A Plague on Both Your Houses

Shakespeare foresaw the tragedy of unmitigated anger to innocents caught in the ties of family conflicts. Gabrielle Giffords was a member of the extended political family we call our two-party system in the US. Political, like family, feuds can end up in bloodshed and harm, whether real or fictional. Anger is a powerful emotion that is commonly ascribed to action that leads to violence and produces harmful results. According to many observers, we live in a particularly angry time. Stories of domestic violence or global terrorism are daily news. Efforts to calm seem less and less effective. One reason for… Read More

Continue Reading

The End of Consumption[, as We Know It].

Ali commented on the last post that reducing consumption will not solve the problem of over-consumption, defined as consuming at rates that cause significant damage to the environment. His argument is that reducing consumption, ceteris paribus, has to be accompanied by increased savings that, unless they are stuffed into a mattress, re-enter the economy and produce more consumption somewhere else. This appears to be a variant on the Jevons paradox or rebound effect where efficiency gains show up as increased consumption. Again if all other things were the same, reduced consumption can be viewed as a kind of personal efficiency… Read More

Continue Reading

Electric Vehicles May Be Good But They’re Not Perfect

The new all- electric vehicles from Chevrolet and Nissan are attracting a lot of attention, as is appropriate for such a new entry into the automobile market. There’s no question that they are better for the environment than a Hummer, but not as much as most of the articles I have read claim. Slate reports: According to the EPA, the Leaf gets the equivalent of 99 miles per gallon—106 MPG in the city and 92 MPG on the highway, with an estimated annual electricity cost of $561. That would make the Nissan Leaf (shown in the photo) about twice as… Read More

Continue Reading

Growing Inequality–An Addendum to Yesterday’s Blog Post

In another example of synchronicity, I stumbled into this excellent series of articles on inequality by Timothy Noah. The link is to the first of 10 separate articles. The whole series is available as a pdf. Noah presents a lot of good data showing the growth of inequality since about 1979. The gist of the trends are nicely displayed in a short slide show. There is much too much in the series to reduce to blog size. Noah ends with these couple of paragraphs. I find myself returning to the gut-level feeling expressed at the start of this series: I… Read More

Continue Reading

Out With the Old, In With the Old?

Another year, another yowler. I looked back at the year-end and beginning blogs from the last two years as a jumping off place for this new year. Not much solid ground right now, so whatever jumping off I do has to be quite modest. Sustainability still has not entered our collective consciousness in spite of the torrent of its use and that of its distant cousin, green. The world of business and government moves merrily along selling its meager efforts as sustainability, avoiding any meaningful appreciation of the phenomena involved or any actions that would make a difference. Meanwhile signs… Read More

Continue Reading