sustainability
Daily Alchemy: Can we make this controversy good?
3d ago“Should California be lecturing America on sustainability while experiencing gas shortages?”
Can the economy grow forever on a finite planet?: Cornucopians
The check In 1980, Ehrlich chose five metals and bet they would get scarcer. In 1990, every single one was cheaper. He mailed Simon a check for $576.07 and spent the next three decades explaining why he was still right despite being completely wrong.... Can the economy grow forever on a finite planet?: Decouplers
Molecules into stone In September 2021, Climeworks activated Orca on a lava field outside Reykjavik. It pulls 4,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually and mineralizes it into basalt. Permanent removal. Not an offset. Molecules extracted from the sky and locked into rock.... Can the economy grow forever on a finite planet?: Degrowth
Underground The Ogallala Aquifer stretches beneath eight American states. It irrigates $20 billion in crops annually. It took the last ice age to fill. In parts of western Kansas, the water table has dropped over 150 feet since 1950. Some wells have gone dry.... Can the economy grow forever on a finite planet?: Green growth
The price curve In 2010, a solar panel cost $2.15 per watt. By 2023: $0.27. Eighty-seven percent decline in thirteen years. The IEA, which had underestimated solar in every forecast for a decade, finally stopped lowballing.... The Open Question April 22: Who decides what's good for the planet? Hey y'all!
It's Earth Day, and I started to ask "what's our role in the health of the planet?"; but "Health" smuggles in a telos the planet doesn't have; not to mention assumptions about us, the planet, morality, etc. The Great Oxygenation Event was a mass extinction from the perspective of everything then alive, and the best thing that ever happened from the perspective of us now. Five more mass extinctions since. There is no view from nowhere on what's good for Earth.
So a question I find more provocative and meaningful: Who decides what's good for the planet? eg:
- Is environmentalism helping, or making things worse (and according to whom, measured against what baseline)?
- Should we engineer the climate? Who holds the thermostat?
- Is having children an environmental harm, a necessity (for solutions, or for their own sake), neither, both?
- Does individual action matter, or is it a corporate distraction?
- Who pays for climate adaptation? eg: carbon caps can lock Haitians out of development; "loss and damage" can lock Western voters out of their economies. Whose development, whose sacrifice?
Every answer presupposes an answerer. That's a part we usually skip, but here let's name it and let our differences make us wiser.
Lots of love, and see (some of) you at 2p central.
Jordan
(UpTrust CEO)#openquestion
Don Miguel Ruiz talks about this in the Four Agreements. Each family/culture programs their children with the rules to live by, the things to fear, the things to be admired. These prototypes over time have morphed into harmful at best paradigms that need to be broken.... The Open Question April 22: Who decides what's good for the planet? Hey y'all!
It's Earth Day, and I started to ask "what's our role in the health of the planet?"; but "Health" smuggles in a telos the planet doesn't have; not to mention assumptions about us, the planet, morality, etc. The Great Oxygenation Event was a mass extinction from the perspective of everything then alive, and the best thing that ever happened from the perspective of us now. Five more mass extinctions since. There is no view from nowhere on what's good for Earth.
So a question I find more provocative and meaningful: Who decides what's good for the planet? eg:
- Is environmentalism helping, or making things worse (and according to whom, measured against what baseline)?
- Should we engineer the climate? Who holds the thermostat?
- Is having children an environmental harm, a necessity (for solutions, or for their own sake), neither, both?
- Does individual action matter, or is it a corporate distraction?
- Who pays for climate adaptation? eg: carbon caps can lock Haitians out of development; "loss and damage" can lock Western voters out of their economies. Whose development, whose sacrifice?
Every answer presupposes an answerer. That's a part we usually skip, but here let's name it and let our differences make us wiser.
Lots of love, and see (some of) you at 2p central.
Jordan
(UpTrust CEO)#openquestion
"How are we behaving that is contrary to our and the planets best interest." this is very close to something that guides my own personal ethics, framed more in the aspiration rather than negation, something like "how do we behave in a way that benefits us individually,... The Open Question April 22: Who decides what's good for the planet? Hey y'all!
It's Earth Day, and I started to ask "what's our role in the health of the planet?"; but "Health" smuggles in a telos the planet doesn't have; not to mention assumptions about us, the planet, morality, etc. The Great Oxygenation Event was a mass extinction from the perspective of everything then alive, and the best thing that ever happened from the perspective of us now. Five more mass extinctions since. There is no view from nowhere on what's good for Earth.
So a question I find more provocative and meaningful: Who decides what's good for the planet? eg:
- Is environmentalism helping, or making things worse (and according to whom, measured against what baseline)?
- Should we engineer the climate? Who holds the thermostat?
- Is having children an environmental harm, a necessity (for solutions, or for their own sake), neither, both?
- Does individual action matter, or is it a corporate distraction?
- Who pays for climate adaptation? eg: carbon caps can lock Haitians out of development; "loss and damage" can lock Western voters out of their economies. Whose development, whose sacrifice?
