ocean acidification

80 results back to index

The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans by Mark Lynas

Airbus A320, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, data science, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, degrowth, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Easter island, Eyjafjallajökull, Great Leap Forward, Haber-Bosch Process, ice-free Arctic, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the steam engine, James Watt: steam engine, megacity, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Negawatt, New Urbanism, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, peak oil, planetary scale, precautionary principle, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, special drawing rights, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, Tragedy of the Commons, two and twenty, undersea cable, University of East Anglia, We are as Gods

., 2005: “Anthropogenic Ocean Acidification over the Twenty-first Century and Its Impact on Calcifying Organisms,” Nature, 437, 681–6. 25. S. Kawaguchi et al., 2010: “Will Krill Fare Well Under Southern Ocean Acidification?,” Biology Letters, in press. 26. P. Brewer and K. Hester, 2009: “Ocean Acidification and the Increasing Transparency of the Ocean to Low-Frequency Sound,” Oceanography, 22, 4, 86–93. 27. P. Munday et al., 2010: “Replenishment of Fish Populations Is Threatened by Ocean Acidification,” PNAS, 107, 29, 12930–4. 28. F. Gazeau et al., 2010: “Effect of Ocean Acidification on the Early Life Stages of the Blue Mussel (Mytilus edulis),” Biogeosciences Discussions, 7, 2927–47. 29.

…

The “deniers” are waiting in the wings, and if the wrong triggers are pressed it will only be a matter of time before any constructive debate on mitigating ocean acidification is destroyed by the same politicized trench warfare that has overtaken the debate on climate change. SKEPTIC TANK Ocean acidification skeptics are still few and far between, but they do exist. Almost exclusively, they take their cue from the climate debate, simply extending their contrarian stance on global warming into this newly unfolding scientific arena. This straightforward intellectual extrapolation is stated quite explicitly by the British writer Matt Ridley, who writes provocatively in his 2010 book The Rational Optimist that “ocean acidification looks suspiciously like a back-up plan by the environmental pressure groups in case the climate fails to warm.”54 The case against ocean acidification as a valid environmental concern has accordingly been taken up by a growing number of climate-denialist groups and websites, which label it variously as “the next big hoax” or a “scam.”

…

Most marine organisms use carbonate for their shells, and amounts of carbonate (CO32-) tend to be depleted as a result of this process. For a good discussion of the chemistry involved, see R. Feely et al., 2009: “Ocean Acidification: Present Conditions and Future Changes in a High-CO2 World,” Oceanography, 22, 4, 36–47. 4. C. Pelejero et al., 2010: “Paleo-Perspectives on Ocean Acidification,” Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 25, 6, 332–4. 5. Feely et al., cited above. 6. J. Dore et al., 2009: “Physical and Biogeochemical Modulation of Ocean Acidification in the Central North Pacific,” PNAS, 106, 30, 12235–40. 7. Pelejero et al., cited above. 8. R. Feely et al., 2008: “Evidence for Upwelling of Corrosive ‘Acidified’ Water onto the Continental Shelf,” Science, 320, 1490–2. 9.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, Columbian Exchange, correlation does not imply causation, double helix, Easter island, Honoré de Balzac, index card, Jacob Silverman, Maui Hawaii, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, out of africa, seminal paper, Skype, Steven Pinker, the long tail, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Yogi Berra

This is what has happened in all these times of major mass extinction.” Ocean acidification is sometimes referred to as global warming’s “equally evil twin.” The irony is intentional and fair enough as far as it goes, which may not be far enough. No single mechanism explains all the mass extinctions in the record, and yet changes in ocean chemistry seem to be a pretty good predictor. Ocean acidification played a role in at least two of the Big Five extinctions (the end-Permian and the end-Triassic) and quite possibly it was a major factor in a third (the end-Cretaceous). There’s strong evidence for ocean acidification during an extinction event known as the Toarcian Turnover, which occurred 183 million years ago, in the early Jurassic, and similar evidence at the end of the Paleocene, 55 million years ago, when several forms of marine life suffered a major crisis.

…

“Unfortunately, the biggest tipping point, the one at which the ecosystem starts to crash, is mean pH 7.8, which is what we’re expecting to happen by 2100,” Hall-Spencer tells me, in his understated British manner. “So that is rather alarming.” * * * SINCE Hall-Spencer’s first paper on the vent system appeared, in 2008, there has been an explosion of interest in acidification and its effects. International research projects with names like BIOACID (Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification) and EPOCA (the European Project on Ocean Acidification) have been funded, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of experiments have been undertaken. These experiments have been conducted on board ships, in laboratories, and in enclosures known as mesocosms, which allow conditions to be manipulated on a patch of actual ocean.

…

There’s strong evidence for ocean acidification during an extinction event known as the Toarcian Turnover, which occurred 183 million years ago, in the early Jurassic, and similar evidence at the end of the Paleocene, 55 million years ago, when several forms of marine life suffered a major crisis. “Oh, ocean acidification,” Zalasiewicz had told me at Dob’s Linn. “That’s the big nasty one that’s coming down.” * * * WHY is ocean acidification so dangerous? The question is tough to answer only because the list of reasons is so long. Depending on how tightly organisms are able to regulate their internal chemistry, acidification may affect such basic processes as metabolism, enzyme activity, and protein function.

Climate Change by Joseph Romm

biodiversity loss, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, Climatic Research Unit, data science, decarbonisation, demand response, disinformation, Douglas Hofstadter, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, failed state, gigafactory, hydraulic fracturing, hydrogen economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), knowledge worker, mass immigration, ocean acidification, performance metric, renewable energy transition, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, the scientific method

Aerosols seed the formation of clouds, which help cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight.” However, as the ocean acidifies, seawater appears to generate less DMS. If DMS dropped globally because of ocean acidification, it would create an amplifying feedback that would boost global warming beyond what the climate models are predicting. How much extra warming could occur because of ocean acidification? The Max Planck Institute found that reductions in DMS would increase temperatures up to 0.48 K (0.9°F). They concluded, “Our results indicate that ocean acidification has the potential to exacerbate anthropogenic warming through a mechanism that is not considered at present in projections of future climate change.”

…

How bad was this extinction? Besides killing over 90% of marine life, it wiped out some 70% of land-based animal and plant life. Ocean acidification has long been a great concern of the world’s climate scientists, in part because of its implications for global food production. In June 2009, some 70 Academies of Science issued a joint statement on ocean acidification. These groups of leading scientists from the major developed and developing countries warned “Ocean acidification is irreversible on timescales of at least tens of thousands of years” and “Marine food supplies are likely to be reduced with significant implications for food production and security in regions dependent on fish protein, and human health and wellbeing.”

…

That could mean a drop in CO2 uptake by 2100 of as much as 30%, which would be a major amplifying feedback because it would weaken the ability of the ocean to act as a carbon dioxide sink. At the same time, ocean acidification itself may speed up total warming this century as much as 0.9°F, according to a 2013 study. Researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology have found “Global warming amplified by reduced sulphur fluxes as a result of ocean acidification,” as they titled their Nature Climate Change study. Sulphur in the air comes mainly from the ocean and helps form clouds that keep the Earth cool. As the journal Nature explained, “Phytoplankton—photosynthetic microbes that drift in sunlit water—produces a compound called dimethylsulphide (DMS).

Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity From Politicians by Joe Quirk, Patri Friedman

3D printing, access to a mobile phone, addicted to oil, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, business climate, business cycle, business process, California gold rush, Celtic Tiger, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, Colonization of Mars, Dean Kamen, Deng Xiaoping, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, export processing zone, failed state, financial intermediation, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, happiness index / gross national happiness, income inequality, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Kickstarter, low skilled workers, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, megaproject, minimum wage unemployment, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), open borders, Patri Friedman, paypal mafia, peak oil, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, price stability, profit motive, radical decentralization, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, standardized shipping container, stem cell, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, undersea cable, young professional

global atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are roughly 35 percent higher than they were before the industrial revolution: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/, global temperature data: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature, NASA Surface Temperature Analysis: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-2-1.html. Since the industrial revolution, ocean acidity has increased 30 percent: NOAA’s PMEL Carbon Program: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F and http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Acidification. Since the industrial revolution, ocean acidity has increased 30 percent after holding steady for about 21 million years, www.ocean-acidification.net/About.html. “each square kilometer (about 0.4 square miles) will sequester 40 tons of carbon”: R. Radulovich, “Maricultura en Costa Rica,” Ambientico 179 (2008): 7–14. “Algae can double [their] mass in anywhere from twenty-four to forty-eight hours”: M.

…

Corals and mollusks require a certain pH level in the surrounding water: Justin Ries et al., “Marine Calcifiers Exhibit Mixed Responses to CO2-Induced Ocean Acidification,” Geological Society of America (July 21, 2009). See also A. Ridgwell and D. N. Schmidt, “Past Constraints on the Vulnerability of Marine Calcifiers to Massive Carbon Dioxide Release,” Nature Geoscience 3, no. 3 (2010): 196–200. See also Carl Zimmer, “An Ominous Warning on the Effects of Ocean Acidification,” Yale Environment 360, last modified February 15, 2010, http://e360.yale.edu/feature/an_ominous_warning_on_theeffects_of_ocean_acidification/2241. In 1980 10 percent of the world’s seafood came from fish farms: “A Milestone for U.S.

…

Lissa puts her hope in what she affectionately calls “ocean nuts,” adding that her husband is one. Lissa has her own hypothesis about ocean acidification. Carbonic acid in the water seems to be increasing much faster than CO2 in the atmosphere. Lissa doesn’t think the increasing CO2 input from the atmosphere is the only cause. She thinks the rate at which CO2 has sunk out of the surface water has decreased in the last century. “Most of the CO2 is in the surface three hundred feet. It’s not diffusing down fast enough. It may be that ocean acidification is not due to fossil fuel use only. This idea was first proposed by Charles Darwin’s grandson.

The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century by Ronald Bailey

3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, biodiversity loss, business cycle, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, Climatic Research Unit, commodity super cycle, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, dematerialisation, demographic transition, disinformation, disruptive innovation, diversified portfolio, double helix, energy security, failed state, financial independence, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, Gary Taubes, Great Leap Forward, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, Induced demand, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, knowledge economy, meta-analysis, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Neolithic agricultural revolution, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, pattern recognition, peak oil, Peter Calthorpe, phenotype, planetary scale, precautionary principle, price stability, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, rent-seeking, rewilding, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, systematic bias, Tesla Model S, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, two and twenty, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, women in the workforce, yield curve

., “Respiration of Mediterranean Cold-Water Corals Is Not Affected by Ocean Acidification as Projected for the End of the Century.” Biogeosciences 10 (August 27, 2013): 5671–5680, biogeosciences.net/10/5671/2013/bg-10-5671-2013.pdf; see also S. J. Hennige et al., “Short-Term Metabolic and Growth Responses of the Cold-Water Coral Lophelia pertusa to Ocean Acidification.” Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography 99 (January 2014): 27–35. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967064513002774. overall effects on marine organisms: Astrid C. Wittman and Hans-O. Pörtner, “Sensitivities of Extant Animal Taxa to Ocean Acidification.” Nature Climate Change 3 (August 25, 2013): 995–1001, www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n11/full/nclimate1982.html; and also, Kristy J.

…

This ongoing controversy is important because lower climate sensitivity would mean that future warming will be slower, giving humanity more time to adapt and to decarbonize its energy production technologies. Higher climate sensitivity would mean the opposite. Ocean Acidification As the oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the amount of carbonic acid is increased, thus making the ocean more acidic. As noted previously, the acidity of the surface waters of the oceans has increased by about 26 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The IPCC 2014 Adaptation report observes, “Impacts of ocean acidification range from changes in organismal physiology and behavior to population dynamics and will affect marine ecosystems for centuries if emissions continue.”

…

Studies on cold-water Mediterranean corals similarly found that their rates of calcification remained constant even when exposed to levels of carbon dioxide in high-end projections for the end of this century. Nevertheless, published reviews of research on the effects of ocean acidification resulting from high levels of extra carbon dioxide find the overall effects on marine organisms are negative. Of course, if emissions are cut to keep future temperature increases down, that would also limit the effects of ocean acidification. How Much Will Global Warming Cost? Assume global warming. There are two ways to address concerns about warming: adaptation and mitigation. In 2014, the IPCC issued two reports dealing with both sorts of responses.

Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do by Jeremy Bailenson

Apollo 11, Apple II, augmented reality, computer vision, deliberate practice, experimental subject, fake news, game design, Google Glasses, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), iterative process, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, low earth orbit, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, Neal Stephenson, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, Oculus Rift, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, overview effect, pill mill, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skinner box, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, telepresence, too big to fail, traumatic brain injury

Their study had the benefit of not isolating one species, but instead of analyzing how many species interacted when dealing with the environmental stress. OCEAN ACIDIFICATION As Roy and I examined Fio’s research about the vents, the clearer it became that the huge amounts of CO2 we’ve been pumping into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution are leading to serious consequences for the plant and animal life in the oceans. When CO2 hits the water, the pH level of the water goes down, and ocean acidification occurs. Higher acid concentrations interfere with the ability of many organisms to develop, including oysters, clams, lobsters, and corals.

…

So what we do over the next 100 years or 200 years can have implications for ocean ecosystems from tens of thousands to millions of years. That’s the implication of what we’re doing to the oceans right now.”12 Ocean acidification has received less attention than it deserves. When I give public talks about using VR to educate people about the Ischia vents, I ask audience members to raise their hands if they’ve heard of ocean acidification. The usual response is less than one-tenth. It’s not hard to understand why this is: underwater ocean environments are hard to visualize and difficult to reach, and the effects of acidification, at the moment, are mostly subtle.

…

The huge scale and remoteness of the garbage patch was just the kind of problem we felt VR could help educate the public about. But our proposal was rejected, and the grant organization suggested we team up with a marine scientist and sent us a list of possible collaborators. That is how we became acquainted with the marine biologists Fiorenza Micheli and Kristy Kroeker and their work studying ocean acidification on a rocky reef in the shallow waters off the coast of Ischia, a small island on the western edge of Italy’s Bay of Naples. Though I’ve spent a lot of time in its virtual waters, I’ve never actually been to Ischia—when your new line of research involves a resort island in the Mediterranean, it’s important to signal to the grant organizations that it isn’t a boondoggle.

Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs by Juli Berwald

23andMe, 3D printing, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, Black Lives Matter, carbon footprint, Charles Lindbergh, circular economy, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, en.wikipedia.org, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial innovation, Garrett Hardin, George Floyd, Google Earth, Gregor Mendel, Greta Thunberg, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), lateral thinking, Maui Hawaii, microbiome, mouse model, ocean acidification, Panamax, Paris climate accords, Skype, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, TED Talk, the scientific method, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons

At a lower pH, marine creatures that build calcium carbonate structures must use extra energy to find the carbonate building blocks they need. That ocean acidification compromises their ability to do other important things, like gather food and reproduce. About a decade ago, just as the atmospheric CO2 pushed against 400 parts per million for the first time, a threshold that hadn’t been reached at any time in human history, marine scientists began raising alarms about ocean acidification. Early predictions put coral at risk when atmospheric carbon dioxide reached 450 parts per million, which is expected around 2050.

…

Jorry, “The Origin of Modern Atolls: Challenging Darwin’s Deeply Ingrained Theory,” Annual Review of Marine Science 13, no. 21 (2021): 1–37, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-marine-122414-034137. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT twenty-two million tons each day: The Ocean Portal Team, Reviewed by Jennifer Bennett (NOAA), “Ocean Acidification,” Smithsonian, April 2018, https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/invertebrates/ocean-acidification. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT that build calcium carbonate structures: Andrew Alden, “Calcite vs Aragonite,” ThoughtCo, August 27, 2020, https://www.thoughtco.com/calcite-vs-aragonite-1440962. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT use extra energy: Peter Hannam, “ ‘Death Blow’: Corals, Algae Don’t Acclimatise to More Acidic Seas,” The Sydney Morning Herald, May 28, 2019, https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/death-blow-corals-algae-don-t-acclimatise-to-more-acidic-seas-20190527-p51rmn.html.

…

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT system of pH control: Laetitia Plaisance, “Sneak Peek: Future of Coral Reefs in an Acidifying Ocean,” Smithsonian, August 2012, https://ocean.si.edu/ecosystems/coral-reefs/sneak-peek-future-coral-reefs-acidifying-ocean. Malcolm McCulloch et al., “Coral Resilience to Ocean Acidification and Global Warming through pH Up-Regulation,” Nature Climate Change 2, no. 8 (2012): 623–27, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229429812_Coral_resilience_to_ocean_acidification_and_global_warming_through_pH_up-regulation. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT biological chisels: J. Stanley Gardiner, “Photosynthesis and Solution in Formation of Coral Reefs,” Nature 127 (1931): 857–58, https://doi.org/10.1038/127857a0.

The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World by Oliver Morton

Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, Apollo 13, Asilomar, Boeing 747, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, Columbian Exchange, decarbonisation, demographic transition, Dr. Strangelove, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy transition, Ernest Rutherford, Garrett Hardin, germ theory of disease, Haber-Bosch Process, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, John Harrison: Longitude, John von Neumann, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kintsugi, late capitalism, Louis Pasteur, megaproject, Michael Shellenberger, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Philip Mirowski, planetary scale, plutocrats, public intellectual, renewable energy transition, rewilding, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Silicon Valley, smart grid, South China Sea, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, tech billionaire, Ted Nordhaus, Thomas Malthus, Virgin Galactic

The same taste later led him to look at what dissolved carbon dioxide might do to ocean chemistry – that is, at the problem, only then coming to the fore, of ‘ocean acidification’.* That dissolving carbon dioxide in water produces a weak acid is basic chemistry, and that doing so on a global scale might change the pH – a measure of acidity – of the oceans had been obvious since Revelle’s days, but such pH changes were generally seen as a minor matter. As a doubling of the carbon-dioxide level went from being, as Caldeira put it, ‘a nightmare to avoid’ to ‘the least we can get away with’, ocean acidification took on a new importance, and Caldeira was one of the first to recognize it.

…

Such a scheme could never replace emissions reduction, Crutzen went on; the reduction of emissions offered the surest way to a stable climate, and it was the only way to curtail ocean acidification. This stress on acidification was one of the clever things about the way Crutzen framed his argument. The fact that sunshine geoengineering can do nothing about this non-climatic effect of increased carbon dioxide is often treated by critics of the idea as a fatal shortcoming. Crutzen saw that it could be a political asset. Because sunshine geoengineering efforts would do nothing about ocean acidification, they did much less to undermine the politics surrounding the reduction of carbon-dioxide emissions.

…

But by trying to nullify the risks of ocean acidification, at least for itself, the coral-island nation pushes too far, and the middle ground breaks down. The Concert falls apart, other veilmakers step in, and the world goes down the moral-hazard-nightmare path while people try all sorts of new ocean-chemistry modifications, some of which go badly wrong. To some old hands in geoengineering debates, it seems almost surreal that countries already engaged in a radical programme of solar geoengineering are falling out because of the moral hazard posed by small-scale action against ocean acidification. In retrospect, though, the Concert’s idea that only one aspect of the earthsystem would be geoengineered was never likely to be stable.

Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone by Juli Berwald

clean water, complexity theory, crowdsourcing, Downton Abbey, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Kickstarter, microplastics / micro fibres, ocean acidification, Panamax, rent control, Ronald Reagan, Skype, sparse data, stem cell, Suez canal 1869, TED Talk, the scientific method, Wilhelm Olbers

Coral skeletons are the infrastructure that allows for the great biological diversity of the reef. Besides the chance to walk memory lane back to Eilat, Maoz’s ocean acidification work was one of the major reasons I wanted to visit this lab. I wanted an answer to the question that got me started on the jellyfish odyssey in the first place. Would jellyfish really be winners in a future acidified sea? In the years that I’d been following jellyfish research, I had found only a few studies that touched on the question. “I don’t like the assumption that ocean acidification won’t affect them,” Maoz told me when I asked him about the fate of jellyfish. “They are highly dependent on their statoliths.”

…

We may find that some jellies in some places are better at surviving acid trips than others. Maoz continued: “With coral, we can see how they survive ocean acidification. Their metabolism has to change. There are changes in tissue formation. And we know some species have survived past acidification events. But how do jellies do it? It’s not in the geologic record. Do jellyfish find an oceanographic refuge? A place in the ocean where the ocean acidification isn’t so bad? Is it behavioral? Or do they change their life cycle, hunker down as polyps or just hang out in the surface as medusae? The jellyfish have a lot of choices, but the fossil record doesn’t tell us anything about their life history.”

…

Staring at a shot of a solitary snail whose dark eyes peer out from under a pearly white shell or a nearly transparent octopus whose arms are coiled in symmetric spirals, you realize that every living creature on our planet tells a unique millennia-long success story worthy of our consideration. The piece David was working on at the time was on ocean acidification, which is known as global warming’s evil twin. The oceans have sucked up about 28 percent of the carbon dioxide we’ve emitted from burning fossil fuels over the past two and a half centuries. When carbon dioxide mixes with water, it forms carbonic acid. With more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, there’s more carbonic acid in the ocean.

The Weather of the Future by Heidi Cullen

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, air freight, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, availability heuristic, back-to-the-land, bank run, California gold rush, carbon footprint, clean water, colonial rule, data science, Easter island, energy security, hindcast, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, mass immigration, Medieval Warm Period, megacity, millennium bug, ocean acidification, out of africa, Silicon Valley, smart cities, trade route, urban planning, Y2K

And when these fish change location, the birds can’t always find them. Sea turtles are also at risk. The sex ratio of turtle hatchlings is temperature-dependent, and continued warming could cause a significant bias toward females in future populations. But again, temperature is just half of it. The other half of the global warming situation is ocean acidification (OA). Kleypas describes OA as the “silent problem” associated with increasing CO2. It’s also been described as “the other CO2 problem.” The other CO2 problem has scientists very worried. And, ironically, it comes as the result of a favor the oceans are doing us. No good deed goes unpunished.

…

Scientists can’t confirm yet that what they are seeing is indeed the impact of increased OA, as opposed to other stressors such as coastal pollution. But the fact that the effect is seen on inshore as well as offshore reefs suggests to them that the cause is more likely to be global (for example, temperature and ocean acidification) than local (for example, pollution). It appears that not just the economy but also the GBR is in a recession. And the impact of OA isn’t limited to corals. “There’s some very cool new research out there about clown fish,” Kleypas says. “Of course, it’s also very depressing.” The clown fish has become an iconic species ever since Disney’s blockbuster Finding Nemo gave kids a look at the biodiversity of the GBR.

…

The clown fish has become an iconic species ever since Disney’s blockbuster Finding Nemo gave kids a look at the biodiversity of the GBR. Interestingly, Phil Munday and his colleagues at James Cook University found that OA affects Nemo’s ability to find his way home. “Baby clown fish use their sense of smell to find a suitable habitat. And ocean acidification impacts their ability to differentiate between what is a suitable habitat and what isn’t,” Kleypas says. Recent research suggests that OA has impaired their sense of smell. “The baby fish aren’t getting the signal that says, ‘Bad habitat; don’t go there!’ and are less able to sense the proper habitat.

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel

air freight, Airbnb, Anthropocene, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, biodiversity loss, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, circular economy, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate personhood, cotton gin, COVID-19, David Graeber, decarbonisation, declining real wages, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, disinformation, Elon Musk, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, extractivism, Fairphone, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gender pay gap, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the steam engine, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Jevons paradox, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, land reform, liberal capitalism, lockdown, longitudinal study, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, means of production, meta-analysis, microbiome, Money creation, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, new economy, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, out of africa, passive income, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Post-Keynesian economics, quantitative easing, rent control, rent-seeking, retail therapy, Ronald Reagan, Rupert Read, Scramble for Africa, secular stagnation, shareholder value, sharing economy, Simon Kuznets, structural adjustment programs, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, universal basic income

Damian Carrington, ‘Global warming of oceans equivalent to an atomic bomb per second,’ Guardian, 2019. 13 Marine life depends on temperature gradients that circulate nutrients from the seafloor to the surface. As oceans warm, those gradients are breaking down and nutrient cycles are stagnating. 14 Damian Carrington, ‘Ocean acidification can cause mass extinctions, fossils reveal,’ Guardian, 2019. 15 Malin Pinsky et al., ‘Greater vulnerability to warming of marine versus terrestrial ectotherms,’ Nature 569(7754), 2019, pp. 108–111. 16 Bärbel Hönisch et al., ‘The geological record of ocean acidification,’ Science 335(6072), 2012, pp. 1058–1063. Coral reefs support a quarter of all ocean life, including species that are crucial to human food systems. Half a billion people rely on coral ecosystems for food.

…

More than 90% of the heat from global warming gets absorbed into the sea.12 As oceans heat up, nutrient cycles are being disrupted, food chains broken, and vast stretches of marine habitat are dying off.13 At the same time, industrial emissions are causing oceans to become more acidic. This is a problem, because ocean acidification has driven mass extinction events a number of times in the past. It played a major role in the last extinction event, 66 million years ago, when ocean pH dropped by 0.25. That small shift was enough to wipe out 75% of marine species. On our present emissions trajectory, ocean pH will drop by 0.4 by the end of the century.14 We know what’s about to happen.

…

Source: Krausmann et al. (2009), materialflows.net Keep in mind that every ton of material stuff that’s extracted from the earth comes with an impact on the planet’s living systems. Ramping up the extraction of biomass means razing forests and draining wetlands. It means destroying habitats and carbon sinks. It means soil depletion, ocean dead zones and overfishing. Ramping up the extraction of fossil fuels means more carbon emissions, more climate breakdown and more ocean acidification. It means more mountaintop removal, more offshore drilling, more fracking and more tar sands. Ramping up the extraction of ores and construction materials means more open-cast mining, with all the downstream pollution that entails, and more cars and ships and buildings that demand yet more energy.

Squid Empire: The Rise and Fall of the Cephalopods by Danna Staaf

3D printing, Anthropocene, colonial rule, Kickstarter, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, Skype, wikimedia commons

Wignall, “Large Igneous Provinces and Mass Extinctions: An Update,” Geological Society of America Special Papers 505 (2014): SPE505-02. 21Matthew Clapham, Interview with the author, March 24, 2016. 22For more details about scientific studies on current and projected ocean acidification, visit this beautifully readable site maintained by the Smithsonian Museum’s Ocean Portal: http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-acidification (accessed January 28, 2017). 23Korn, Skype interview with the author, January 29, 2016. 4. The Protean Shell 1R. Granot, “Palaeozoic Oceanic Crust Preserved Beneath the Eastern Mediterranean,” Nature Geoscience 9 (2016): 701–705.

…

Warm water holds less oxygen than cold water, so oxygen levels plummeted. At the same time, the ocean absorbed excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which led to a chemical reaction that lowered oceanic pH. According to Clapham, the big unknown is whether the drop in pH really affected marine organisms. If you’ve read about modern ocean acidification as a result of industrial belches of carbon dioxide, this may seem obvious—bleak predictions of coral and seashells eroding or unable to form in the first place grow closer to reality every year.22 But that’s because in modern times the pH is changing so fast. If it changed more slowly, ocean feedback loops could buffer the change and leave plenty of carbonate for shell-building organisms.

…

Acid rain is currently the leading suspect.13 The acid could have come from both the meteor impact and volcanic eruptions, and when it dissolved in the surface waters of the ocean, the pH dropped precipitously. Acidification isn’t always a big deal for every organism. Though low-pH water can deform or damage shells, studies on the impact of ocean acidification on modern mollusks have shown that creatures like baby clams can handle a slightly deformed shell. Baby ammonoids were probably not so robust.14 The survival of ammonoid infants depended on their phragmocone, the tiny gas-filled shell that kept them afloat. About the size of a rice grain, this minuscule ammonitella had much thinner walls than an adult ammonoid’s shell.

