 2021) grumbles and growls like a rambunctious thunderstorm on an early spring day opening up darkened clouds of acid rain across the world of environmentalism, including celebrated personalities. According to Bright Green Lies authors Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Max Wilbert: “We are writing this book because we want…
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Path to Extinction or Path to a Livable Future?
As climate change leads humanity’s march to Armageddon, data surfacing during late 2021 suggests that the march could be much briefer than previously thought. “Nature is starting to emit greenhouse gases in competition with cars, planes, trains, and factories,” asserts Robert Hunziker. The Amazon has switched from soaking up CO2 to emitting it. Likewise, the…
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US Plastics Industry Will Have More Emissions Than Coal by 2030
With dozens of new plastics manufacturing and recycling facilities in the works, the U.S. plastics industry will release more greenhouse gas emissions than coal-fired power plants by 2030, say the authors of a new report. Emissions from the plastics sector equaled that of 116 coal-fired power plants last year, according to the report out Thursday…
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Climate goals will fail as long as cryptocurrency exists
The minimum energy usage attributable to Bitcoin activity, as of this week, is 43.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year, and its estimated actual energy demand is 176.83 TWh per year, according to Digiconomist. For comparison, that estimate is the equivalent of a bit more than 16 weeks of average energy usage in the entire Philippines (based…
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From Popovers to Popunders: The Kind of Decarbonization That Can Succeed
So much carbon dioxide has now accumulated in the atmosphere that it’s no longer possible to prevent a dangerous rise in global temperatures through purely technological means. In other words, it’s too late to prevent catastrophic ecological damage and human suffering simply through building more renewable electric capacity and improving energy efficiency. Humanity can keep…
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Don’t Expect Real Climate Solutions from COP26. It Functions for Corporations
The politicians’ third and more complex deception is in the technology-centered “decarbonization” measures they embrace in the name of “green growth.” These rely on tweaking, rather than transforming, the big technological systems through which most fossil fuels are consumed — tThe politicians’ third and more complex deception is in the technology-centered “decarbonization” ransport networks, electricity…
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Response to Don Fitz
[This is the third part of an exchange between Robert Pollin and Don Fitz carried in Green Social Thought (GST) andZNet. The first portion consisted of two articles by Pollin which originally appeared in Truthout on 7/3/21 and 6/10/21. The second portion was a response by Don Fitz which appeared in GST and ZNet. The…
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Against Overproduction
[This is the final part of an exchange between Robert Pollin and Don Fitz carried inGreen Social Thought (GST) andZNet. The first portion consisted of two articles by Pollin which originally appeared in Truthout on 7/3/21 and 6/10/21. The second portion was a response by Fitz to Pollin’s articles. The third portion was a rejoinder…
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The Gritty Reality of Solar Power
Time is fast running out. The world’s affluent nations, with their abundant greenhouse emissions, have to finally drag themselves across the starting line and begin phasing out fossil fuels at the accelerated pace that the climate emergency demands. And if they can manage to do that, they clearly will need to quickly build up wind…
