To the relief of climate scientists around the world, it appears that the polar ice cap hasn’t shrunk as much this summer as it did last summer.
with Sarah Wolfe | Self-sufficiency isn’t a sexy idea. At best, people who say they’re interested in being self-sufficient are stereotyped as dour, old-fashioned rural-types. At worst, they’re seen as fanatical survivalists planning for an apocalypse. Economists also tell us that self-sufficiency is an anachronism. Instead, it’s specialization that produces wealth, and economies – including the world economy – produce the most wealth when everyone, including countries, specializes in what they do best and then trades their products for the other things they need. The more specialization, the more connectivity among specialists, and the more trade along those connections, the better.
But there are problems with this model.
When it comes to conserving Earth’s natural environment, our markets are badly broken. For our planet’s future – and for our future prosperity – we must fix them.
Can rapid population growth help cause civil violence, such as insurgency or revolution? How does war affect the population structure of societies? Is the science of demography a useful forensic tool in determining mortality arising from war crimes? This edited volume addresses such questions.
What’s going on? Are we simply in the midst of another gut-churning fluctuation of a world economy that’s prone to intermittent volatility but that always seems to find its footing? Or are we glimpsing a deeper emergency, one that goes to the heart of modern global capitalism?
What should we do with the carbon we produce when we burn fossil fuels? Some experts say we should fight climate change by putting the carbon back underground, whence it came.
A Globally Integrated Climate Policy for Canada, University of Toronto Press, 2008.
A few years ago, these scientists regarded global warming as a matter of serious concern; now many appear to think that it’s a matter of grave urgency – that we may be running out of time. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports are increasingly viewed as out of date.
The Arctic ice cap melted this summer at a shocking pace, disappearing at a far higher rate than predicted by even the most pessimistic experts in global warming. But we shouldn’t be shocked, because scientists have long known that major features of earth’s interlinked climate system of air and water can change abruptly.
Late last week the world’s central banks acted to head off panic among investors and lenders by pumping nearly a third of a trillion dollars of cash into the world’s financial markets. Something is clearly amiss.