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas

accounting loophole / creative accounting, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, blood diamond, Climatic Research Unit, Deng Xiaoping, failed state, Garrett Hardin, hindcast, ice-free Arctic, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Live Aid, Medieval Warm Period, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, price stability, South China Sea, supervolcano, Tragedy of the Commons

., 2006: ‘Global temperature change’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103, 39, 14288-93 p. 54 reduce the alkalinity: Orr, J., et al., 2005: Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms', Nature, 437, 681-6 p. 54 major report: The Royal Society, 2005: Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, Policy Document 12/05 p. 54 toxic: Orr, J., et al., 2005: ‘Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms’, Nature, 437, 681-6 p. 55 began to disintegrate: Ruttimann, J., 2006: ‘Sick seas’, Nature, 442, 978-80 p. 55 will dissolve: Gazeau, F., et al., 2007: ‘Impact of elevated CO2 on shellfish calcification’, Geophysical Research Letters, 34,L07603 p. 55 ‘huge risk’: Schiermeier, Q., 2004: ‘Researchers seek to turn the tide on problem of acid seas’, Nature, 430, 820 p. 56 decline in plankton: Behrenfeld, M., et al., 2006: ‘Climate-driven trends in contemporary ocean productivity’, Nature, 444,752-5 p. 57 Switzerland: Beniston, M., and Diaz, H., 2004: ‘The 2003 heat wave as an example of summers in a greenhouse climate?

…

They comprise at least half the biosphere's entire primary production-that's equivalent to all the land plants put together-often forming blooms so extensive that they stain the ocean surface green and can easily be photographed from space. The places where phytoplankton thrive are the breadbaskets of the global oceans: all higher species from mackerel to humpbacked whales ultimately depend on them. Yet coccolithophores have a calcium carbonate structure, and this makes them especially vulnerable to ocean acidification. When scientists simulated the oceans of the future by pumping artificially high levels of dissolved CO2 into sections of a Norwegian fjord, they watched in dismay as coccolithophore structures first corroded, and then began to disintegrate altogether. Acidification will also directly affect other ocean creatures.

…

acid rain 171, 228, 230, 249 adaptation 94, 103, 196, 208-9, 220, 235 Afifi, Abdulkader 268 Africa 120 agriculture 89-90, 157-8, 173, 195 ancient 108, 220 disease 151-3 drought 22, 101-5, 173, 194 famine 112, 113 glacial retreat 13-18 monsoon 20-1, 52 rainfall 21-2 refugees 159 refuges 210 Agassiz, Lake 10 agriculture xv, 176, 261 abandonment 8, 174, 211 Africa xv, 89-90, 157-8, 173 Arctic 131 Australia 112, 124, 173 Central and South America 82, 85, 89, 134, 173 China 172-3 decline in 90-1, 157, 172-5, 196 drought-resistant crops 174 Europe 59-60, 62, 89 ‘firestick farming’ 122 growing season, extended 131, 158, 196 harvest failure 13, 113 India 78-9, 137, 173, 174 intensive 195 irrigation 8, 58, 82, 86, 140, 144, 159, 197 new areas 157, 186-7, 196, 197 North America 5-9, 88-9, 90, 143-4, 158-9, 173 Pakistan 139-41 refuges 210 slash-and-burn 120 UK 89, 210-11 worldwide agricultural drought 173-4 air-conditioning 59, 62, 178 Alaska 25, 221 meltdown 25-6, 75, 131, 187 North Slope fossils 219, 221 rainfall 129, 193 Alexandria, Egypt 163-5, 167 algae 34-5, 37, 58, 224 Algeria 19-20 Alley, Richard 68 Alps xv, 29-31, 58, 150, 177, 180-1, 246 Amazon River 119 Amazonia 32-3, 153, 175 death of 115-21, 190, 209, 252 deforestation 119-20 desertification 194, 209 drought 112, 115, 116, 173 American Association for the Advancement of Science 204 American Geophysical Union 69 Andes 80-5, 108, 115, 119, 238 Angola 104, 105 animals see wildlife Antarctic Ocean 199-200 Antarctica 67, 176 ancient 108-9, 220, 222, 228 coal 222 ice-free 211, 220 ice sheets 64, 71, 146, 167-70 Anthropocene 208, 235 aquifers 8, 53, 158, 166, 170, 194-5 Archer, David 205, 206 Arctic 10, 66, 128-31 agriculture 196 amplifier 24, 76, 189 ancient 109-10, 198-9, 203 ice-free 25-7, 109-10, 130, 170, 186, 203, 220 meltdown 23-8, 66-73, 186-90, 246 peoples 76-7 vegetation 76 wildlife 33, 72-7, 187 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment 75 Arctic Ocean ancient 199, 219, 249-50 freshwater run-off 188 methane hydrate melt 205-6 sea-ice xx, 72-7, 129, 186-7 Argentina 194 Asian Brown Cloud 136 Atacama Desert, Peru 113 Atlantic Ocean: ancient 201, 218, 219 circulation 9-13, 110, 176 freshwater run-off 10-11 hurricane formation 42-6 North 69 tropical 22 Atlas Mountains, Morocco 180, 181 atmosphere 128-9, 234-5, 236-7 ancient 202-5, 222, 225, 230-1, 249-50 atolls 16, 46-7 Australia 31-8, 95, 211 agriculture 112, 124, 173 bushfires 122-5 coal 221 desertification 194 drought 112, 113, 173, 194 Australian Conservation Foundation 123 avalanches 180 submarine 201, 206-8 Axel Heiberg Island, Canada 203 Baker, Andrew 37 Bakun, Andrew 238 Banda Aceh 207 Bangkok, Thailand 72 Bangladesh 79, 132, 135, 137, 165 Barbados 166 Barrow, Alaska 25 Beever, Dr Erik 40 Bennike, Ole 109 Benton, Michael 230-1 Bhopal, India 238 Bighorn Basin, Wyoming 199 biodiversity 33-4, 91-7, 154-6, 198, 213, 234, 240, 252 Amazon 119 China 171 marine 154 plants 39 under threat 18, 41 biofuels 274-6 Biosphere 2 97 birds 75, 77, 92, 94, 95, 120, 155 Black Sea 237 bogs, thawing 188-9 Bolivia 84, 121 Bombay see Mumbai Boston, USA 165 Botswana 90, 101-5, 151 Bowman, Malcolm 147 Brahmaputra River 138, 193 Brazil 42, 43, 44, 95, 120, 121, 194 desertification 194 hurricanes 42-4 rainforest 120 Brigham, Lawson 189 British Antarctic Survey 110, 167 British Council 14 British Virgin Islands 38 Broe, Pat 72 Bryden, Professor Harry 11, 12 Buffett, Bruce 205, 206 Bunyard, Peter 119 Burke, Eleanor 22 Burkina Faso 90 Bush, George W. 264 bushfires, Australia 122-5 butterflies 92, 93, 95 Cairo, Egypt 195 calcium carbonate 34, 53-6, 221 Caldeira, Professor Ken 54 California 3-5, 8-9, 85-8, 115, 142, 144-5, 195 California Coastal Range 87 Cameroon 232 Camill, Phil 188, 190 Canada xvii, 131, 188, 196 agriculture 90, 144, 158, 174, 196, 197 ancient 7 arctic 76, 131, 187 forest fires 197 fossil fuels 73, 221, 269 habitable areas 196, 197 rainfall 129 river flows 193, 196 Canberra, Australia 124-5 Cape Floristic Region, South Africa 39 carbon 96, 117, 205, 221-2, 267, capture and storage 271, 273, 276 carbon cycle 56, 116, 117-19, 190, 220-2, 225, 227, 250,254-5, 256 carbon trading 257 dissolved 188-9 release from seabed 202 release from soil 117-18, 188, 250-1 sequestering 175, 221-2, 223 carbon dioxide xix-xx, 89, 96-7, 252-3 ancient atmosphere 110-12, 203-4, 220, 225, 229, 230, 233, 249-50 and climate sensitivity 248-9 emissions 78, 131, 204, 234-6, 246-7 fertilising effect of 174 from fires 197, 203 ocean acidification 53-6 plant emissions 60 volcanic outgassing 232, 233, 235 Caribbean 38, 113 Carboniferous period 234 Carnegie Institution 54 cars 172, 271, 272, 276 Carson, Rachel 95-6 Cascades, USA 87 Caspian Sea 178 cattle ranching 8, 19, 102, 103, 119, 184 Cayman Islands 63 Central America 82, 83-4, 85, 89, 133-5, 173 Chaco Canyon, New Mexico 5-6 Chad, Lake 20 Chernobyl 176 Chile 89, 194, 211 Chilingarov, Artur 73-4 Chimu civilisation 82, 83 China xxii, 140, 197, 218 coal 221 conflict 197 desertification 197 droughts 51-3 early civilisation 172-3 emissions 257, 258, 264 floods 112 forests 155 hypercapitalism 170-5 monsoon 52-3, 193, 209 water supply 140, 194 civilisations, collapse of 82-3, 131-5, 174-5 climate change xix-xx, 6, 10-11 ancient 15-16, 23, 197-206 conferences on 14 denial 14, 16, 262-5 modelling xv, 105-7, 194-6, 217, 248-51 speed of xxi, 235-6 transient xxi-xxii climate sensitivity 248-50, 252-3 climate zones, shifting 27-8, 123, 129 climatic envelope 94 clouds 107, 114, 125, 175 coal 221, 222, 226, 234, 262, 269, 271 coasts 72, 76, 145-8, 183, 184-5, 193 coccolithophores 54-5, 56 Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (Diamond) 134 Colorado River, USA 6, 86, 142-5, 167 Columbia 121 Columbia River, USA 87 Comiso, Josefino 75 computer modelling 12, 22 carbon-cycle feedback 116-18 climate xv, 105-7, 194-6, 217, 248-51 El Niño 113-14 global and regional models 106 Hadley Model 39, 59, 105-6, 134 hindcasting 104, 106 hurricane 128 hydrological 139 sea temperature 110 conflict 6, 212-14 over climate refugees 141, 159, 179 over habitable land xxii, 197 over oil 268-9 over water xxii, 85, 86, 141 conservation, site-based 94 continental climates 198 continental drift 218 continental shelf 237 collapse of 201, 206-7 contraction and convergence 257 Cooke, Jennifer 184, 185 cooling: aerosols 135 north-west Europe 9, 12, 211 nuclear winter xviii, 125, 233 Younger Dryas 10 coral: bleaching 34-9, 154-5 reefs 34-9, 42, 63, 91, 154-5, 209, 220, 246 Coral Coast, Fiji 38-9 Cordillera Blanca, Peru 81-2, 84 Cordillera Central, Peru 83-4 Cornwall 28 Costa Rican golden toad 40-1 Cox, Peter 117, 273-4 Cretaceous 56, 200, 217-23, 236, 250 Crump, Marty 40-1 CSIRO 33-4, 122-3 cyclones see hurricanes Cyprus 62 dams 86, 142-3, 167, 196 Dante xviii, 217, 245-6 Danube River 181 Dasuopu, Tibet 14 Dawson, Mary 197, 198 Democratic Republic of Congo 16 Day After Tomorrow, The 9 deforestation 14, 175-6, 247 Amazonia 119-20 Central America 134 deforestation diesel 276 deglaciation see glaciers denial 14, 16, 262-5 Denmark 73, 149 Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (UK) 78 Department for International Development (UK) 139 desalination plants 178 desert: Amazonia 115, 116 Europe 58, 60, 62, 150, 194 Kalahari Desert 102, 103-4, 105, 194 Marine 224 Mediterranean rim 150-1 North America 3-9 Polar 67 Sahara 21-2, 23, 61, 120, 151, 180, 186, 194, 195, 224 sandstorms 224 spreading 150-1, 186, 194-6, 209, 246 Diamond, Jared 133-4 Dickens, Gerald 200, 204 disease 123, 151-3, 158 drought 60, 193 Africa 101-5 and agriculture 157, 173-4 Amazonia 112, 115, 116, 173 ancient 16, 133-4 Australia 112, 113, 173, 194 Central America 83-4, 133-5 China 51-3 ENSO-related 113 Europe 58, 60, 62, 150, 194 extreme 4, 23 hotspots 173-4 Mediterranean 62-3 Palmer Drought Severity Index 22-3 perennial 194, 209 Sahel 18-19, 22-3 spread of 22-3 threat to woodland 94 UK 177-8, 182 US 3-9, 60, 86-8, 129, 143, 142-5 Doyle, Arthur Conan 153, 154 Dudh Koshi River 80 Dukes, Jeffrey 260, 265-6 dust storms 9, 51-2 Dust Bowl 7-8, 9, 88, 144, 194 Earth: thermal time lag 246, 251 thermoregulation systems 176 earthquakes 207 ecological overshoot 134 economics 170-2 ecosystems 91-7, 175-6, 222-3, 240, 261 Arctic 187 Wet Forest 31-4 Ecuador 84, 89 Eemian interglacial 52, 63, 64 Egypt 19, 195 El Niño 83, 112-15, 224 Ellesmere Island, Nunavut 25, 109, 197-8 Emanuel, Kerry 45, 46 emissions 113, 258, 259 contraction and convergence 257 cuts in 124, 246, 253-9, 276-7 future scenarios 247-8 India 77-8 permits 257 rate of 56, 246, 259 stabilising 276-7 targets 251-9 see also greenhouse gases energy: efficiency 271, 272-3, 275-6 renewable 258, 267-70, 271-7 ENSO 113, 114, 115 Environmental Research Letters 71 Eocene 198, 199, 203-4, 208, 209 see also Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum erosion: coastal 76, 145-8, 183, 184-5, 193 hillside 134 soil 170, 184-5, 202, 203, 214, 227-8 Estonia 59 ethanol 275 Ethiopia 18, 90, 108, 194, 210 Europe: agriculture 59-60, 62, 89 ancient 218, 220 cooling 9, 10, 11-12 desertification 150, 177-8, 186 drought 58, 60, 62, 150, 194 El Niño effect 113 extinctions 95, 156 floods 148-51, 182-4 heatwaves 57-61, 62, 177-9, 180-2 hurricanes 44-5 rainfall 62, 177 refuges 159 storms 148-51 temperature rise 175-9, 186 wildfires 62 European Union 256, 276 Everest, Mount 138, 139 extinctions 33, 39-41, 76, 77, 86, 91-7, 208 Anthropocene Mass 235 end-Permian 226-34 Paleocene-Eocene 208-10 human 240 living dead species 156 marine 208-10, 224, 225-6, 229, 233, 234 mass 56, 92, 157, 201, 224, 226-34, 235 plant 39, 76, 77, 91, 93-4, 155, 228 Fahnestock, Mark 69 famine 88, 89, 90-1, 103, 158-9, 213 Africa 112, 113 India 78-9 mass 174 Sahel 18 Faroe Islands 207 feedbacks 190, 252, 255 carbon-cycle 60-1, 116-19, 190, 245, 250, 255 desertification 194 ice-age 255 ice-albedo 28, 70-1 methane 188-90, 202, 204-6 Fiji 38-9, 166 Finland 177 flood barriers 147, 148, 165 flooding: Africa 151 atolls 46-7 coastal cities 145-8, 164-7, 193, 211-12 continental interiors 193, 218 Europe 148-51, 182-4 flash floods 5, 23, 146, 180, 203, 230 monsoon see monsoon post-ice age 66; storm surge see storm surge UK xiii-xiv, 148-51, 182-4, 193-4 USA xiv, 115, 145-7, 158, 165-6 food 88-91, 140-1, 166, 172, 213 aid 210 prices 8, 91, 158, 275 production 210, 261-3 shortages 134, 140-1, 158, 174, 186, 275 web, Arctic 75 see also agriculture Ford, Derek 63 forest 262 ancient 229 boreal 197 carbon emissions 60 deforestation 119-20, 175, 176, 247 die-back 60, 78 montane 17-18 polar 187, 208, 220 reforestation 272 US West 144 forest fires 17, 61-2, 122-5, 197, 203 Amazonia 120-1 Asian 276 Australia 122-5 Europe 58, 59, 61-2 Indonesia 118-19, 121, 136-7 North America 4, 87-8, 144-5 fossil fuels 73, 78, 171-2, 221, 222, 223-6, 261, 267-70 France 58, 62, 149, 177 Francis, Jane 108, 110 freshwater surges 10-11 Frey, Karen 188-9 Friends of the Earth 256 frogs 31-4, 40-1 frost 89, 219 fungi 228 Gabon 90 Gaia Theory 176, 221, 240 Ganges, River 138, 140, 141, 193, 211 gas, natural 7, 73, 222, 260, 261, 268, 269, 271, 272, 276 Gazprom 73 Geology 185 Geology Today 111 Geophysical Research Letters 43, 185 Germany 58, 59, 94, 149, 150, 181, 221 Ghana 18 Giant Sequoia National Park 4 glaciers 10, 80, 110 Alpine 30, 58, 177, 180-1, 187, 246 Andean 80-5 Antarctic 108-9, 167, 168, 169 Arctic 25-6 Greenland 66-9, 138 Himalayas 80 Iceland 130-1 Karakoram 137-42 Kilimanjaro 13-18 Scandinavian 131 Gladwell, Malcolm 23 Glen Canyon Dam 142-3 Global Carbon Project 246 Global Commons Institute 257 global dimming 107, 249 global warming xix accelerating xiv, 206 ancient xvii Arctic amplifier 24, 76 climate zone shifts 28 peaks 223-6 positive feedback 189, 252 runaway 204-5, 231, 246, 253, 256, 258 speed of xxi, 235-6 thermal inertia xxi-xxii, 111 Gobi Desert 51, 194, 195 GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) 70 Great Barrier Reef 34-6 Great Lakes 9 Great Plains 4, 5, 7, 155 Great Depression 210 Greece 177 greenhouse gases xix-xx, 110, 176, 178-9, 188, 236, 247 ocean acidification 53-4 see also carbon dioxide emissions methane Greenland 6, 10, 13, 67-70, 76, 129, 187, 252 ancient 24, 75, 109, 219, 233 ice sheet collapse 64-72, 129, 130, 131, 146, 170, 176, 252 Greenpeace 120 Grindelwald, Switzerland 30 Guadalupe River 184 Gulf of Mexico 224 Gulf Stream 9-10, 211, 237 Hadley Centre, UK 22-3, 39, 59, 105-6, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 134, 148,205 Haeberli, Wilfried 30 Hall, T.

Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made by Gaia Vince

3D printing, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, bank run, biodiversity loss, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, citizen journalism, clean water, climate change refugee, congestion charging, crowdsourcing, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, driverless car, energy security, failed state, Google Earth, Haber-Bosch Process, hive mind, hobby farmer, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), ITER tokamak, Kickstarter, Late Heavy Bombardment, load shedding, M-Pesa, Mars Rover, Masdar, megacity, megaproject, microdosing, mobile money, Neil Armstrong, ocean acidification, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Peter Thiel, phenotype, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, supervolcano, sustainable-tourism, synthetic biology

., & Robinson, A., ‘The multimillennial sea-level commitment of global warming’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110(34) (2013), 13745–50. doi:10.1073/pnas.1219414110. 2.Peter F. Sale, Our Dying Planet (2011), is good on ocean threats. 3.FAQs about ocean acidification. at <http://www.epoca-project.eu/index.php/what-is-ocean-acidification/faq.html. 4.McClanahan, T. R., Graham, N. A. J., MacNeil, M. A., Muthiga, N. A., Cinner, J. E., Bruggemann, J. H., & Wilson, S. K., ‘Critical thresholds and tangible targets for ecosystem-based management of coral reef fisheries’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108(41) (2011), 17230–3. doi:10.1073/pnas.1106861108. 5.Jones, A., Berkelmans, R., van Oppen, M.

…

., ‘Future ocean increasingly transparent to low-frequency sound owing to carbon dioxide emissions,’ Nature Geoscience 3(1) (2009), 18–22. doi:10.1038/ngeo719. 11.Hall-Spencer, J. M. et al., ‘Volcanic carbon dioxide vents show ecosystem effects of ocean acidification’, Nature 454 (2008), 96–9. 12.Cquestrate: The Idea, at www.cquestrate.com/the-idea. 13.Harvey, L. D. D., ‘Mitigating the atmospheric CO2 increase and ocean acidification by adding limestone powder to upwelling regions’, Journal of Geophysical Research 113(C4) (2008). doi:10.1029/2007JC004373. 14.World Meteorological Organization, ‘Climate, carbon and coral reefs’ (2010), at www.wmo.int/pages/prog/wcp/agm/publications/documents/Climate_Carbon_CoralReefs.pdf. 15.Field, I.

…

Methods to reduce the amount of the sun’s energy that heats the planet – called ‘solar radiation management’ – have the potential to rapidly counteract regional or even global warming. With global temperatures almost certain to exceed the 2°C of warming this century that scientists consider ‘safe’ for humanity, quick-cooling options look increasingly attractive. Deflecting the sun’s energy back into space would do nothing to counteract the ocean acidification effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide – which I’ll come to later – but it is a valuable way of buying time while societies decarbonise, adapt to warmer conditions and new climates, and figure out an effective and efficient way of removing the carbon dioxide we’ve put into the atmosphere. Some engineers are proposing erecting Earth-orbiting space mirrors that would bounce sunlight back out before it even enters our atmosphere.

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 3D printing, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, bank run, basic income, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, circular economy, clean water, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, complexity theory, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, degrowth, dematerialisation, disruptive innovation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, full employment, Future Shock, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, global village, Henri Poincaré, hiring and firing, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, land value tax, Landlord’s Game, loss aversion, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Minsky moment, mobile money, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, Myron Scholes, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, price mechanism, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, retail therapy, Richard Thaler, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, smart cities, smart meter, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the map is not the territory, the market place, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, Vilfredo Pareto, wikimedia commons

And it points towards a future that can provide for every person’s needs while safeguarding the living world on which we all depend. Below the Doughnut’s social foundation lie shortfalls in human well-being, faced by those who lack life’s essentials such as food, education and housing. Beyond the ecological ceiling lies an overshoot of pressure on Earth’s life-giving systems, such as through climate change, ocean acidification and chemical pollution. But between these two sets of boundaries lies a sweet spot – shaped unmistakably like a doughnut – that is both an ecologically safe and socially just space for humanity. The twenty-first-century task is an unprecedented one: to bring all of humanity into that safe and just space.

…

Worldwide, freshwater use more than trebled, energy use increased fourfold, and fertiliser use rose over tenfold. The effects of this dramatic intensification of human activity are clearly visible in an array of indicators that monitor Earth’s living systems. Since 1950 there has been an accompanying surge in ecological impacts, from the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to ocean acidification and biodiversity loss.24 ‘It is difficult to overestimate the scale and speed of change,’ says Will Steffen, the scientist who led the study documenting these trends. ‘In a single lifetime humanity has become a planetary-scale geological force … This is a new phenomenon and indicates that humanity has a new responsibility at a global level for the planet.’25 This Great Acceleration in human activity has clearly put our planet under pressure.

…

No wonder that, since 1970, the number of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish worldwide has fallen by half.31 Although the global scale of chemical pollution has not yet been quantified, it is of great concern to many scientists. And human pressure on other critical Earth-system processes – such as freshwater withdrawals and ocean acidification – continues to rise towards planetary-scale danger zones, creating local and regional ecological crises in the process. This stark picture of humanity and our planetary home at the start of the twenty-first century is a powerful indictment of the path of global economic development that has been pursued to date.

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells

agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, anthropic principle, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, basic income, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Blockadia, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Chekhov's gun, climate anxiety, cognitive bias, computer age, correlation does not imply causation, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, effective altruism, Elon Musk, endowment effect, energy transition, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, failed state, fiat currency, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, it's over 9,000, Joan Didion, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Kevin Roose, Kim Stanley Robinson, labor-force participation, life extension, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, megacity, megastructure, Michael Shellenberger, microdosing, microplastics / micro fibres, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, Paris climate accords, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, postindustrial economy, quantitative easing, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Solow, Sam Altman, Silicon Valley, Skype, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, the built environment, The future is already here, the scientific method, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, Whole Earth Catalog, William Langewiesche, Y Combinator

Half of that heat has been absorbed since 1997, and today’s seas carry at least 15 percent more heat energy than they did in the year 2000—absorbing three times as much additional energy, in just those two decades, as is contained in the entire planet’s fossil fuel reserves. But the result of all that carbon dioxide absorption is what’s called “ocean acidification,” which is exactly what it sounds like, and which is also already burning through some of the planet’s water basins—you may remember these as the place where life arose in the first place. All on its own—through its effect on phytoplankton, which release sulfur into the air that helps cloud formation—ocean acidification could add between a quarter and half of a degree of warming. * * * — You have probably heard of “coral bleaching”—that is, coral dying—in which warmer ocean waters strip reefs of the protozoa, called zooxanthellae, that provide, through photosynthesis, up to 90 percent of the energy needs of the coral.

…

worth at least $400 million: Michael W. Beck et al., “The Global Flood Protection Savings Provided by Coral Reefs,” Nature Communications 9, no. 2186 (June 2018), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04568-z. oysters and mussels will struggle: Kate Madin, “Ocean Acidification: A Risky Shell Game,” Oceanus Magazine, December 4, 2009, www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/ocean-acidification--a-risky-shell-game. fishes’ sense of smell: Cosima Porteus et al., “Near-Future CO2 Levels Impair the Olfactory System of Marine Fish,” Nature Climate Change 8 (July 23, 2018). 32 percent in just ten years: Graham Edgar and Trevor J.

…

This is very bad news, because reefs support as much as a quarter of all marine life and supply food and income for half a billion people. They also protect against flooding from storm surges—a function that offers value in the many billions, with reefs presently worth at least $400 million annually to Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Cuba, and Mexico—$400 million annually to each. Ocean acidification will also damage fish populations directly. Though scientists aren’t yet sure how to predict the effects on the stuff we haul out of the ocean to eat, they do know that in acid waters, oysters and mussels will struggle to grow their shells, and that rising carbon concentrations will impair fishes’ sense of smell—which you may not have known they had, but which often aids in navigation.

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffrey Sachs

agricultural Revolution, air freight, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, biodiversity loss, British Empire, business process, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, colonial rule, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, demographic transition, Diane Coyle, digital divide, Edward Glaeser, energy security, failed state, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Global Witness, Haber-Bosch Process, impact investing, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, invention of agriculture, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, low skilled workers, mass immigration, microcredit, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, old age dependency ratio, peak oil, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Simon Kuznets, Skype, statistical model, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, unemployed young men, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working-age population, zoonotic diseases

., “Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services,” Science 314, no. 5800 (November 3, 2006): 787–90. 141 Coral reefs: See Michael Hopkin, “Oceans in Trouble as Acid Levels Rise,” Nature News, June 30, 2005; T. P. Hughes et al., “Climate Change, Human Impacts, and the Resilience of Coral Reefs,” Science 301 (2003): 929; John M. Pandolf, et al., “Global Trajectories of the Long-Term Decline of Coral Reef Ecosystems,” Science 301 (2003): 955; and the Royal Society Working Group on Ocean Acidification, Ocean Acidification Due to Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (London: Royal Society, June 2005). 142 crash of amphibian populations: See Simon Stuart et al., “Status and Trends of Amphibian Declines and Extinctions Worldwide,” Science 306 (December 3, 2004): 1783–88; Joseph R. Mendelson III et al., “Biodiversity: Confronting Amphibian Declines and Extinctions,” Science 313, no. 5783 (July 7, 2006): 48; and J.

…

“Paradox of Enrichment: Destabilization of Exploitation Ecosystems in Ecological Time.” Science 171 (January 29, 1971): 385–87. Roughgarden, Jonathan, and Fraser Smith. “Why Fisheries Collapse and What to Do About It.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, volume 93 (May 1996): 5078–83. Royal Society Working Group on Ocean Acidification. Ocean Acidification Due to Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. London: Royal Society, June 2005. Sachs, Jeffrey D. The End of Poverty. New York: Penguin Press, 2005. _____. “A Global Fund to Fight Against AIDS.” The Washington Post, April 7, 2001. _____. “HIV Non-Intervention: A Costly Option.”

…

Global warming will raise ocean temperatures and lead to massive coral bleaching, in which the corals expel the microalgal organisms that give the corals their dazzling colors, and often die. The reefs will be threatened by overfishing in and around them, by pollution, by increased tropical storm intensities, by direct destruction by tourists, and by ocean acidification due to the rising concentration of carbon dioxide in the air and ocean surface water. Already coral reefs around the world are seriously degraded, and the multiple causes of degradation are intensifying. A recent study of degradation along coasts and estuaries adds more evidence showing how environmental degradation results from multiple assaults rather than a single factor.

