This is an annotated list of the the more substantive posts on Trinifar (last updated March 3, 2008). The list isn’t chronological.
There is another group of posts on subjects like human rights, philosophy, and religion which I’ll include here when time and motivation allow. In the meantime, use the search box, tags, and categories to look for them. There’s also a third group of miscellaneous posts that I don’t think need to be cataloged.
See also the Index.
Preface, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
The preface to this series, your shrinking carbon dioxide allotment, examines the problem of reducing carbon dioxide emissions in light of US and world population growth and the desire everywhere for economic growth.
“Fire from fossil fuels burning in internal combustion engines and electric power plants is the foundation of the global economy and makes our modern lifestyles possible. We are surrounded with the tangible benefits of fire’s energy, but its most notable by-product — carbon dioxide — goes unseen. Only relatively recently have we learned how threatening the increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is to the very way of life fire supports.“
This post written in July 2007 is one of the most frequently viewed posts on Trinifar, perhaps the #1. Parts 1-3 where added around the beginning of March 2008.
- world population growth rate is a look at the rate and consequences of population growth.
- exponential or not? is an analysis of whether or not world population growth is exponential in the formal, mathematical sense of the term.
- immigration and US population growth: Only one country in the world has an advanced economy and a steadily increasing population: The United States of America. A growing population would be a problem in any case, but that its happening in the US with its high level of per capita consumption and greenhouse gas emissions is especially troubling. An issue that’s avoided by nearly everyone in the environmental community and, until recently, by demographers is that most of the US population growth is due to immigration.
- learning from Iran about family planning: Some developing nations have the means to take Iran’s approach of using the planning and power of a strong government to make a quick, meaningful change in population growth. Whatever you think of Iran’s government, in this case they implemented their program without draconian measures like China’s one-child policy. In fact, the specific steps they took are widely recognized as compassionate, effective means of slowing growth and have positive side effects like a better educated, healthier citizenry.
- presidential commission reports on population growth: In 1969 President Richard Nixon said, “One of the most serious challenges to human destiny … will be the growth of the population. Whether man’s response to that challenge will be a cause for pride or for despair … will depend very much on what we do today. … When future generations evaluate the record of our time, one of the most important factors in their judgment will be the way in which we responded to population growth.”
- myriad views on overpopulation is a taxonomy of views on population growth and hopefully becomes the seed for a FAQ on the subject.
- the Philippines, a case study examines one country.
- consuming quads in the USA: 2005 to 2030 introduces the AEO2007, Annual Energy Outlook 2007 with Projections to 2030, a report prepared each year by the Energy Information Administration, Office of Integrated Analysis and Forecasting, U.S. Department of Energy.
- consuming quads, part two: Part one of this series focused on the reference case projection in AEO2007, Annual Energy Outlook 2007 with Projections to 2030, the official energy report of the US Department of Energy. This post looks at the four main variants of the reference case used in the report — higher/lower economic growth and higher/lower projected fuel prices — then discusses why the report projects outcomes at odds not just with the President’s statement but contrary to common sense as well.
high-carbon economy presents a fascinating diagram (based on one from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) of the sources and sinks of energy in the United States.
other posts
water, the unarguable limit on growth examines water resources and water use around the world and in the United States.
visualizing sustainability shows the some of the more compelling graphs used on Trinifar as of July 20, 2007, with links to and summaries of the posts in which they first appeared.
prison population growth: In America we have more people in prison — in raw numbers and as a portion of our population — than any other nation in the world. We also spend more money on this than any other country. Yet we don’t have less crime; every European nation has lower crime rates (and lower incarceration rates for that matter) than we do. And our incarceration rate is growing.
decoding Bali: presents a guide to understanding the recent Bali Conference and it’s place in a long series of United Nations’ efforts to address climate change.
excuses, excuses, excuses: … faced with the knowledge that our current economy and lifestyles are causing ecological destruction to such an extent that our, and certainly our children’s, well-being is in jeapordy, how is it we avoid taking any significant action?
are we bacteria or primates? which follows a dark green future looks at attitudes toward a coming bottleneck. Since we are living far beyond the carrying capacity of Earth, some kind of collapse will happen to reduce human impact on the planet. Will it be war, famine, and disease that rectifies the imbalance or will humanity take some intentional steps to live within Earth’s means?
the end of economic growth, a series on the work of Charles Siegel:
- part 1, introduction: “We often hear that we are reaching the limits of growth because of ecological constraints, but we rarely hear that we are also reaching the limits of human needs. … In the United States, we have already gone beyond the limits of human needs. Growth is no longer improving the average American’s well being.”
- part 2, work time: During the first half of the 20th century there was a dramatic rise in life expectancy coupled with a decrease in infant mortality while the average work week dropped. Since the Second World War, however, the work week has been constant even though the GDP has continued to grow steadily and neither life expectancy or infant mortality has changed much. What’s going on?
