I think ‘magical thinking’ is apt for what brought down our financial system, but it’s a view from hindsight, not foresight, and altogether too imprecise. I wrote my first comprehensive paper on growth induced collapse 30 years to the day before the Fed called this one to a halt.
The problem now as seen from foresight […]
Responding to an Archinect discussion:
http://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=79713_0_23_0_M
Hi there! I haven’t read the whole thread, but gather the question is whether we can grow our way our of the impacts of growth, using crafty wind power investments to do it. I’ve been spending this week trying to find out why none of the media are aware of the vigorous […]
Allison,
Hi, to no one’s surprise someone unsubscribed me from the
list again. The site does not seem to be accepting applications for membership at present either. Hope this is responsive.
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You say: “! And please not just a theory.”
– The practical tools for measuring total direct project impacts has been the main thing I’ve raised here. The […]
Chuck,
Right, Growth to failure, but is it the kind of thing that just recreates itself after every failure, because we don’t understand the problem yet? That’s how it seems to me, as no one seems to be pointing out that the basic multiplier of economics has that exact property.
Phil Henshaw??
> Hi Phil,
> I think the […]
Anselmo,
I agree with you 99% philosophically, but note that there is a basic difference between the kind of environmental intervention we’ve gotten into from the kind that we started with. It’s a change in scale.
Our method of intervention in nature includes an automatic multiplier of scale. It may possibly be that there have always been […]
Chris,
Your article: “America’s Self-inflicted Societal Collapse” (http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46564) is insightful and passionate. I’ve been writing and doing research on the problem for 30 years. I think you miss = the simplest and most undeniable way to point to the deep cause. Money as we manage it has to multiply for stability.
What confuses things is the kind of […]
Widely distributed,
Money will multiply as long as there are profits, because
people with money multiply their own profits that way. As JM Keynes among others pointed out, when real productivity approaches limits, multiplying money will drive profits to zero. Driving profits to zero triggers waves of collapse, providing a means for our responding to our limits […]
Anselmo & all,
I think it’s very relevant to consider the accumulating adverse genetic change due to human intervention. The principal process of evolution is not yet well understood yet though. “Punctuated equilibrium” requires a mechanism for relatively rapid change of the whole genome rather than a selective drift of individual genes, and as yet there are no testable […]
O2 post: Mauro,
That’s an excellent question. What you want is the ‘accumulative’ total effect, of the ‘choice’ being made, if what you want is to give people ways to decide what choices are better than others. The way you’re starting is just the right way, thinking it through far enough to begin to see the […]
Brian,
Yea, most people think it’s a problem of attitude, but there are great examples of where that’s clearly not the case. The environmental movement, for example, makes the same mistake time after time of treating niche opportunities as unlimited resources. The important part is not to say they have a ‘bad attitude’. The error is […]