can we use reuse, recycle, repurpose, or remanufacture this input or output? If we can’t, can we trade it to someone who finds it useful enough to compensate us for it? If we still can’t, we have to find a way to strip it out of the cycle altogether, because cycles can’t be fed with bad inputs that can’t be recycled, reused, or repurposed.

Our obsession with growth creates two problems. The first is that we have convinced ourselves that growth is the normal state and that it is reasonable to expect it to go on and on. That patently ridiculous idea—exactly as hopeful and deluded as the search for a perpetual motion machine—causes us to stop searching for other possibilities. While thi

We will not arrest ecological decline or regain financial health without also introducing a different rhythm of work, consumption, and daily life, as well as alterations in a number of system-wide structures. We need an alternative economy, not just an alternative energy system.