Every answer presupposes an answerer. That's a part we usually skip, but here let's name it and let our differences make us wiser.
Lots of love, and see (some of) you at 2p central.
Jordan
(UpTrust CEO)#openquestion
As an architect and student of human nature I have thought long and hard on this subject. I do not think it is so much deciding who gets to be the arbiter of the way things are as it needs to be How are we behaving that is contrary to our and the planets best interest.... A bad solution is bad, then, because it acts destructively upon the larger patterns in which it is contained. It acts destructively upon those patterns, most likely, because it is formed in ignorance or disregard of them.... Is energy the true currency?: Energy spiritualists
The oldest curriculum The Vedic tradition calls it prana — the breath that animates all living things. The Chinese call it qi — the vital force flowing through body and world. The Lakota call it wakan — the sacred power pervading nature.... Is energy the true currency?: Degrowth
The date we went into debt In 2022, Earth Overshoot Day fell on July 28. That is the date humanity consumed more biological resources than the planet regenerates in a year.... Dead shopping malls are coming back. But not the way you’d expect. (This is about taxes).
See that empty shopping mall over there? The one that died during Covid 19? It has a huge footprint, but generates little to no tax revenue to fund the city. Not property taxes, not sales tax on purchases, not even income taxes for the state. It’s like a black hole.... The Material Economics Doctrine
The bioeconomy isn’t a utopian idea. It’s a response to a system that got more expensive and more fragile. Freight costs rose. Insurance rose. Inventory ties up capital. Overseas labor isn’t cheap anymore. Climate disasters aren’t rare events.... If people cannot change the commodities society depends on, then protest alone will never produce lasting change.
Protest is good at signaling pain.
It is not designed to reroute capital.That’s not a moral judgment. It’s a structural one.
Modern power does not primarily respond to outrage. It responds to demand signals, procurement contracts, financing structures, and commodity dependency. As long as the same materials flow through the same systems, the same outcomes repeat, regardless of who is in office or what slogans trend.
This is why so many movements burn hot and fade.
They change language, but not inputs.
They change narratives, but not supply chains.
They raise awareness, but leave money flowing exactly where it always has.Real change begins when money moves differently.
Jobs follow commodities.
Communities follow jobs.
Political behavior follows economic reality.My work focuses on building that missing middle layer, where social intention becomes economic participation. Through platforms like nowweevolve.com and thebioeconomyfoundation.org, I’m working on redirecting consumer demand, public funding, and private capital toward regenerative materials and domestic production systems that create real work, especially in rural communities.
This isn’t anti-protest. It’s post-protest.
If we want durable change, we have to give people a way to participate economically in the solution. Not just speak, but buy, build, fund, and work their way into a different system.
Social change scales when money flow changes.
Everything else is commentary.Steve, I agree with you completely on the price reality, and I want to extend the solution one layer deeper because this is where it actually becomes feasible. The missing piece is not just consumer willingness. It is industrial siting and rural development incentives.... If people cannot change the commodities society depends on, then protest alone will never produce lasting change.
Protest is good at signaling pain.
It is not designed to reroute capital.That’s not a moral judgment. It’s a structural one.
Modern power does not primarily respond to outrage. It responds to demand signals, procurement contracts, financing structures, and commodity dependency. As long as the same materials flow through the same systems, the same outcomes repeat, regardless of who is in office or what slogans trend.
This is why so many movements burn hot and fade.
They change language, but not inputs.
They change narratives, but not supply chains.
They raise awareness, but leave money flowing exactly where it always has.Real change begins when money moves differently.
Jobs follow commodities.
Communities follow jobs.
Political behavior follows economic reality.My work focuses on building that missing middle layer, where social intention becomes economic participation. Through platforms like nowweevolve.com and thebioeconomyfoundation.org, I’m working on redirecting consumer demand, public funding, and private capital toward regenerative materials and domestic production systems that create real work, especially in rural communities.
This isn’t anti-protest. It’s post-protest.
If we want durable change, we have to give people a way to participate economically in the solution. Not just speak, but buy, build, fund, and work their way into a different system.
Social change scales when money flow changes.
Everything else is commentary.I don't disagree with a word you say. But, I will point out that a 24 pack of double-roll bamboo toilet paper from Amazon is nearly 4x the price of the same number of double rolls of Kroger store brand ($28 vs. $7.50).... Welcome!
Hello fellow plant lovers, My name is Monica and I created this group for those who, like myself, love all things gardening, growing and have spiritual connections to plants and herbs. As an introduction, I am a green witch, flower artist and writer.... Collage Art + Creative Reuse in Windsor, NC
Hi, all. I’m Laura, a collage artist and entrepreneur in Eastern North Carolina. I create whimsical mixed-media work (mostly from reclaimed paper), and I’m also in the middle of opening RECYCLAMATION Thrift in Windsor, NC – a creative reuse space + community thrift store built...