Hosting a successful podcast on sustainability, I get a lot of requests or suggestions to bring on as guests people who sell more things, claiming they reduce waste relative to something more wasteful: compostable straws, jewelry from ocean plastic, clothes you can trace to the cotton farm, etc. Selling more isn’t selling less. If you make a polluting system more efficient, you pollute more efficiently, even if you make your[…] Keep reading →

If you believe that nonstop growth of the economy and population is impossible on a finite planet, you expect that either we have to stop growing deliberately or nature will cause both to collapse. If you further believe we have have overshot what Earth can sustain, you expect that even if we stop now, nature will cause both to collapse. Growing onto other planets doesn’t help because even if we[…] Keep reading →

I rarely post other people’s content as the main part of my blog, but this video put together a lot of what is predicted to happen the way a few generations ago people predicted global warming and sea level rise. People doubted it not for disagreeing with the observations and predictions but because they didn’t want to believe. It made them feel bad. The global economy and human population collapse,[…] Keep reading →

The more I learn about renewables, the more I find they rely on fossil fuels more than I thought. They don’t seem that renewable and relying on false promises looks like it’s leading us to delay acting, as we have for a centure. I wrote about all the scams we fall for. Desiring as we are to find ways to keep society intact, we want technologies like hydrogen energy storage[…] Keep reading →

Hitler was vegetarian. If you want to work on sustainability, you will face people pointing out this history. They don’t point out that he also promoted larger families, but many feel like it checkmates all cases for changing diet. Beyond diet, I’ve talked a lot about population since reading podcast guest Alan Weisman‘s Countdown and learning of guest Mechai Viravaidya‘s lowering Thailand’s birth rate through purely voluntary, often fun, means.[…] Keep reading →

When I read Tom’s book on sustainability, Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, I couldn’t believe the book didn’t exist already. I consider it the science book of the decade so invited him back. He shares about his motivation and goals in writing it. You might read my review of the book first, but you can jump into this conversation too. Here is an excerpt from my review:[…] Keep reading →

When I read Tom’s book on sustainability, Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, I couldn’t believe the book didn’t exist already. I consider it the science book of the decade so invited him back. He shares about his motivation and goals in writing it. You might read my review of the book first, but you can jump into this conversation too. Here is an excerpt from my review:[…] Keep reading →