Merijn Knibbe — An ecomodernist manifesto

Meaningful climate mitigation is fundamentally a technological challenge. By this we mean that even dramatic limits to per capita global consumption would be insufficient to achieve significant climate mitigation. Absent profound technological change there is no credible path to meaningful climate mitigation.

While we reject the planning fallacy of the 1950s, we continue to embrace a strong public role in addressing environmental problems and accelerating technological innovation, including research to develop better technologies, subsidies, and other measures to help bring them to market, and regulations to mitigate environmental hazards. And international collaboration on technological innovation and technology transfer is essential in the areas of agriculture and energy.

Real-World Economics Review Blog
An ecomodernist manifesto
Merijn Knibbe

John Aziz — Get ready for a massive renewable energy boom

Renewables are projected to be the fastest growing source of energy over the next 30 years. And that's a conservative estimate.

The Week
Get ready for a massive renewable energy boom
John Aziz

Bill Mitchell — Environmental Sustainability and Economic Growth

I am now using Friday’s blog space to provide draft versions of the Modern Monetary Theory textbook that I am writing with my colleague and friend Randy Wray. We expect to publish the text sometime early in 2014. Comments are always welcome. Remember this is a textbook aimed at undergraduate students and so the writing will be different from my usual blog free-for-all. Note also that the text I post is just the work I am doing by way of the first draft so the material posted will not represent the complete text. Further it will change once the two of us have edited it.

Today, I am continuing to add the sections in Chapter 25. So far we have done 25.1 and 25.2. I am jumping to 25.5 today.

Chapter 25 Recent Policy Debates

In this Chapter we consider the following policy debates:
▪ 25.1: Ageing, Social Security, and the Intergenerational Debate
▪ 25.2: Twin Deficits and Sustainability Of Budget Deficits
▪ 25.3: Fixed Versus Flexible Exchange Rates: Optimal Currency Areas, the Bancor, or Floating Rates?
▪ 25.4: Economic Growth: Demand or Supply Constrained?
▪ 25.5: Environmental Sustainability and Economic Growth

25.5 Environmental Sustainability and Economic Growth

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Environmental Sustainability and Economic Growth
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory, Australia

Noam Chomsky — The Eve of Destruction

What is the future likely to bring? A reasonable stance might be to try to look at the human species from the outside. So imagine that you’re an extraterrestrial observer who is trying to figure out what’s happening here or, for that matter, imagine you’re an historian 100 years from now -- assuming there are any historians 100 years from now, which is not obvious -- and you’re looking back at what’s happening today. You’d see something quite remarkable.

TomDispatch
Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, The Eve of Destruction
Noam Chomsky

David Ferguson — Scientists: Frog and toad declines signal of ‘collapse of the world’s ecosystems’

Scientists: Frog and toad declines signal of ‘collapse of the world’s ecosystems’ (via Raw Story )

A study released Wednesday said that North American frogs, toads and other amphibious animals are disappearing so quickly that they are on track to be extinct from their natural habitats by 2033. According to the Denver Post, the study — which was conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey — said…

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Parag Khanna — The Human City

The tangled web of international organizations that constitutes global governance has become so remote and ineffective that few count on it to deliver results anymore. Now, after decades of turf wars and self-marginalization, international organizations must rally around an increasingly pressing global priority: sustainable urbanization.

The world is undergoing an unprecedented and irreversible wave of urbanization, with the share of the global population living in cities set to reach 60% by 2030. But rapid urbanization is driving up industrial fossil-fuel consumption and household water consumption, and is increasing demand for food in areas where arable land is scarce. In short, the current urbanization trajectory is not sustainable.

Project Syndicate
The Human City
Parag Khanna | Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and Director of the Hybrid Reality Institute

Khanna cites Singapore as an example of better management. Does this argue for a more planned approach?

Jeff Spross — Bloomberg Study: 70 Percent Of New Global Power Capacity Added Through 2030 Will be Renewable

According to Bloomberg’s renewable energy research team, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), 70 percent of the power generation the world will add between now and 2030 will most likely be renewable.

That would mean $630 billion in new renewable capacity investments in 2030 alone — over three times what was built in 2012, and 35 percent higher than what BNEF predicted for 2030 a year ago. So not only does renewable energy’s future look formidable, it’s looking more formidable every year we project it....

"This 2030 investment figure is 35 percent higher than that produced in Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s last global forecast a year ago, and the projection for total installed renewable energy capacity by that date is 25 percent higher than in that previous forecast, at 3,500GW."

Cimate Progress
Bloomberg Study: 70 Percent Of New Global Power Capacity Added Through 2030 Will be Renewable
Jeff Spross

Asumes fusion will not be online in 2030. That seems reasonable, even if a breakthrough is made before then. Then the problem will be scaling.

Mike Sandler — The Trillion Dollar Coin vs. Limits to Growth

The coin again, or still. Interesting post on monetary economics and environmental sustainability, plus a proposal for dual currencies. As Sandler observes, the coin has people thinking out of the box.

The Huntington Post Blogs
The Trillion Dollar Coin vs. Limits to Growth
Mike Sandler | Political Economist, Climate Change Professional, and Sustainability Advocate
(h/t Resilience.org)