State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?

The two key questions are, What’s going on? And can it keep going on in this way, on this scale, at this pace, without reducing the likelihood that future generations will live as prosperously and comfortably as ours has?

Can renewables be built out and exploited rapidly enough to avoid making that experimental determination? Perhaps.

But there is a fourth possibility. Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein proposes that we strengthen and deepen the practice of democracy even as we enlarge the power of the state.

First, champions of markets and advanced technology propose to solve the climate crisis by harnessing the power of markets and technological innovation to avoid what they regard as the quagmire of government.

Around 13 percent of the world’s population is undernourished, for example, 19 percent of people have no access to electricity, and 21 percent live in extreme income poverty.

steady-state economy will have to face issues of fairness and justice in distribution that were more easily addressed (or postponed to the future) in a high-EROI, supposedly infinite-growth economy.

These could include taxing consumption rather than income (with a design that protects consumption of basics such as food and shelter), subsidizing solar panels and other technologies that shift consumption away from nonrenewables, and

The thermodynamic revolution in economics also suggests a different conceptual slicing of human productive activity, an alternative to the triumvirate of land, labor, and capital that is offered by neoclassical theory. All economic value is produced by intelligence operating on matter using energy. Capital—the tools and equipment we use to increase

There are now hundreds of ecovillages around the world modeling sustainable and low-consumption lifestyles. And hundreds of Transition Towns are working to transform existing communities to be both more sustainable and more resilient.