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Life on Earth is under enormous stress from a rapidly changing environment and climate. A recent study in Nature show how human societies are already impacted by a changing climate in at least 467 different ways. For example, increased water evaporation and increased air capacity to hold moisture, due to warming, have lead to extreme drought in places...
The capitalistic system only has two modes of operation, either expanding or collapsing. That's why people are so obsessed with growth, because it stabilises the system. Capitalism is premised on the logic of never ending growth: debts are made on the basis that they can be repaid with future income, and profits are invested to gain future profits....
The central assumption of the neoliberal economic model that material consumption and industrial expansion can continue without devastating political and environmental consequences is known to be false. Yet, every politician on Earth is pushing for further material growth which in a time of resource scarcity only leads to rapidly increasing income inequality. This in turn undermines the stability...
Source: FAO Aquastat, Oxford Analytica When people from the West and its mainstream media try to analyse what's happening in the Middle East all they talk about is armed conflict and war. But never do they mention the deep fundamental drivers of energy, water scarcity and climate change. Many countries in the Middle East are extremely vulnerable and...
Annual global temperatures from 1850-2017. The colour scale represents the change in global temperatures covering 1.35°C. Credit: Climate Lab Book, 2018 The Earth System Earth is a complex dynamic system. Earth system dynamics can be understood in terms of trajectories between alternate states separated by thresholds that are controlled by nonlinear processes, interactions, and feedbacks. For example, over...
We are in a double bind. Growing the economy will cause catastrophic climate change and massive biological extinction. But not growing the economy will lead to lots of suffering under the current neoclassical economic structure. Of course, we could chose to change our entire economic system so that its in line with the biophysical reality we live in,...
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