- part 3, the limits of human needs: is about the idea like this: “The success of economic activity is (should be) how well it fulfills fundamental human needs, not how many products and services (satisfiers) are produced.”
modeling the future: discusses a modeling effort and projection which says, among other things, if we don’t change our ways the number of poor people is going to skyrocket in the next 40 years. An introduction to work of Paul Chefurka.
population growth gets some mainstream attention presents John Feeney’s BBC News Green Room article, Humanity is the greatest challenge, and my thoughts on it. “What’s so rewarding for me in seeing John’s essay get published on the BBC News website is the acknowledgement by a major media outlet that not only does increasing consumption matter — with all the problems it entails like CO2 emissions, water shortages, climate change, and decrease in biodiversity — but that increasing population is also a fundamental driver of consumption.”
GPI: Genuine Progress Indicator: By differentiating between economic activity that diminishes both natural and social capital and activity that enhances such capital, the GPI and its variants are designed to measure sustainable economic welfare rather than economic activity alone [which is what the GDP does].
sustainability fundamentals introduces the concepts of carrying capacity, IPAT equation, ecological footprint, and ecological economics.
sustainability requires justice: “World-wide justice is a necessary condition for world-wide sustainability.”
ecological/steady-state economics, an introduction: “The verb ‘to grow’ has become so overladen with positive value connotations that we have forgotten its first literal dictionary denotation, namely, ‘to spring up and develop to maturity.’ Thus the very notion of growth includes some concept of maturity or sufficiency, beyond which point physical accumulation gives way to physical maintenance; that is, growth gives way to a steady state. It is important to remember that ‘growth’ is not synonymous with ‘betterment.’” — Herman Daly. Also many excerpts from John Attarian’s work.
libertarianism & growth discusses some thoughts on climate change from a libertarian blog (e.g. how the free market and technological change will mitigate it) as well as the Donora disaster in Pennsylvania that led to the first pollution control legislation in the United States.
modeling the future, what-if? examines Scenarios of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Atmospheric Concentrations, Part A produced by the Climate Change Science Program for the US Department of Energy. “The hardest fact for anyone to accept is that we need to radically transform the global energy system in a short period of time. It makes sense that this is hard to accept, it’s next to impossible without the general population being aware of the necessity. The cost is enormous, the benefits not immediate.”
learning to think about the future offers a handout/poster to stimulate classroom discussion about many of the issues raised on this blog.
an insider’s view of the oil peak looks at the views of Matt Simmons, “a key advisor to the Bush Administration, Vice President Cheney’s 2001 Energy Task Force and the Council on Foreign Relations”; the founder of Simmons & Co which bills itself as Investment Bankers to the Energy Industry (“Founded in 1974, the firm has acted as financial advisor in over $101 billion of transactions, including 490 merger and acquisitions worth over $69 billion”); and author of Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy.
the end of oil a look at The End of Oil (Paul Roberts 2004). Roberts presents a positive, optimistic scenario in which the US government, pushed by industry and individual states like California, is moved to aggressively address energy policy by emphasizing a “bridge” economy to stop the worst of current energy trends while providing “more flexibility in eventually creating a new energy system.”
subsidizing the decline of food security: Government subsidies for the fishing and agricultural industries, subsidies which once may have been well-motivated, are now supporting activities which clearly threaten our well-being.
good news: the pending catastrophe is real: I’m not glad we are facing calamity. I’m glad that the reality of the pending catastrophe is being acknowledged in the mainstream media on a daily basis. I’m glad for that because it means we have a chance to respond collectively. We have a chance to back politicians who recognize these problems and the complexity of our situation. There is not one thing we can “go to war” against. It’s not climate change, water availability, cheap oil, decreasing biodiversity, or overpopulation. It’s all of them together. It’s a time when the world economy will change in a fundamental way — whether the powers that be like it or not. It’s a time when we need to be managing the future, not exploiting it as if it were another giant oil field.
robust sustainability: I’m interested in robust sustainability, a way of life that can be sustained over centuries and resilient in the face of natural challenges like disease, crop failure, and climate cycles as well as social upheavals in the form of political and economic changes. Rather than seeing sustainability as some sort of homogeneous, constant state, I think it’s important to take a broader, more realistic view that expects the world to change, assumes that people will sometimes choose to change their forms of government, and accepts the ebb and flow of both resource availability and the economic systems that attempt to make the best use of available resources. The last thing we need is a monoculture of sustainability. For a natural system to be sustainable — and humanity is very much a natural system — it must be flexible and heterogeneous.
the thousand item triage: While there is a general awareness that climate change is real and poses a significant problem, I think few understand the vast scale of the economic, social, and political changes required to avoid a catastrophe.
housing density: Many of our metro regions are so incredibly overpopulated only a reduction in the number of people can make them sustainable, healthy places to live. Many of them are in a constant struggle just to provide water to their residents and businesses (LA, Denver, Phoenix, Atlanta), yet they continue to grow.
