It’s tempting to dream that fusion will save us. It’s the most common power source in the universe, including our Sun’s. Many believe it could produce power without radioactivity or greenhouse emissions and could be made safe. Fukushima is a nuclear fission plant, not fusion, but have you ever wondered why it was built where a tsunami could hit it? The word tsunami comes from Japanese, so they knew it[…] Keep reading →

I write about how unsustainability led to imperialism, which led to colonialism and slavery. But wait. Why bring up all this awful history? Haven’t we learned from it? Have we learned from history? Aren’t we moving on from it? Look at all the things that can solve our environmental problems: carbon taxes, electric vehicles, carbon offsets, more efficient batteries, and so on. Can’t we solve each problem one at a[…] Keep reading →

Jane has been a guest on the podcast. I’ve been catching up on research on population and overpopulation and wanted to compile her videos for future reference. EDIT: She wrote a wonderful overview peer-reviewed paper that covers a lot of her results, with references to more literature: The social and environmental influences of population growth rate and demographic pressure deserve greater attention in ecological economics, in Ecological Economics. Here’s the[…] Keep reading →

I’ve held off on writing this post since I think some people may misunderstand me. My goal is to help raise self-awareness. NYU has posted posters like this one all over campus. I think they are mostly responding to the Israel-Hamas situation, though could apply to others. I grew up not learning much about emotions or making myself aware of them. Leadership classes in business school moved me to increase[…] Keep reading →

Regular listeners know I focus on understanding addiction. I see people in my neighborhood and in headlines nearly daily addicted to heroin, fentanyl, meth, and crack. Since our culture promotes craving and dependence as what many would call “good business,” I see people on those drugs not as outliers or anomalies from culture. I see them as slightly more acute versions of mainstream America. I see addiction to doof as[…] Keep reading →

I value learning from people who think differently. A lot of people seem to value cultural exchange. Probably the most different place from the United States I’ve visited is North Korea, twice. I grew up equating flying with travel and the only way to explore other cultures. Now that I’ve stopped flying, I see how I had made myself dependent and ignorant by a practice (flying) that is destroying cultures,[…] Keep reading →

This week I watched and read: Elinor Ostrom videos: Ostrom won the Economics Prize that isn’t really a Nobel Prize, but has the Nobel name attached to it. It’s still prestigious. Her research showed how the situation described as “The Tragedy of the Commons” doesn’t result in the problems people think. It does create some incentives to overgraze and pollute, but it doesn’t stop there. Communities have found ways to[…] Keep reading →