Everything Under the Sun: Toward a Brighter Future on a Small Blue Planet by Ian Hanington

agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, Bretton Woods, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, Day of the Dead, disinformation, do what you love, energy security, Enrique Peñalosa, Exxon Valdez, Google Earth, happiness index / gross national happiness, Hedy Lamarr / George Antheil, hydraulic fracturing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Medieval Warm Period, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, planned obsolescence, precautionary principle, stem cell, sustainable-tourism, the scientific method, University of East Anglia, urban planning, urban sprawl

According to a 2011 study from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), the combined effects of overfishing, fertilizer runoff, pollution, and ocean acidification from carbon dioxide emissions are putting much marine life at immediate risk of extinction. The twenty-seven scientists from eighteen organizations in six countries who participated in the review of scientific research from around the world concluded that the looming extinctions are “unprecedented in human history” and have called for “urgent and unequivocal action to halt further declines in ocean health.” The main factors are what they term the “deadly trio”: climate change, ocean acidification, and lack of oxygen. Overfishing and pollution add to the problem.

…

The process that affects corals—lower pH levels hindering their ability to calcify their skeletons—will also reduce the ability of phytoplankton to form calcium carbonate in their shells and skeletons. This, in turn, will reduce the ocean’s ability to absorb and store carbon, leading to increased global warming. Despite the warnings from scientists, ocean acidification hasn’t been a big part of climate-change negotiations. We can’t continue to ignore the state of our oceans. Of course, acidification—caused mainly by what we put into the air—is only one problem we’ve created for our oceans. We are also dumping a lot of crap (often literally) into our seas.

…

According to the UN Environment Programme, thirteen thousand pieces of plastic are floating in each square kilometre of ocean, and much of it accumulates in the five large swirling ocean gyres. Marine animals eat the plastic as it breaks down, and contaminants work their way up the food chain, all the way to humans. Scientists are looking for answers to this problem, and it’s good to see that nations are now starting to come together in an attempt to address ocean acidification. But we must all do more to prevent these kinds of problems from occurring in the first place. We can do this by reducing our waste and emissions and by encouraging governments to show more leadership in protecting the earth and the oceans that cover most of its surface. The oceans are where life is thought to have originated, as is indicated by the saltiness of our blood.

The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions by Greta Thunberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, air freight, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, basic income, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, BIPOC, bitcoin, British Empire, car-free, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean water, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, degrowth, disinformation, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Food sovereignty, global pandemic, global supply chain, Global Witness, green new deal, green transition, Greta Thunberg, housing crisis, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, land tenure, late capitalism, lockdown, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microplastics / micro fibres, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, phenotype, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, retail therapy, rewilding, social distancing, supervolcano, tech billionaire, the built environment, Thorstein Veblen, TikTok, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, urban sprawl, zoonotic diseases

The enrichment of CO2 in ocean water and the subsequent fall in pH is called ocean acidification. Rising CO2 levels and the resulting ocean acidification place marine organisms and ecosystems in peril, adding to the dangers of warming and oxygen loss. Acidity has already risen by approximately 30 per cent. Even if current efforts to reduce and finally stop CO2 emissions are fully successful, some ocean acidification and the hazards it presents to marine organisms and ecosystems will remain long term. Thus far, we have observed that ocean acidification often causes reduced calcification – leading to, for instance, the thinning or fracture of shells on organisms – or the destabilization of carbonate-based ecosystems such as coral reefs.

…

We do, however, know that all marine organisms are directly affected by changes in the chemistry of the ocean, while animals which feed on other organisms are also indirectly affected through changes in the food chain. So the oceans are simultaneously warming and acidifying – and it is as yet unclear to what extent the effects of oxygen deficiency and ocean acidification are already influencing or exacerbating the impacts created by warming oceans. Complex organisms such as animals and plants thrive in a relatively narrow temperature range and so respond strongly to this warming. Warming is a key driver of ongoing shifts in biogeography, and mortalities are caused when extreme temperatures exceed the tolerance limits of species.

…

Specifically, farming seaweed and shellfish (oysters, mussels, clams, scallops) is highly sustainable since these organisms live simply off sunlight and nutrients already in seawater – no fertilizer, fresh water, or feed required. These are some of the lowest-carbon sources of food around. Farming seaweed can provide a range of benefits, from helping to reduce local ocean acidification, to harbouring biodiversity, to buffering against the impacts of storms on coastlines, and it has the potential to grow into an industry supporting tens of millions of jobs. Blue carbon We hear so much talk about planting trees – billions of them – with little acknowledgement that about 50 per cent of global photosynthesis happens in the ocean.

Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World by Gaia Vince

3D printing, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, charter city, circular economy, clean water, colonial exploitation, coronavirus, COVID-19, decarbonisation, degrowth, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, European colonialism, failed state, gentrification, global pandemic, Global Witness, green new deal, Haber-Bosch Process, high-speed rail, housing crisis, ice-free Arctic, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invention of the printing press, job automation, joint-stock company, Kim Stanley Robinson, labour mobility, load shedding, lockdown, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, mass incarceration, mega-rich, megacity, negative emissions, new economy, ocean acidification, old age dependency ratio, open borders, Patri Friedman, Peace of Westphalia, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, place-making, planetary scale, plyscraper, polynesian navigation, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, rewilding, Rishi Sunak, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, special economic zone, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, undersea cable, urban planning, urban sprawl, white flight, women in the workforce, working-age population, zero-sum game, Zipcar

There remain limitations on how many people the planet’s resources can feed even with the help of modern agricultural techniques. Earth’s carrying capacity is currently set at around 9 billion, but in a world that is 4°C hotter, several scientists have warned that the limit may be just 1 billion, due to effects on crops, water supplies, extreme weather, sea-level rise and ocean acidification. It’s a sobering warning, and means we need to dramatically change how we feed ourselves. Today, four-fifths of the planet’s ice-free land is used to grow our food. Of the 300,000 species of edible plant, we rely on just seventeen species to make up 90 per cent of our diet. Much of this is farmed monocultures of cereals, produced by depleting aquifers, exhausting soils, killing pollinators and other insects, and polluting waterways.

…

Phytoplankton are the basis of the oceanic food chain and thus hugely important for biodiversity. Their growth is limited by lack of nutrients, especially iron. Adding powdered iron to ocean waters, in locations such as Antarctica, would dramatically increase phytoplankton production, sucking up carbon dioxide, and thus also reduce ocean acidification. In past geological eras, far greater quantities of desert dust were blown into the seas, resulting in global cooling. Artificial fertilization of the oceans would have the same effect.7 Large oceanic mammals, especially whales, help with this service. Whales feed in the deep ocean, returning to the surface to breathe and excrete iron-rich faeces, creating the perfect growing conditions for phytoplankton.8 Industrial whaling in the twentieth century devastated this carbon-rich marine ecosystem, and protecting whales would significantly help rectify this.9 Assisted ocean fertilization would help restore whale populations by supporting larger populations of krill, which feed on phytoplankton and which, in turn, are the food whales depend upon.

…

Enhanced weathering can also be used in the oceans – silicates can be spread on beaches and washed into the sea on tides. This would help remove carbon dioxide from the oceans – meaning the oceans could absorb more of the gas from the atmosphere, reducing global temperatures – and it would help reduce ocean acidification, especially close to the areas the silicates are spread. It could prove a lifeline for coral reef ecosystems. The problem is cost: mining and pulverizing rock and spreading it around on a large scale is energy demanding and expensive12 – costs are several times greater per tonne of carbon dioxide than for BECCS, for instance.13 But there is huge opportunity for the mining and oil and gas industries to invest in the process as an ‘offset’ for emissions elsewhere; and mine tailings or residues, which today pose a disposal problem for the industry, could be used for enhanced weathering in a win-win situation for everyone.

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert

Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, big-box store, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, Donald Davies, double helix, Hernando de Soto, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jacob Silverman, James Watt: steam engine, Kickstarter, lockdown, Maui Hawaii, moral hazard, negative emissions, ocean acidification, Stewart Brand, The Chicago School, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

In the age of man, there is nowhere to go, and this includes the deepest trenches of the oceans and the middle of the Antarctic ice sheet, that does not already bear our Friday-like footprints. An obvious lesson to draw from this turn of events is: be careful what you wish for. Atmospheric warming, ocean warming, ocean acidification, sea-level rise, deglaciation, desertification, eutrophication—these are just some of the by-products of our species’s success. Such is the pace of what is blandly labeled “global change” that there are only a handful of comparable examples in earth’s history, the most recent being the asteroid impact that ended the reign of the dinosaurs, sixty-six million years ago.

…

The crushed stone would react with carbon dioxide, drawing it out of the air. Alternatively, it’s been proposed that olivine, a greenish mineral that’s common in volcanic rock, could be ground up and dissolved in the oceans. This would induce the seas to absorb more CO2 and, as an added benefit, combat ocean acidification. Another family of negative-emissions technologies, or NETs, takes its cue from biology. Plants absorb carbon dioxide while they’re growing; then, when they rot, they return that CO2 to the air. Grow a new forest and it will draw down carbon until it reaches maturity. A recent study by Swiss researchers estimated that planting a trillion trees could remove two hundred billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere over the next several decades.

…

“stop growing and begin dissolving”: Jacob Silverman et al., “Coral Reefs May Start Dissolving When Atmospheric CO2 Doubles,” Geophysical Research Letters, 36 (2009), agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2008GL036282. “rapidly eroding rubble banks”: O. Hoegh-Guldberg et al., “Coral Reefs Under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification,” Science, 318 (2007), 1737–1742. “curious rings of coral land”: Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (New York: P. F. Collier, 1909), 406. “raised by myriads of tiny architects”: Darwin, Charles Darwin’s Beagle Diary, Richard Darwin Keynes, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1988), 418.

Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth by Stuart Ritchie

Albert Einstein, anesthesia awareness, autism spectrum disorder, Bayesian statistics, Black Lives Matter, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, citation needed, Climatic Research Unit, cognitive dissonance, complexity theory, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data science, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, double helix, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, fake news, Goodhart's law, Growth in a Time of Debt, Helicobacter pylori, Higgs boson, hype cycle, Kenneth Rogoff, l'esprit de l'escalier, Large Hadron Collider, meta-analysis, microbiome, Milgram experiment, mouse model, New Journalism, ocean acidification, p-value, phenotype, placebo effect, profit motive, publication bias, publish or perish, quantum entanglement, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, rent-seeking, replication crisis, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, selection bias, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Stanford prison experiment, statistical model, stem cell, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, Thomas Bayes, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, University of East Anglia, Wayback Machine

A Case Study of Impediments to Progress in Evolutionary Biology: Case Study of Impediments to Progress’, Biological Reviews 88, no. 3 (Aug. 2013): pp. 511–36; https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12013 38.  Timothy D. Clark et al., ‘Ocean Acidification Does Not Impair the Behaviour of Coral Reef Fishes’, Nature 577, no. 7790 (Jan. 2020): pp. 370–75; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1903-y. See also Martin Enserink, ‘Analysis Challenges Slew of Studies Claiming Ocean Acidification Alters Fish Behavior’, Science, 8 Jan. 2020; https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aba8254. As the latter article notes, the fact that fish behaviour seems to be unaffected is not a reason to stop worrying about ocean acidification, which has many other negative effects. 39.  http://www.orgsyn.org/instructions.aspx; see also Dalmeet Singh Chawla, ‘Taking on Chemistry’s Reproducibility Problem’, Chemistry World, 20 March 2017; https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/taking-on-chemistrys-reproducibility-problem/3006991.article 40.  

…

For instance, despite what we thought we knew, putting a red band on male finches’ legs probably doesn’t make them super-attractive to females; male sparrows with larger patches of black plumage on their throats (their so-called ‘bib’) probably don’t have higher dominance in the flock; and the evidence that female blue tits are more attracted to particular plumage colours in males is inconclusive.37 • In marine biology, a massive replication attempt in 2020 found that the effects of ocean acidification (one of the consequences of climate change) on fish behaviour were non-existent.38 It thus failed to replicate several highly publicised studies from the previous decade that had apparently shown that more acidic conditions caused fish to become disoriented, and in some cases to swim towards, rather than away from, the chemical cues produced by predators

