Topic: Less of What We Don’t Need
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The Best Way to Reduce Your Personal Carbon Emissions: Don’t Be Rich
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The top 10 percent of the wealthiest people in China emit less carbon per person than people on the bottom half of the US wealth distribution — again, inequality between countries — but it also shows that the top 10 percent wealthiest in the US emit more than five times as much CO2 per person…
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Fighting for Their Water and Their Lives, Communities Take Direct Action Against Barrick Gold in the Dominican Republic
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“El agua vale mas que oro,” or in English “Water is worth more than gold,” a young boy chants along with members of his community in Las Piñitas, Dominican Republic. He was born and raised here, neighboring the largest foreign direct investment project the country has ever seen – the Pueblo Viejo gold mine. Pueblo…
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Commons in the political mainstream?
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The Labour Party in the UK, which has a good chance of taking political power at the next election, has been involved in a process of policy development which involves taking up ideas from the commons movement and is focused around the revival of and protection of commons. In one week I have now been…
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Clean Energy, at What Cost? Uruguay’s Renewables Bid Deepens Electricity Inequality
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After three years of debate, in 2008, the State of Uruguay decided to start diversifying the energy matrix by increasing the share of renewable energy sources, especially wind and solar. Although this process has been introduced as a paradigm for the region, the plan implemented for the development of “clean energy,” far from reverting the…
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Resisting Hydroelectric Dams in Guatemala: A Matter of Life and Death
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Nine months have passed since Indigenous human rights defender Sebastian Alonso Juan was shot and killed at a peaceful protest in Guatemala’s Ixquisis region, and communities are still waiting for justice. On Jan. 17, 2017, Sebastian Alonso Juan joined a nonviolent community demonstration against Promoción y Desarrollos Hídricos (PDH), S.A, the Guatemalan subsidiary of an…
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Work sharing is a win-win policy for our businesses and employees
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Though Washington has been mired in gridlock over the past few years, work sharing is one policy that has enjoyed the support of Democrats and Republicans alike. And with good cause. Estimates suggest that work sharing has saved over more than half a million jobs since the Great Recession and is still a good policy to keep…
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Guatemalan Water Protectors Fight to Free Their Rivers
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It is late in the rainy season, and two community water defenders and I stand at the edge of the Río Bolo in coastal Retalhuleu. Above us tower the remains of a concrete bridge where people from the community of El Rosario used to cross this once tremendous river. Today, the water flows barely two…
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Can everything run on renewable energy? An outline of the negative case
The potential and limits to renewable energy are hotly debated, and far from settled. Many people take it for granted that it can meet all our energy needs, and numerous impressive agencies and technical reports say this. However until the last few years when simulations based on detailed weather data have become available nearly all…
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Getting Hitched and Unhitched with the Ecomodernists
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"The ‘eco-’ prefix refers to their recognition that 'humanity must shrink its impacts on the environment to make more room for nature.' Here, they seem to align with the direction of travel of the wider environmental movement. Yet the ‘-modernist’ half of their name firmly asserts their belief that if this is to happen, it…
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Puerto Rico is our Future
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News reports tell of the devastation left by a direct hit from Category 4 Hurricane Maria. Puerto Ricans already coping with damage from Hurricane Irma, which grazed the island just days before, were slammed with an even stronger storm on September 20, bringing more than a foot of rain and maximum sustained winds of at…