Consumption & Demand

From Denmark to Bhutan: the policies of happiness

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Over the last 100 years, living standards in the West have improved enormously, but it appears that people have not become much happier. In 2006, the first ‘Happy Planet Index’ (HPI) measured happiness across 178 countries. The small south Pacific island of Vanuatu was the happiest nation. Germany ranked 81st, Japan 95th and the US 150th.

Various surveys have indicated that while wealthy western nations use up vast quantities of the world’s scarce resources, many of their citizens are not much happier, or are indeed less happy, than those who belong to poorer countries that use far fewer resources.

Running on empty: big airlines in big trouble

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Most people living in our modern industrial society take air travel for granted. We think very little about hopping on a plane and travelling around the world for little more than a couple of weeks wages. As jet fuel prices bounce along with the price of crude however many airlines are increasingly struggling to break even. Fuel prices now account for 35 percent of operating costs compared to 15 percent a decade ago. The future of the global aviation industry is in big trouble.

Mother: Caring for 7 Billion (documentary film review)

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The documentary takes a penetrating look at overpopulation, what fuels it and why the world has become complacent about the issue after making a good start in addressing it during the late 60s. The film dispels some key myths about overpopulation – chief among them the belief that it’s long been solved – even if it stops short of admitting the inevitability of a world population crash as the Earth’s resources deplete. And it conveys its message in an engaging, visually immersive style that finds just the right balance between hard facts and ordinary human involvement.

Words which matter to people

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I wish to argue only this: that the end of all our questioning will not be a set of universal abstractions that transcend the messiness and peculiarity of the local cultural concepts with which we find ourselves. That abstract technical concepts, however usefully they serve within their own context, will always lack the power of living language. And that, if we wish the qualities that we may associate with resilience to take root in the places where we live, we would do well to look for concepts and stories which embody those qualities, and words which matter to people.

Pink Attack!

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Ultimately I’m not convinced you can have any kind of functional relationship with consumer culture — even though, of course, I have one. I live in large measure off the waste of industrial society, a waste that will probably dry up some day.

Commentary: Peak Oil, Declining EROI and the New Energy-Economic Reality

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This week in the ASPO-USA Webinar series, Dr. Charles A.S. Hall presented his talk “Peak Oil, Declining EROI and the New Energy-Economic Reality. Dr. Hall was trained as a systems ecologist by Howard Odum at the University of North Carolina. Today he is ESF Foundation Distinguished Professor at State University of New York in the College of Environmental Science & Forestry. He is also the author of Energy and the Wealth of Nations: Understanding the Biophysical Economy.