Consumption & Demand

Marx and Engels and “Small Is Beautiful”

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Marx and Engels were acutely aware of the waste and environmental destruction that capitalism brought, as they indicated in numerous passages, though they could not “envisage the [full] ecological catastrophe that a constantly expanding industrial society can ensue.”

It is commonplace for critics of Marx and Engels on ecology to point their finger at the tragedy of the Soviet Union and the damage it inflicted on its environment (in which the Soviet Union, unfortunately, was hardly unique). But the Soviet Union in the 1920s had the most developed ecological science in the world and was extremely advanced in introducing ecological practices. All of this, however, was obliterated in the subsequent purge under Stalin.

The death of sprawl?

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The United States has reached an historic moment. The exurban development explosion that defined national growth during the past two decades has come to a screeching halt, according to the latest US Census figures. Only 1 of the 100 highest-growth US communities of 2006–all of them in sprawled areas–reported a significant population gain in 2011, prompting Yale economist Robert Shiller to predict suburbs overall may not see growth "during our lifetimes."

 

Should we care about the human future? If so, how much?

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In virtually every institution in human society, we humans concern ourselves with the continuation of the species. We have children, we raise them in some sort of family, we educate them for the world of work and citizenship, and then we see them couple and start the cycle all over again. All the while we seek to defend ourselves from disease, violence, economic deprivation, in fact, anything that might cut short our lives or those of our children. It ought to be self-evident that human beings do care about the future. What I want to examine is whether they should and if so, how much.

Talking happiness

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I’m writing this on a plane, on my way home from four conferences on the “new economy.” The UN conference on “High Level Meeting on Wellbeing and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm,” organized by the nation of Bhutan, was especially noteworthy.

I had the sense of being at a milestone event, at which a couple of heads of state and several high-level national government representatives were saying almost exactly what ecological economists like Herman Daly have been telling us for years. Here is a nation—a tiny one, but a nation nonetheless—making its voice heard in the international community, calling for an end to the monomaniacal pursuit of GDP growth above all else. Despite the difficulties ahead, this is a cause worth celebrating and supporting.

Heat those Feet!

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One of the more bothersome aspects of living in an unheated house (with tile floors in much of the house, in my case) is having cold feet. Spring has arrived, so perhaps this post is not as timely as it might otherwise have been. But let’s consider the energy costs of various approaches to warming up cold feet…

A post on warming up cold feet may seem pretty lame. After all, are not our problems much bigger than cold feet? Indeed. But the post serves to illustrate a few valuable lessons…

Does the U.S. really have more oil than Saudi Arabia?

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People are often confused about the overall extent of U.S. oil reserves. Some claim that the U.S. has hundreds of billions or even trillions of barrels of oil waiting to be produced if bureaucrats will simply stop blocking development. In fact, in a recent debate between Republican candidates contending for Gabrielle Giffords’ recently vacated House seat, one candidate declared “We have more oil in this country than in Saudi Arabia.” So, I thought it might be a good idea to elaborate a bit on U.S. oil resources.

Review of Lt. Col. Eggen’s thesis, Impact of the Peaking of World Oil Production on the Global Balance of Power

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The U.S. war colleges continue to generate insightful analyses of the potential effects of Peak Oil. Recently the U.S. Army Combined and General Staff College (USACGSC) released an excellent study by Lt. Col. GS Pascal Eggen, Swiss Armed Forces.