How many people can the planet support? Call it the carrying capacity for spaceship earth. Currently there are over 8 billion (mid 2023) and we will reach 9 billion in the next 15 years. The Carrying Capacity according to studies presented in Wikipedia suggests the range is just two to four billion people. There are many estimates of how many the planet
Read moreBlowing the whistle is a shorthand phrase meaning ‘halt the action; something is wrong’. In sport it usually denotes a foul. In real life whistleblowers raise the alarm when they see powerful forces falling short of standards they have set themselves – either by breaking the law or failing to adhere to common standards. Perhaps the most celebrated – or
Read more(Published in the Planetary Health Weekly, Vol. 9, No. 46, November 16, 2023) How to understand our world today that appears to be in a genuine mess? The Planetary Health Weekly (PHW) lays out so many issues regarding global warming (or the climate crisis) but let’s consider the context in which they occur. In my 4th blog in April 2022,
Read more(from the Planetary Health Weekly, Vol. 9, No. 46, November 16, 2023) How to understand our world today that appears to be in a genuine mess? The Planetary Health Weekly (PHW) lays out so many issues regarding global warming (or the climate crisis) but let’s consider the context in which they occur. In my 4th blog in April 2022, I
Read moreAs I indicated last time, one of the problems with the Polluter Pays principle is that economists seem to have been particularly dilatory in finding appropriate ways to implement it. As a result, so many products whose manufacture cause excess carbon emissions, noxious air pollution or the fouling of lakes, rivers and even aquifers, escape penalty when sold, distorting the business
Read more(from the Planetary Health Weekly, Vol. 9, No. 42, October 19, 2023) What would it take for the counter-elites, including those frustrated elite-wannabes as well as progressives seen in the riots and anti-government demonstrations, to return to the massive organization efforts such groups did almost a century ago to turn off the wealth pump and push us in the direction
Read more(in the Planetary Health Weekly Vol. 9, No. 37, September 14, 2023) Part of the problem in making sense of the conflicts over climate change and the biodiversity crises is that there is not only a polarisation of opinions, but these opinions are based on very different principles. I have been concerned for some time about morality in the business
Read more(in the Planetary Health Weekly, Vol. 9, No. 41, October 12, 2023) Polluter Pays is the idea that any party, such as a business, that causes environmental damage or pollution is held responsible for any costs borne by the community at large including specific victims. If a chicken farm pollutes a river so that fishermen downstream lose their livelihoods the principle
Read moreCredit: Turchin and Korotayev, 2020 One way to confuse people is to use fancy words that are unfamiliar. That is much of what constitutes the educational process
Read moreContinued from Part A (PHW July 3, 2023) The Plughole Problem appears in relation to most aspects of climate change and the biodiversity crises; you may have recognised it as a regular theme of mine. It’s the obsession with new ideas while ignoring the old harmful ones which still go on causing trouble – finding new taps to open while
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