
The Ministry for the Future: A Novel

There are still a few regions with very high fertility rates—notably in sub-Saharan Africa—and as a result, living standards are not yet rising at the rates needed to end poverty in those places. The expectation is that with more urbanization and longer years of schooling, especially for girls, fertility rates will decline in those places as well.
... See moreJeffrey D. Sachs • The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions

An international collaboration among ecological economists and scientists that attempted to define safe operating zones, or what they term “planetary boundaries,” reported in 2009 that of the nine they identified, we’d already exceeded three (climate, biodiversity, the nitrogen cycle), and were approaching limits on four more (freshwater use, land
... See moreJuliet B. Schor • True Wealth: How and Why Millions of Americans Are Creating a Time-Rich,Ecologically Light,Small-Scale, High-Satisfaction Economy

We could be facing the existential collapse of everything we know, and yet no single person or organization is the culprit. Can we blame the fossil fuel companies? The super-rich? All of the consumers in ‘the West’? Or would it be better to blame the Chinese for building coal power plants on such a massive scale in the early 2000s? The Republicans
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