Nile River Nations Agree to Cooperate, but Danger Lurks for One of Planet’s Great Wetlands
The beginning of the Blue Nile near its outlet from Lake Tana in the highlands of Ethiopia. Photo by Ondrej Zvácek/Creative Commons Earlier this month, the foreign ministers of Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia reached agreement on basic principles for managing what...
OVERdevelopment, OVERpopulation, OVERshoot
“Even as a waste disposal site, the world is finite.” —William R. Catton Jr. Post Carbon Fellow Bill Ryerson’s introduction to the new book OVERdevelopment, OVERpopulation, OVERshoot. MOST CONVERSATIONS ABOUT POPULATION begin with statistics—demographic data, fertility rates in this or that...
Lessons from São Paulo’s Water Shortage
It’s getting harder and harder to separate nature’s role in disasters from our own, and the dire water predicament confronting São Paulo, Brazil, is no exception. But as with the ongoing drought in California, there are important lessons from...
Only Less Will Do
When I’m not writing books or essays on environmental issues, or sleeping or eating, you’re likely to find me playing the violin. This has been an obsessive activity for me since I was a boy, and seems to deliver...
Recycling in the Anthropocene
Recently I’ve been reading salvos in a raging debate about biological and ecological conservation. Traditionally, conservation has largely been about protecting “natural” environments by keeping human presence to a minimum. Now some observers have pointed out that there are...
Sustainability for Whom?
The mission of UPSTREAM (formerly Product Policy Institute) is “sustainable production and consumption and good governance.” Sometimes I feel like we’re swimming against the tide in advocating a role for government action in ensuring sustainable production and consumption. Big...
Richard Heinberg on Our Renewable Future
Richard Heinberg discusses our renewable future and how to get there. Richard is the author of eleven books including: – Afterburn (April 2015) – Snake Oil (July 2013) – The End of Growth (August 2011) – Peak Everything: Waking...
Is the US Overplaying Its Energy Hand?
In the grand poker game of geopolitics, energy is often the wild card. That’s why the Middle East is such a mess: Great Powers (first Britain, more recently the United States) have been installing, propping up, toppling, threatening, or...
The Year the Dam of Denial Breaks
This is the year the “dam of denial” will break and the momentum for climate action will become an unstoppable flood. It will be messy, confusing and endlessly debated but with historical hindsight, 2015 will be the year. The...
Climate Change Poses Existential Water Risks
We often hear it said that climate change is too abstract to win the support needed to effectively combat it. But the primary way we will experience climate change is through the water cycle – through droughts, floods, depleted...