…

ABC News abortion Abu Ghraib prison abuse (2003) accidental discoveries Acta Crystallographica Section E acupuncture Afghan hounds Agence France-Presse AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) Alchemist, The (Bega) Alexander, Benita Alexander, Scott algorithms allergies Alzheimer, Aloysius Alzheimer’s Disease Amazon American Journal of Potato Research Amgen amygdala amyloid cascade hypothesis anaesthesia awareness Fujii affair (2012) outcome switching Anaesthesia & Analgesia animal studies antidepressants antipsychotics archaeology Arnold, Frances arsenic artificial tracheas asthma austerity Australia Austria autism aviation Babbage, Charles Bacon, Francis bacteria Bargh, John Bayer Bayes, Thomas Bayesian statistics BDNF gene Before You Know It (Bargh) Bega, Cornelis Begley, Sharon Belgium Bell Labs Bem, Daryl benzodiazepines bias blinding and conflict of interest De Vries’ study (2018) funding and groupthink and meaning well bias Morton’s skull studies p-hacking politics and publication bias randomisation and sexism and Bik, Elisabeth Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Biomaterials biology amyloid cascade hypothesis Bik’s fake images study (2016) Boldt affair (2010) cell lines China, misconduct in Hwang affair (2005–6) Macchiarini affair (2015–16) meta-scientific research microbiome studies Morton’s skull studies Obokata affair (2014) outcome switching preprints publication bias replication crisis Reuben affair (2009) spin and statistical power and Summerlin affair (1974) Wakefield affair (1998–2010) biomedical papers bird flu bispectral index monitor black holes Black Lives Matter blinding blotting BMJ, The Boldt, Joachim books Borges, Jorge Luis Boulez, Pierre Boyle, Robert brain imaging Brass Eye vii British Medical Journal Brock, Jon bronchoscopy Broockman, David Brown, Nick Bush, George Walker business studies BuzzFeed News California Walnut Commission California wildfires (2017) Canada cancer cell lines collaborative projects faecal transplants food and publication bias and replication crisis and sleep and spin and candidate genes carbon-based transistors Cardiff University cardiovascular disease Carlisle, John Carlsmith, James Carney, Dana cash-for-publication schemes cataracts Cell cell lines Cell Transplantation Center for Open Science CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) chi-squared tests childbirth China cash-for-publication schemes cell line mix-ups in Great Famine (1959–1961) misconduct cases in randomisation fraud in chrysalis effect Churchill, Winston churnalism Cifu, Adam citations clickbait climate change cloning Clostridium difficile cochlear implants Cochrane Collaboration coercive citation coffee cognitive dissonance cognitive psychology cognitive tests coin flipping Colbert Report, The Cold War collaborative projects colonic irrigation communality COMPare Trials COMT gene confidence interval conflict of interest Conservative Party conspicuous consumption Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project (CCAP) ‘Coping with Chaos’ (Stapel) Cornell University coronavirus (COVID-19) Corps of Engineers correlation versus causation corticosteroids Cotton, Charles Caleb creationism Crowe, Russell Csiszar, Alex Cuddy, Amy CV (curriculum vitae) cyber-bullying cystic fibrosis Daily Mail Daily Telegraph Darwin Memorial, The’ (Huxley) Darwin, Charles Das, Dipak datasets fraudulent Observational publication bias Davies, Phil Dawkins, Richard De Niro, Robert De Vries, Ymkje Anna debt-to-GDP ratio Deer, Brian democratic peace theory Denmark Department of Agriculture, US depression desk rejections Deutsche Bank disabilities discontinuous mind disinterestedness DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) domestication syndrome doveryai, no proveryai Duarte, José Duke University duloxetine Dutch Golden Age Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research Dweck, Carol economics austerity preprints statistical power and effect size Einstein, Albert Elmo Elsevier engineering epigenetics euthanasia evolutionary biology exaggeration exercise Experiment, The exploratory analyses extrasensory perception faecal transplants false-positive errors Fanelli, Daniele Festinger, Leon file-drawer problem financial crisis (2007–8) Fine, Cordelia Fisher, Ronald 5 sigma evidence 5-HT2a gene 5-HTTLPR gene fixed mindset Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Food Frequency Questionnaires food psychology Formosus, Pope foxes France Francis, Pope Franco, Annie fraud images investigation of motives for numbers Open Science and peer review randomisation Freedom of Information Acts French, Chris Fryer, Roland Fujii, Yoshitaka funding bias and fraud and hype and long-term funding perverse incentive and replication crisis and statistical power and taxpayer money funnel plots Future of Science, The (Nielsen) gay marriage Gelman, Andrew genetically modified crops genetics autocorrect errors candidate genes collaborative projects gene therapy genome-wide association studies (GWASs) hype in salami-slicing in Geneva, Switzerland geoscience Germany Getty Center GFAJ-1 Giner-Sorolla, Roger Glasgow Effect Goldacre, Ben Goldsmiths, University of London Golgi Apparatus good bacteria Good Morning America good scientific citizenship Goodhart’s Law Goodstein, David Google Scholar Górecki, Henryk Gould, Stephen Jay Gran Sasso, Italy grants, see funding Granularity-Related Inconsistency of Means (GRIM) grapes Great Recession (2007–9) Great Red Spot of Jupiter Green, Donald Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Gross, Charles ground-breaking results groupthink ‘Growth in a Time of Debt’ (Reinhart and Rogoff) growth mindset Guzey, Alexey gynaecology h-index H5N1 Haldane, John Burdon Sanderson Hankins, Matthew HARKing Harris, Sidney Harvard University headache pills heart attacks heart disease Heathers, James height Heilongjiang University Heino, Matti Henry IV (Shakespeare) Higgs Boson Hirsch, Jorge HIV (human immunodeficiency viruses) homosexuality Hong Kong Hooke, Robert Hossenfelder, Sabine Houston, Texas Hume, David Huxley, Thomas Henry Hwang, Woo-Suk hydroxyethyl starch hype arsenic life affair (2010) books correlation versus causation cross-species leap language and microbiome studies news stories nutrition and press releases spin unwarranted advice hypotheses Ig Nobel Prize images, fraudulent impact factor India insomnia International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology Ioannidis, John IQ tests Iraq War (2003–11) Italy Japan John, Elton Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology Journal of Environmental Quality Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine Journal of Personality and Social Psychology journals conflict of interest disclosure fraud and hype and impact factor language in mega-journals negligence and Open Science and peer review, see peer review predatory journals preprints publication bias rent-seeking replication studies retraction salami slicing subscription fees Jupiter Kahneman, Daniel Kalla, Joshua Karolinska Institute Krasnodar, Russia Krugman, Paul Lacon, or Many Things in Few Words (Cotton) LaCour, Michael Lancet Fine’s ‘feminist science’ article (2018) Macchiarini affair (2015–16) Wakefield affair (1998–2010) language Large Hadron Collider Le Texier, Thibault Lewis, Jason Lexington Herald-Leader Leyser, Ottoline Lilienfeld, Scott Loken, Eric Lost in Math (Hossenfelder) low-fat diet low-powered studies Lumley, Thomas Lysenko, Trofim Macbeth (Shakespeare) Macbeth effect Macchiarini, Paolo MacDonald, Norman machine learning Macleod, Malcolm Macroeconomics major depressive disorder Malaysia Mao Zedong MARCH1 Marcus, Adam marine biology Markowetz, Florian Matthew Effect Maxims and Moral Reflections (MacDonald) McCartney, Gerry McCloskey, Deirdre McElreath, Richard meaning well bias Measles, Mumps & Rubella (MMR) measurement errors Medawar, Peter medical research amyloid cascade hypothesis Boldt affair (2010) cell lines China, misconduct in collaborative projects Fujii affair (2012) Hwang affair (2005–6) Macchiarini affair (2015–16) meta-scientific research Obokata affair (2014) outcome switching pharmaceutical companies preprints pre-registration publication bias replication crisis Reuben affair (2009) spin and statistical power and Summerlin affair (1974) Wakefield affair (1998–2010) medical reversal Medical Science Monitor Mediterranean Diet Merton, Robert Mertonian Norms communality disinterestedness organised scepticism universalism meta-science Boldt affair (2010) chrysalis effect De Vries’ study (2018) Fanelli’s study (2010) Ioannidis’ article (2005) Macleod’s studies mindset studies (2018) saturated fats studies spin and stereotype threat studies mice microbiome Microsoft Excel Milgram, Stanley Mill, John Stuart Mindset (Dweck) mindset concept Mismeasure of Man, The (Gould) Modi, Narendra money priming Mono Lake, California Moon, Hyung-In Morton, Samuel Motyl, Matt multiverse analysis nanotechnology National Academy of Sciences National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) National Institutes of Health National Science Foundation Nature cash-for-publication and cell line editorial (1981) impact factor language in Obokata affair (2014) Open Access and open letter on statistical significance (2019) replication research Schön affair (2002) Stapel affair (2011) Nature Neuroscience Nature Reviews Cancer NBC negligence cell line mix-ups numerical errors statistical power typos Netflix Netherlands replication studies in Stapel’s racism studies statcheck research neuroscience amyloid cascade hypothesis collaborative projects Macleod’s animal research studies replication crisis sexism and statistical significance and Walker’s sleep studies neutrinos New England Journal of Medicine New York Times New Zealand news media Newton, Isaac Nielsen, Michael Nimoy, Leonard No Country for Old Men Nobel Prize northern blots Nosek, Brian Novella, Steven novelty Novum Organum (Bacon) Nuijten, Michèle nullius in verba, numerical errors nutrition Obama, Barack obesity Obokata, Haruko observational datasets obstetrics ocean acidification oesophagus ‘Of Essay-Writing’ (Hume) Office for Research Integrity, US Oldenburg, Henry Open Access Open Science OPERA experiment (2011) Oransky, Ivan Orben, Amy Organic Syntheses organised scepticism Osborne, George outcome-switching overfitting Oxford University p-value/hacking alternatives to Fine and low-powered studies and microbiome studies and nutritional studies and Open Science and outcome-switching perverse incentive and pre-registration and screen time studies and spin and statcheck and papers abstracts citations growth rates h-index introductions method sections results sections salami slicing self-plagiarism university ranks and Parkinson’s disease particle-accelerator experiments peanut allergies peer review coercive citation fraudulent groupthink and LaCour affair (2014–15) Preprints productivity incentives and randomisation and toxoplasma gondii scandal (1961) volunteer Wakefield affair (1998–2010) penicillin Peoria, Illinois Perspectives in Psychological Science perverse incentive cash for publications competition CVs and evolutionary analogy funding impact factor predatory journals salami slicing self-plagiarism Pett, Joel pharmaceutical companies PhDs Philosophical Transactions phlogiston phosphorus Photoshop Physical Review physics placebos plagiarism Plan S Planck, Max plane crashes PLOS ONE pluripotency Poehlman, Eric politics polygenes polyunsaturated fatty acids Popper, Karl populism pornography positive feedback loops positive versus null results, see publication bias post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) power posing Prasad, Vinay pre-registration preclinical studies predatory journals preprints Presence (Cuddy) press releases Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea (PREDIMED) priming Princeton University Private Eye probiotics Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences prosthetic limbs Przybylski, Andrew psychic precognition Psychological Medicine psychology Bargh’s priming study (1996) Bem’s precognition studies books Carney and Cuddy’s power posing studies collaborative projects data sharing study (2006) Dweck’s mindset concept Festinger and Carlsmith’s cognitive dissonance studies Kahneman’s priming studies LaCour’s gay marriage experiment politics and preprints publication bias in Shanks’ priming studies Stanford Prison Experiment Stapel’s racism studies statistical power and Wansink’s food studies publication bias publish or perish Pubpeer Pythagoras’s theorem Qatar quantum entanglement racism Bargh’s priming studies Morton’s skull studies Stapel’s environmental studies randomisation Randy Schekman Reagan, Ronald recommendation algorithms red grapes Redfield, Rosemary Reflections on the Decline of Science in England (Babbage) Reinhart, Carmen Rennie, Drummond rent-seeking replication; replication crisis Bargh’s priming study Bem’s precognition studies biology and Carney and Cuddy’s power posing studies chemistry and economics and engineering and geoscience and journals and Kahneman’s priming studies marine biology and medical research and neuroscience and physics and Schön’s carbon-based transistor Stanford Prison Experiment Stapel’s racism studies Wolfe-Simon’s arsenic life study reproducibility Republican Party research grants research parasites resveratrol retraction Arnold Boldt Fujii LaCour Macchiarini Moon Obokata Reuben Schön Stapel Wakefield Wansink Retraction Watch Reuben, Scott Reuters RIKEN Rogoff, Kenneth romantic priming Royal Society Rundgren, Todd Russia doveryai, no proveryai foxes, domestication of Macchiarini affair (2015–16) plagiarism in salami slicing same-sex marriage sample size sampling errors Sanna, Lawrence Sasai, Yoshiki saturated fats Saturn Saudi Arabia schizophrenia Schoenfeld, Jonathan Schön, Jan Hendrik School Psychology International Schopenhauer, Arthur Science acceptance rate Arnold affair (2020) arsenic life affair (2010) cash-for-publication and Hwang affair (2005) impact factor LaCour affair (2014–15) language in Macbeth effect study (2006) Open Access and pre-registration investigation (2020) replication research Schön affair (2002) Stapel affair (2011) toxoplasma gondii scandal (1961) Science Europe Science Media Centre scientific journals, see journals scientific papers, see papers Scientific World Journal, The Scotland Scottish Socialist Party screen time self-citation self-correction self-plagiarism self-sustaining systems Seoul National University SEPT2 Sesame Street sexism sexual selection Shakespeare, William Shanks, David Shansky, Rebecca Simmons, Joseph Simonsohn, Uri Simpsons, The skin grafts Slate Star Codex Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute Smaldino, Paul Smeesters, Dirk Smith, Richard Snuppy social media South Korea Southern blot Southern, Edwin Soviet Union space science special relativity specification-curve analysis speed-accuracy trade-off Spies, Jeffrey spin Springer Srivastava, Sanjay Stalin, Joseph Stanford University Dweck’s mindset concept file-drawer project (2014) Prison Experiment (1971) Schön affair (2002) STAP (Stimulus-Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency) Stapel, Diederik statcheck statistical flukes statistical power statistical significance statistical tests Status Quo stem cells Stephen VI, Pope stereotype threat Sternberg, Robert strokes subscription fees Summerlin, William Sweden Swift, Jonathan Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Sydney Morning Herald Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (Górecki) t-tests Taiwan taps-aff.co.uk tax policies team science TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Texas sharpshooter analogy Thatcher, Margaret theory of special relativity Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman) Thomson Reuters Tilburg University Titan totalitarianism toxoplasma gondii trachea translational research transparency Tribeca Film Festival triplepay system Trump, Donald trust in science ‘trust, but verify’ Tumor Biology Turkey Tuulik, Julia Twitter typos UK Reproducibility Network Ulysses pact United Kingdom austerity cash-for-publication schemes image duplication in multiverse analysis study (2019) National Institute for Health Research pre-registration in Royal Society submarines trust in science university ranks in Wakefield affair (1998–2010) United States Arnold affair (2020) arsenic life affair (2010) austerity Bargh’s priming study (1996) Bem’s precognition studies California wildfires (2017) Carney and Cuddy’s power posing studies Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion climate science in creationism in Das affair (2012) De Vries’ drug study (2018) Department of Agriculture Dweck’s mindset concept Fryer’s police brutality study (2016) image duplication in Kahneman’s priming studies LaCour affair (2014–15) Morton’s skull studies Office for Research Integrity Poehlman affair (2006) pre-registration in public domain laws Reuben affair (2009) Stanford Prison Experiment Summerlin affair (1974) tenure Walker’s sleep studies Wansink affair (2016) universalism universities cash-for-publication schemes fraud and subscription fees and team science University College London University of British Columbia University of California Berkeley Los Angeles University of Connecticut University of East Anglia University of Edinburgh University of Hertfordshire University of London University of Pennsylvania unsaturated fats unwarranted advice vaccines Vamplew, Peter Vanity Fair Vatican Vaxxed Viagra vibration-of-effects analysis virology Wakefield, Andrew Walker, Matthew Wansink, Brian Washington Post weasel wording Weisberg, Michael Wellcome Trust western blots Westfall, Jake ‘Why Most Published Research Findings Are False’ (Ioannidis) Why We Sleep (Walker) Wiley Wiseman, Richard Wolfe-Simon, Felisa World as Will and Presentation, The (Schopenhauer) World Health Organisation (WHO) Yale University Yarkoni, Tal Yes Men Yezhov, Nikolai Z-tests Ziliak, Stephen Zimbardo, Philip Zola, Émile About the Author Stuart Ritchie is a lecturer in the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King’s College London.