IPAT & rates of change: If we don’t begin bring down consumption (start to reduce emissions) we have no hope of avoiding environmental catastrophe. Since the population growth rate has been in decline for decades, it makes sense to focus on the consumption/emissions growth rate which has never declined except in periods of economic recession and then not much. Failure to acknowledge this is a failure to “bring everything into the light.”
the urban growth equation is a look at an academic paper on growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities.
the population dialog: An op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor describes how “dialog clubs” are being used in Rwanda to help with reconciliation and economic recovery in the wake of the 1994 genocide that killed nearly a million.
George W Bush’s commitment to mitigating climate change: So in spite of the great accomplishment of the GWB administration in offering the target of 18% reduction in carbon intensity (a meaningless measure of emissions per GDP dollar), actual carbon emissions (the measure that matters) will increase by 11%.
redundancy, redundancy, redundancy: By their very nature conservatives resist change, but they do respond to issues of safety and security. If we can get them to see that safety is now a bigger issue than being safe from crime, that security is more than saving for retirement, that the concerns of climate change and poverty are really about the safety and security of our children and grandchildren, then we might find some common ground on which conservatives and progressives can come together. We need a broad base of support to enable politicians to make the hard choices necessary to change our course before we exhaust the planet’s remaining safety margins.
cornucopian sustainability: The cornucopian view is valuable precisely because it causes the sustainability discussion to be taken up by people who otherwise would turn away. Yet No Impact Man has the more accurate vision and the lifestyle offering more lasting wealth and satisfaction.
“we mustn’t kill our customers”: Yes, there is green washing, but, given the very real business risks and the scale of fortunes involved, there is also a sincere desire for a sustainable, truly green, bottom-line. That requires an accurate view of the future and government policies coupled with meaningful regulation to ensure sustainability.
peak shoes, peak food: Peak Shoes and Peak Food are just as realistic as Peak Oil and everyone — including governments and oil companies — believes Peak Oil is realistic. The only disagreement is about the timing. Will it be later this year or 2035? One reason Peak Oil doesn’t get more attention is most people haven’t made the connection between Peak Oil and Peak Everything Else.
even an 11-year-old can understand: Michael A. Little, professor of anthropology, Binghamton University, New York, offers some thoughtful remarks about the consequences of continued growth in terms an 11-year-old can understand.
population growth in the news (part 3): The OPT merely pointed out the simple and obvious fact that more people means more use of energy and other resources, thus more carbon emissions, thus more dramatic climate change. Reduce population growth or — to break the taboo and state the unthinkable — reduce the size of the world population and addressing climate change becomes more manageable.
the sustainability game is a (sort of) light hearted look at how to achieve a sustainable Earth.
stop, look, and listen: Three decades of Earth Days have only mitigated somewhat the destruction we are inflicting on our planet. We are desperate for a government that will take action to halt and reverse course, and we need more people to vote such governments into power. E. O. Wilson said, “The evidence of swift environmental change calls for an ethic uncoupled from other systems of belief. … The stewardship of environment is a domain on the near side of metaphysics where all reflective persons can surely find common ground.”
new frame for climate change notes that “… the UK hopes that the debate will reveal widespread agreement in the [UN] Security Council about the seriousness of the issue and some recognition that aspects of climate change, and especially the cumulative effects in vulnerable areas, may pose potential threats to international peace and security.
national security and Richard Dawkins: “… a 63-page report, National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, was released by 11 retired admirals and generals detailing how climate change threatens our national security and what we should be doing about it.”
biodiversity: Remarks from E. O. Wilson in The Diversity of Life.
gasoline, bread, and the value of time: “…examples of ways to make a small dent in our high-consumption, high-carbon economy — ways that have their own special personal benefits as well. You don’t have to wait for the government to do something. By exercising your personal freedom and creativity you can start making a difference now with the choices you make today.”
“happiness versus consumption”: “…there comes a point where using more resources actually reduces your quality of life.”
yak shaving looks at various attitudes toward anthropomorphic global warming.
the CIA & saving the world presents Metcalfe’s and Reed’s Laws and how they related to community building.
affluence, part 1: The wealthiest 10% of U.S. households, as defined by net worth in the most recent Federal Reserve Board study, have an average annual income of $256,000. They earn 36% of the income earned by all American households and control 70% of the total net worth of all US households. Their average net worth is $3.1 million. The average value of their financial assets is $1.3 million. As a group, these 11.2 million households hold 89% of the value of all publicly traded stock and stock mutual funds in the U.S. [With charts.]
affluence, part 2: To discover you do not need so much — that all the things and services you use, as often as not, lower the quality of your life — is too much like a spiritual experience to be taken seriously. I hasten to add, it’s not a spiritual experience. It’s just the way things are.
population growth in the news and four regions, a closer look: Population issues in Nigeria, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and California. the Philippines, a case study continues the series.
future curves presents five different possible future paths for the growth/decrease of world population.
Trinifar, version 1.0: In this essay, rather than gnash our teeth over the maximum number of people that can be sustained with decent living conditions, let’s look at the minimum required to maintain, say, the level of technology we currently have in the USA. Think of it as a bottom-up instead of top-down approach to sustainability. [A playful post listed here so I don't forget to write version 2.0 at some point now that I've learned a bit more.]
