Tag Archives: Economics

Book review: McAfee (2019), More from Less

This is an interesting book which could be a good book if its key message – that technology and capitalism will decouple economic growth from resource use in time to prevent serious ecological disruption – were supported by research. This, … Continue reading

Posted in Ecomodernism, Economy and the Environment, Scarcities and constraints | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Critique of econometric models in Thinking in Systems: a Primer

Donella Meadows’s book Thinking in Systems: A Primer (pp. 89-90) contains a rather interesting critique of econometric models and their limitations in explaining and predicting what happens in the world. While Meadows acknowledges that econometric models are more useful than … Continue reading

Posted in Economy and the Environment, Notes in process | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Never use the word “consumer”. Here’s why.

A public service announcement to everybody concerned about environmental and social issues: when writing or talking, refrain from the use of the word “consumer” if at all possible. There is considerable empirical evidence that merely using the word, instead of … Continue reading

Posted in Ecomodernism | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

The Elon Musk approach to nuclear power costs

Recently, I read an interesting piece about the reasoning process used by the man behind Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk: first principles reasoning. In this mode of thinking, espoused by Aristotle among others, one begins from the “first principles” or … Continue reading

Posted in Energy, Nuclear energy & weapons | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Graphic of the Week: Having too much and too little renewables – at the same time

One of the benefits of renewable energy is that it pushes down the price of electricity when the wind blows or the sun shines. Besides lowering energy bills, that kills the profitability of traditional “baseload” power plants – i.e. those … Continue reading

Posted in Ecomodernism, Infographics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 22 Comments