Posts Tagged ‘oil’

The Dominant Approach to Economics and the Environment

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
biomimicry in design

Will the oil disaster in the gulf help us to see that the dominant approach to economics and the environment–which is a technological fix–will not help? There’s a lot of talk in the press and on the blogs about the loss of absolute faith in technology that the ongoing inability to stop the gushing will cause. At the very least, let’s hope that this situation takes the wind out of the sails of geo-engineering and nuclear energy. We need to trust small scale, decentralized, safe technologies not the centralized ones favored by the large corporations.

While we’re on the question of technology, I’m on one of the world’s great ones, the train,  where I’m heading down to Washington, DC to do the Diane Rehm show. (It’ll be live this morning at 11 am). I wanted to let you know about a new piece I’ve written which is at changethis.com, an interesting site that features business... (read more...)

Welcome to Plenitude

Friday, May 14th, 2010
Vegetables

Welcome to Plenitude: the blog and my new website. I’m here to plant a stake in the heart of the Business-As-Usual economy and its bankrupt politics. As I write, oil is spewing out into the Gulf of Mexico, at the rate of perhaps 70,000 barrels a day, and a deadlocked Congress has produced an energy bill that calls for expanded offshore drilling. It’s true madness.

It’s one more example that the Business-as-Usual economy (to borrow a term from the climate discourse) has become profoundly dysfunctional. That conclusion is becoming widely accepted. But we’re having trouble moving beyond it. Plenitude is a vision for doing just that—getting us on a path that reverses the rampant destruction of the planet caused by BAU and restoring true well-being to people and communities. With the political system unable to reign in the corporations that drive emissions and economic activity, Plenitude starts in... (read more...)