The Produce Box: Local Foods in the NC Triangle Region

The trend toward local foods is one of the movements that makes tremendous sense to me in the current emerging economic environment. Here in the Triangle region (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA), a local startup, The Produce Box, has been been making weekly deliveries of local foods for the past couple of years. Each week [...]

Ditching the GDP: Report from Sarkozy/Stiglitz commission

The Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, a group initiated by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, has released a set of recommendations for a more sophisticated set of indicators to replace the concept of GDP (gross domestic product). Columbia economist Joseph Stiglitz is chair of the commission. The draft of the report [...]

Great infographic shows whether the world is getting better or worse

The following infographic linked from New Scientist aggregates various data sources to show multiple world trends. The upshot is that, overall, conditions for people are getting better (though obviously not for everybody — you know how statistics work). However, the environment is shown to be getting worse (click on the image to get to a [...]

Energy Economist Says Oil Will Peak Sooner Than Expected

In an interview with The Independent, Dr. Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency (IEA) says that most of the world’s major oil fields are already past their peak production — see today’s article, “Warning: Oil supplies are running out fast,” by Steve O’Connor. When O’Connor asked Birol to explain the concept of “peak oil,” [...]

5-Euro cardboard solar cooker could drastically reduce wood fires

On April 9, 2009, Forum for the Future announced that it has awarded a $75,000 prize to Kyoto Energy for its Kyoto Box, a cardboard solar cooker designed for households in developing lands. The foil-lined cooker can be made for only 5 Euros and can boil water as a substitute for woodburning. Wood fires are [...]

Would they really hack the planet to sustain economic growth?

President Obama’s science advisor John Holdren tells the Associated Press that he has brought up geoengineering as a possible alternative in the fight against climate change in discussions with Cabinet-level U.S. officials, as well as with heads of agencies such as NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency (see AP’s article “Obama looking at cooling air [...]

Gallup: Americans favor economy over environment

Since 1984, research firm Gallup has been asking Americans whether they think priority should be given to the economy over environmental protection or vice versa. For the first time this year, the trend crossed over in favor of the economy, as you can see on this graph: Writing for Gallup, Frank Newport comments: The reason [...]

The Grandest Ponzi Scheme and The Great Disruption

In his recent column “The Inflection Is Near?,” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman raises the question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically [...]