The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning by James E. Lovelock

Ada Lovelace, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, Clapham omnibus, cognitive dissonance, continuous integration, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, discovery of DNA, disinformation, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Garrett Hardin, Henri Poincaré, Herman Kahn, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), mandelbrot fractal, mass immigration, megacity, Northern Rock, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, planetary scale, quantum entanglement, short selling, Stewart Brand, Tragedy of the Commons, University of East Anglia, Virgin Galactic

Many environmental scientists oppose the idea on the grounds that it would encourage business as usual and the continued emissions of carbon dioxide. Moreover, while the air temperature might be cooler, the increased carbon dioxide in the air would continue to damage ocean ecosystems through ocean acidification. I agree with this analysis but think that amelioration of this kind should be regarded as equivalent to dialysis as a treatment for kidney failure. It is valuable as a way to buy time, to survive until something better is available. Who would refuse dialysis if death is the alternative? It might be thought that the millions of tons of sulphuric acid aerosol would add significantly to the acidity of the ocean.

…

But before we start geoengineering we have to ask: Are we sufficiently talented to take on what might become the onerous permanent task of keeping the Earth in homeostasis? Consider what might happen if we start by using a stratospheric aerosol to ameliorate global heating – even if it succeeded it would not be long before we faced the additional problem of ocean acidification. This would need another medicine, and so on. We could find ourselves enslaved in a Kafkaesque world from which there was no escape. The alternative is the acceptance of a massive natural cull of humanity and a return to an Earth that freely regulates itself. Whatever we do as geoengineers is unlikely to stop dangerous climate change or prevent death on a scale that makes all previous wars, famines and disasters small; but to continue ‘business as usual’ could be worse and would probably kill most of us during the century.

…

D. 108, 112 Hölldobler, Bert 133 hornets 141 hothouse condition 101 Houghton, Sir John 3, 10 humidity, relative 39 hydrocarbons 77–8 hydroelectricity 71 hysteresis 101, 113, 167 India, pollution 37 intelligence 156–7 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 3, 4, 7–8 forecasting 23–6, 27, 28, 29, 40, 44 isoprene 98 Jet Propulsion Laboratory 1, 13, 105 Jones, Chris 42 Kahn, Herman 24–5 Kasting, James 108, 110 Keeling, Charles David 6 Keeling, Ralph 6, 14 Koeslag, Johan 115 Kump, Lee 29, 110 Kunzig, Robert, Fixing Climate 11, 97 Kyoto Agreement 8 Lackner, Klaus 97 Laplace, Pierre-Simon 132 Lawson, Nigel, An Appeal to Reason 51, 147 leaves, temperature 38 Lehmann, Johannes 58, 99 Lenton, Timothy 42, 115 ‘lifeboat’ world 11–12, 22, 56, 161 Liss, Professor Peter 42, 116 Litvinenko, Alexander 75 livestock, greenhouse gas 47 living space 87–91 Lorenz, Edward 132–3 Lovelock, Helen 137 Lovelock Sandy 73, 79, 108, 115, 123–4, 125, 136, 141–3 Lovelock, Tom 134–5 McGuffie, Kendal 42 magnesium carbonate 97 mankind breathing greenhouse gas 47 importance to Gaia 21 place in Earth system 6 use of fire 149–51 Margulis, Lynn 13, 108, 111 Marine Biological Association 43 Mars, atmosphere 107 Martin, John 98 Maunder minimum 41 May, Robert 128, 132–3 Maynard Smith, John 115, 128 media, anti-nuclear 71–6 methane 79 clathrates 102 micro-organisms 31, 108 Midgley, Mary 106 Millennium Assessment Ecosystem Commission 42 models climate change 7, 14, 30, 33–5, 40–45, 129 dangers of 4, 6, 14, 26, 129–30, 131–2 Monod, Jacques 127, 158–9 National Centre for Atmospheric Research 42 neo-Darwinism 111, 115, 132, 153 New Age 106, 111 nuclear energy 16–17, 50, 64, 68–76, 83 oceans acidification 41, 46, 94, 102 carbon dioxide storage 97–9 fertilization 98 as indicator of global warming 29, 44–5 oil 77–8, 83 overpopulation 3–4, 9, 49, 77 oxygen 49, 152 concentration 105–6 ozone depletion 42, 95, 137 Pachauri, Dr Rajendra K. 30, 49 Paltridge, Garth W. 118 Parris, Matthew 70–71 Pearce, Fred 106 perception 123–6 of Gaia 126–7 pesticides 143, 144, 145 petroleum 77–8 photosynthesis 38, 49, 99, 152 Pinatubo eruption, effect on climate 4, 37, 40, 94 Poincaré, Henri 132 pollution effect on climate 35–7 light 3 polonium-210 75 Polovina, Jeffrey 29 Porritt, Jonathon 106 Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research 42 Prince’s Forest Trust 97 radiation, nuclear 70–71 Rahmstorf, Stefan 7, 26, 42 Ramanathan, Professor V. 37 Rapley, Chris 77, 98 rationalism 127 reductionism, Cartesian 127, 130, 131, 158–9 Rees, Sir Martin, Our Final Century 41 religion 157–9 Rogers, James 79 Rogers, Richard, Cities for a Small Planet 87 Russell, Bertrand 44 Saunders, Dame Cicely 46 Saunders, Professor Peter 115 Schellnhuber, John 42 Schneider, Stephen 3, 8, 15, 28, 120 Schrödinger, Erwin 127 Schroeder, Professor Peter 121 Schwartzman, D.

Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made by Vaclav Smil

8-hour work day, agricultural Revolution, AltaVista, Anthropocene, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, Boeing 747, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean water, complexity theory, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, energy transition, European colonialism, Extinction Rebellion, Ford Model T, garden city movement, general purpose technology, Gini coefficient, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Rosling, hydraulic fracturing, hydrogen economy, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of movable type, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Just-in-time delivery, knowledge economy, Law of Accelerating Returns, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microplastics / micro fibres, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, old age dependency ratio, peak oil, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, power law, precision agriculture, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Republic of Letters, Robert Solow, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Singularitarianism, Skype, Steven Pinker, Suez canal 1869, the built environment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, total factor productivity, urban decay, urban planning, urban sprawl, working-age population

The identified planetary thresholds that should not be crossed in order to prevent intolerable environmental change were climate change; rate of biodiversity loss (terrestrial and marine); interference with the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles; stratospheric ozone depletion; ocean acidification; global freshwater use; changes in land use; chemical pollution; and atmospheric aerosol loading. The first assessment concluded that by 2009 we have already passed their boundaries, and that the safe boundaries of global freshwater use, change in land use, ocean acidification, and interference in the global phosphorus cycle were fast approaching. A revised assessment extended the time span to 2010 and adjusted some definitions.

…

The trajectory of the Anthropocene was called “The Great Acceleration” and the analysis confirmed that safe boundaries were surpassed for several key variables (Steffen et al. 2015a). The most worrisome increases were for CO2 (the safe boundary at 350 ppm CO2), for change in biosphere integrity (with the tolerable range defined as 10–199 extinctions per million species per year), for ocean acidification (no more than 80% of the preindustrial aragonite saturation state of mean surface ocean), and for biogeochemical flows (especially for nitrogen fixation at 62–82 Mt N/year). Climate change No other global environmental change is as consequential as the increase of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations in general and of anthropogenic CO2 in particular.

…

Confident conclusions about the net response of plants in a warmer world with higher CO2 concentrations remain elusive. A large share of rising CO2 emissions has been absorbed by ocean and this process is gradually acidifying sea water, a change that will impact all marine biota and especially all organisms sequestering calcium. Ocean acidification will not make seawater acid (that is pH<7.0) but it has already made it less alkaline: during the past two centuries the progressing surface water pH was lowered from 8.2 to 8.1, and that is (on a logarithmic scale) nearly a 30% decline. Seawater is supersaturated with CaCO3 minerals (calcite and aragonite) that are used by calcifying organisms (mollusks, corals, and phytoplanktonic foraminifers and coccolithophores) to build their shells and skeletons.

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith

dark pattern, Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, ocean acidification, publish or perish, Rodney Brooks

Data from 2015 suggest that the fish is now doing much better, thanks to reduced fishing (“Cod Make a Comeback…,” New Scientist, July 8, 2015). One example is acidification: I’ve not found a lot of work about cephalopods and ocean acidification. Some fairly worrying data are discussed in H. O. Pörtner et al., “Effects of Ocean Acidification on Nektonic Organisms,” which appears in Ocean Acidification, edited by J.-P. Gattuso and L. Hansson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Roger Hanlon, quoted by Katherine Harmon Courage, says that although cephalopods can handle various kinds of “dirty” water, they are very sensitive to the level of acidity (pH), because of their peculiar blood chemistry, and acidification is a serious threat to them.

Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth by Juliet B. Schor

Asian financial crisis, behavioural economics, big-box store, business climate, business cycle, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, Community Supported Agriculture, creative destruction, credit crunch, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decarbonisation, degrowth, dematerialisation, demographic transition, deskilling, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, Gini coefficient, global village, Herman Kahn, IKEA effect, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Jevons paradox, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, life extension, McMansion, new economy, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, peak oil, pink-collar, post-industrial society, prediction markets, purchasing power parity, radical decentralization, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Shiller, sharing economy, Simon Kuznets, single-payer health, smart grid, systematic bias, systems thinking, The Chicago School, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, transaction costs, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

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 use, ocean acidification, and the phosphorus cycle). Planetary Ecocide The debate over limits raised questions of underlying philosophy about how natural and social systems operate. Conventional economic models are more likely to use linear relations, incorporate self-correcting mechanisms that work through market behaviors, and build in a tendency for the system to equilibrate to a fixed point.

…

The official word from two thousand scientists who gathered in Copenhagen in March 2009 was that “the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived. These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts.” Translation: feedback loops have started, opening the door to the possibility of nonlinear, catastrophic climate change.

…

Linux Lipovetsky, Gilles Little House on a Small Planet (Salomon) Living Planet Index living wall systems Lomborg, Bjoooorn Lovins, Amory McDonough, William McKinsey studies macroeconomics Maker Faire Malaysia, health care in Malthus, Thomas manufacturing environmental impact of financialization and network model of productivity growth and putting-out systems of scale and efficiency of marketing Marks and Spencer Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) mass extinctions material flow analysis materiality paradox Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Donella “Dana,” meat methane Mexico, ecological footprint in Michigan, University of microcombines microfarming microgeneration money discount rate and- Mozilla multifunctionality nanotechnology Narain, Sunita National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) National Association of Professional Organizers National Science Foundation natural asset restoration natural gas neocommercialization Neo-Malthusians Netherlands: hours worked in productivity growth in New Economics Foundation New Work movement New York Times New York University nitrogen cycle nitrogen oxides nitrogen trifluoride nonprofit organizations nonrenewable resources Nordhaus, William North America: hours worked in materials consumption in population of Norway, ecological footprint in Not So Big House, The (Susanka) nuclear energy Obama, Barack H. oceans: acidification of dead zones in overfishing of surface warming of oil -93n Old Navy one life living open-source movement organic farming overburden overshoot overwork Overworked American, The (Schor) paper Parthasarathi, Prasannan part-time work see also labor, hours worked trends in; unemployment, working hours reduction and passive solar design patents Peccei, Aurelio pensions permaculture permafrost Peru, health care in Petrini, Carlo pharmaceuticals phosphorus cycle physical capital physophilia Piore, Michael planetary boundaries plastics plenitude: basic lifestyle security and capital requirements of consumption and definition of Earth-smart design and ecological commons and economics of efficiency and green technology and knowledge and medium-term application of natural asset restoration and open-source mechanisms and principles of reciprocity and self-provisioning and sharing and slow spending and small businesses and social capital and -13n time allocation and trade-offs and -4n transition and true materialism and well-being and working less and Pollan, Michael pollution taxation of population aggregate growth and birth rates and food production and sustainability and world, growth of Post Carbon Cities network poverty prairies prices appliances and automobiles and carbon emissions and clothing and commodities and computers and department stores and durable goods and economic bubbles and energy efficiency and food and full-cost measurement of furniture and government subsidies and supply and demand and Princeton University production possibilities curve productivity agriculture and energy efficiency and Putnam, Robert-13n putting-out manufacturing rapid prototyping machines rebound effect dynamics of Recession, Great economic future and hours reductions in savings rate and recycling Rees, William Reinhardt, Uwe relative decoupling renewable energy see also specific types RepRap digital fabricator resources: extraction and consumption of nonrenewable types of restaurants retirement risk Rosnick, David Russia, historical carbon emissions of Sabel, Charles Sachs, Jeff Salomon, Shay savings, rate of Schneider, Stephen Schumacher College Schumpeter, Joseph sea-level rise self-provisioning agriculture and clothing and food and housing and technology and self-storage Sen, Amartya Senate, U.S., climate change and shadow wages Shafer, Jay Shandra, John Share the World’s Resources sharing economy Sheldon, Kennon Shiller, Robert Shiva, Vandana shrimp Simon, Julian Sky Trust proposal Slow Food movement Slow Money movement Slow Travel movement smart machines social capital - socialism social networking Social Security Society for Ecological Economics soil solar energy Spain, ecological footprint in stagflation Stanford University Stern, Nicholas Stern Review Stiglitz, Joseph Stockholm Environment Institute stock market storage stress substitution effect sulfur oxides Susanka, Sarah sustainability: affluence and BAU economy and community and-13n economics of environment and growth and household production and knowledge and multifunctionality and natural asset restoration and one planet living and path to population and self-provisioning and sharing and slow spending and small business and technology and time wealth and working less and Sustainable South Bronx Swan, Simone Sweden: ecological footprint in productivity growth in systems dynamics Tasch, Woody taxes, taxation carbon pricing and technology climate change reduction and - diffusion of economic change and household production and productivity growth and rebound effect and sustainability and time and see also green technology televisions environmental impact of storage and disposal of Thailand, health care in Thoreau, Henry David time, allocation of tool sharing trade, balance of trademarks trade-off economics - trains Transition Town movement transportation see also specific types of transportation travel true materialism Tumbleweed Tiny House Company underemployment unemployment aggregate growth and company size and working hours reduction and United Arab Emirates, ecological footprint in United Kingdom: ecological footprint in historical carbon emissions of hours worked in rebound effects in technological change in well-being and United Nations (UN) United States: clothing exports from clothing purchases in consumption as percent of GDP in ecological footprint in expansion of consumption in furniture imports to greenhouse gas emissions in Happy Planet Index of health care and historical profitability of hours worked in Human Development Index and income inequality in market growth of materials consumption in pensions in per capita income in rebound effects in sharing economy in technological change and well-being and urban farming urban homesteading value, monetized versus non-monetized forms of Velib Vertical Garden Victor, Peter Wackernagel, Mathis wages nonmonetized value and time wealth and Wal-Mart waste stream water privatization of water footprint Waters, Alice water stress Wealth of Networks, The (Benkler) weather see also specific types Wedgwood, Josiah Weisbrot, Mark well-being West, Paul Who Killed the Electric Car?

SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

agricultural Revolution, airport security, An Inconvenient Truth, Andrei Shleifer, Atul Gawande, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Boris Johnson, call centre, clean water, cognitive bias, collateralized debt obligation, creative destruction, credit crunch, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deliberate practice, Did the Death of Australian Inheritance Taxes Affect Deaths, disintermediation, endowment effect, experimental economics, food miles, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), John Nash: game theory, Joseph Schumpeter, Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, market design, microcredit, Milgram experiment, Neal Stephenson, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, patent troll, power law, presumed consent, price discrimination, principal–agent problem, profit motive, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, selection bias, South China Sea, Stanford prison experiment, Stephen Hawking, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, urban planning, William Langewiesche, women in the workforce, young professional

Beside Myhrvold sits Ken Caldeira, a soft-spoken man with a boyish face and a halo of curly hair. He runs an ecology lab at Stanford for the Carnegie Institution. Caldeira is among the most respected climate scientists in the world, his research cited approvingly by the most fervent environmentalists. He and a co-author coined the phrase “ocean acidification,” the process by which the seas absorb so much carbon dioxide that corals and other shallow-water organisms are threatened. He also contributes research to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore for sounding the alarm on global warming.

…

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, February 25, 2009; data also gleaned from the Department of Energy’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center. / 183 Carbon dioxide levels rise after a rise in temperature: see Jeff Severinghaus, “What Does the Lag of CO2 Behind Temperature in Ice Cores Tell Us About Global Warming,” RealClimate, December 3, 2004. / 183–184 “Ocean acidification”: see Ken Caldeira and Michael E. Wickett, “Oceanography: Anthropogenic Carbon and Ocean pH,” Nature 425 (September 2003); and Elizabeth Kolbert, “The Darkening Sea,” The New Yorker, November 20, 2006. / 184 Hard-charging environmental activist: see Mooney, above, for interesting reading on Caldeira’s background / 184 Caldeira mentions a study: see Caldeira et al., “Impact of Geoengineering Schemes on the Terrestrial Biosphere,” Geophysical Research Letters 29, no. 22 (2002). / 186 Trees as environmental scourge: see Caldeira et al., “Climate Effects of Global Land Cover Change,” Geophysical Research Letters 32 (2005); and Caldeira et al., “Combined Climate and Carbon-Cycle Effects of Large-Scale Deforestation,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104, no. 16 (April 17, 2007). / 187 The half-life of atmospheric carbon: see Archer et al., “Atmospheric Lifetime of Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide,” Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 37 (2009). / 188 “Would put an end to the Gulf Stream”: see Thomas F.

…

See Myhrvold, Nathan National Academy of Sciences (NAS), climate change report of, 165, 190, 191 National Association of Realtors, 56 National Automobile Dealers Association, 146 National Foundation for Infant Paralysis, 157 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 151, 152, 153 National Organ Transplant Act, 112 National Standardized Child Passenger Safety Training Program, 151 natural disasters, 175–77 natural experiments, 101 Nazis, obeying, 123 negative externalities, 8, 11, 171–173 203 neurobiology, as male field, 47–48 new ideas, as repugnant, 199–200 New York City polio epidemic in, 144 terrorism in, 66 See also Genovese, Kitty, murder of The New York Times climate change story in, 165 Genovese murder story in, 98, 99, 125–27, 128 Newsweek magazine, climate change story in, 165, 166 Nobel Prize, 12, 59, 82, 115, 117, 184, 196, 198 object-oriented programming, 69, 72 “ocean acidification,” 183–84 Olmsted, Frederick Law, 42 on-the-spot data collection, 28–29, 70–71 oncologists, 85–86 Oportunidades (Mexican welfare program), 27–28 oral sex, 33–34 organ transplants, 111–13, 124–25, 199–200 Orne, Martin, 123 Oshinsky, David M., 144,145 Oster, Emily, 6–7 Oswald, Andrew, 82 output dilemma, 188 overconsumption, dangers of, 170 ozone, 190,196,197 Palestinian suicide bombers, 62–63 panhandlers, 124 paper goods delivery, List’s experience with, 117 parents experiment about visiting, 105–6 and interviews about seat belts, 155–56 Parker, Susan W., 27–28 Pasteur, Louis, 204 perfect substitutes, 37 pilots, World War II, 147 “pimpact,” 37, 40 pimps, 37–38, 40–41, 56 police and increase in crime, 104 and pimps, 40–41 and prostitution, 32, 41, 55 and stolen cars, 174, 175 and terrorism, 66 See also Genovese, Kitty Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming (NAS report), 190 polio, 143–45, 147, 157 politics, and prostitution, 25 popular culture, and crime, 100 population, and cheap and simple fixes, 141–42 positive externalities, 175, 176 practice, deliberate, 61 predictions, economic, 16–17 pregnancy, of prostitutes, 34 premarital sex, 31 President’s Council of Economic Advisors, 115 price for prostitutes, 24–25, 29–30, 33–37, 42, 53–54, 55 raising, 42 See also wages price insensitive, 54 principal-agent problem, 41 prisoners and guard-prisoner experiment, 123 release of, 100–102 Prisoner’s Dilemma (game), 108 professions.

More From Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources – and What Happens Next by Andrew McAfee

back-to-the-land, Bartolomé de las Casas, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, congestion pricing, Corn Laws, creative destruction, crony capitalism, data science, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, DeepMind, degrowth, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Garrett Hardin, Great Leap Forward, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Rosling, humanitarian revolution, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, indoor plumbing, intangible asset, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Snow's cholera map, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Khan Academy, Landlord’s Game, Louis Pasteur, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, market fundamentalism, means of production, Michael Shellenberger, Mikhail Gorbachev, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, precision agriculture, price elasticity of demand, profit maximization, profit motive, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, telepresence, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Veblen good, War on Poverty, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, World Values Survey

A clear example of this is the effort by both government and industry in the United States to clean up the country’s lakes, ponds, streams, and rivers after the passage of 1972’s Clean Water Act. Economists David Keiser and Joseph Shapiro brought together 50 million pollution readings from 170,000 sites across the country and concluded that “water pollution has declined dramatically over time and that the Clean Water Act… contributed to this decline.” After ocean acidification and plastic trash, nitrogen pollution might well be the most serious problem facing the world’s waters. Nitrogen fertilizer that isn’t absorbed by crops can wash into rivers and oceans. There it causes a number of harms including large “dead zones” of oxygen-poor water that can suffocate fish and other marine life.VI As we saw in chapter 2, the Industrial Era saw massive increases in the amount of nitrogen fertilizer used around the world.

…

Nordhaus stresses, though, that we’re sure that the planet is warming as never before in our history: “No climate changes of the speed and scope we are currently witnessing have occurred through the course of human civilization… The best guess is that the rate of global climate change people will face over the next century will be about ten times as rapid as any change experienced by humanity during the last five millennia.” The scientific consensus is strong that this warming will cause more and more variable precipitation, ocean acidification, droughts in some regions, and other deep changes. Nordhaus continues, “We also are likely to encounter surprises, and some of them will be nasty. Perhaps winters in the Northern Hemisphere will become much snowier. Perhaps hurricanes will intensify greatly and change their storm tracks. Perhaps the giant Greenland Ice Sheet will begin to melt rapidly.

…

., 114–15 lead, 95 leather, 45 Leopold II, King of Belgium, 39 Li Keqiang, 146 Life, 61 life expectancy, 13, 32, 196–97 limits, imposing of, 65–67, 93–97 Limits to Growth, The, 57–58, 65, 66, 71, 93, 119–20 Lincoln, Abraham, 37, 38, 121 Linux operating system, 235–36 Litton, Martin, 61 living standards, 9–10, 32, 69 Lomborg, Bjorn, 179, 181 London, 22–23, 26 Lovins, Amory, 58–59 MacLeish, Archibald, 54 Macron, Emmanuel, 155, 250 Maddison, Angus, 9, 13 Maduro, Nicolas, 134–35, 137–38 Magee, Christopher, 73 Magie, Elizabeth, 203 Malthus, Thomas Robert, 7–8, 9, 10, 13, 15, 20, 131, 237 mammals, biomass of, 33 Mann, Charles, 31 manufacturing, 202, 239–40 Mao Zedong, 170 Marine Mammal Protection Act (1972), 96 market fundamentalism, 131–32, 133 Marshall, Alfred, 47–48, 50–51, 63, 99, 108–09, 141, 6977 Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen’s Preservation Trust, 263 Marx, Karl, 21, 130, 131 material intensity, 75 maternal mortality, 196–97 Mattis, James, 211–12 Maybach, Wilhelm, 27 Meadows, Donella, 57 Mesthene, Emmanuel, 114 metals, 56, 79 Mexico, 137, 139 Microsoft, 102, 257 Milanovic, Branko, 221 Mill, John Stuart, 180 Miller, Grant, 28 Mines Act (1842), 38 Mises, Ludwig von, 40 Mokyr, Joel, 122 Molina, Mario, 149 monopolies, 202–03, 204 Monsanto, 155 Montreal Protocol, 150, 249 Morris, Ian, 24–25, 60n Most Powerful Idea in the World, The (Rosen), 16 motors, 27 Mussolini, Benito, 40 Naam, Ramez, 31 National Security Council, 56 Native Americans, 44–45 natural gas, 103, 104, 109, 110, 188 Nature Wars (Sterba), 43–44 negative bias, 179–81 negative externalities, 142, 186, 247–48, 253 Nelson, Gaylord, 61 Neolithic revolution, 12 New Pioneers (Jacob), 91 New Testament, 127 New York Times, 53, 61–62, 147 Newcomen, Thomas, 16 Nicholas, Kim, 185 nitrogen, 30–31 nitrogen pollution, 190 Nixon, Richard, 66 Nokia, 102, 111 nonprofits, 259–63 Nordhaus, William, 248–49 Norquist, Grover, 132 North, Douglass, 159 North Korea, 133 nuclear energy, 58–59, 110, 251–52, 266 nuclear fusion, 240–41 Nunn, Nathan, 268 nutrition, 23–24, 32, 177, 193 ocean acidification, 190 O’Hanlon, Michael, 174 oil, 135–36 one-child policy, 93–94 Ostrom, Elinor, 182 Our World in Data (website), 179, 180 overdoses, 215, 216 ozone layer, 149–50, 228 Pacific Steam Navigation Company, 17 Paddock, William and Paul, 55–56 Paris Agreement, 158 partial excludability, 232–33 passenger pigeon, 42–43, 96, 152, 181 Pasteur, Louis, 23 Patagonia National Park, 260 patents, 19, 116, 232, 235 peak oil, 102–05 peak paper, 90, 113 “Peak Stuff” (Goodall), 76–77 pertussis, 227 Peru, 138 Petroleum Reitwagen, 27 phones, 168–69 Pinker, Steven, 37, 122, 176, 177, 179 Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes, A (Francatelli), 23–24 plastics, 83, 252 plumbing, indoor, 26, 28–30, 168 Poland, 92 polarization, political, 224–25, 254 Politics of Resentment, The (Cramer), 221 pollution, 5, 23, 35, 36, 40–42, 54–55, 63, 66–67, 95, 141, 142, 157, 160–61, 167, 266 globalization of, 148–50 markets for, 143–44 Poole, Robert, 54 population, 13, 32–33, 62–63, 88, 192 of England, 10–11 global, 55–56, 65–69, 71 limiting, 93–94 oscillation in, 8–12, 15, 17, 31 Population Bomb, The (Ehrlich), 55, 65 poverty, 10–11, 179–80, 181, 189, 191–92, 215 Poverty and Famines (Sen), 69 precision agriculture, 242–43 price elasticity of demand, 49, 108–09 Principles of Economics (Marshall), 50–51 private ownership, 117, 170 “Problem of Social Cost, The” (Coase), 143 profit-seeking companies, 115–16 property rights, 116, 133 proteins, 239–40 public awareness, 3–4, 145–48, 153, 154, 158–59, 161, 167–68, 176–78, 226 Public Health Service, US, 55 Putnam, Robert, 212, 213 Radio Shack, 102 railroads, 18, 19, 26, 105–06, 109–10 Rand, Ayn, 132 rare earth elements (REE), 106–08, 109, 110 Reagan, Ronald, 132 rebound effect, 72–73 reciprocity, 212, 213, 217 recycling, 64–65, 90–91 reforestation, 184, 185 regulation, 5 regulatory capture, 129 religion, 115 renewable energy, 111 resource availability, 119–20 resource consumption, 56–58, 63–64, 78–79, 99, 119–20 responsive government, 3–4, 145–48, 153, 154, 158–59, 161, 167–68, 175–76 Return of Nature, The (Ausubel), 4–5 Ricardo, David, 19n Ridley, Matt, 161 Riley, James, 13 Ripley, S.

On the Future: Prospects for Humanity by Martin J. Rees

23andMe, 3D printing, air freight, Alfred Russel Wallace, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, Benoit Mandelbrot, biodiversity loss, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, carbon tax, circular economy, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, decarbonisation, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, demographic transition, Dennis Tito, distributed ledger, double helix, driverless car, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Geoffrey Hinton, global village, Great Leap Forward, Higgs boson, Hyperloop, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Conway, Large Hadron Collider, life extension, mandelbrot fractal, mass immigration, megacity, Neil Armstrong, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, precautionary principle, quantitative hedge fund, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Rodney Brooks, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart grid, speech recognition, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanislav Petrov, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, supervolcano, technological singularity, the scientific method, Tunguska event, uranium enrichment, Walter Mischel, William MacAskill, Yogi Berra

It seems feasible to throw enough material into the stratosphere to change the world’s climate—indeed, what is scary is that this might be within the resources of a single nation, or perhaps even a single corporation. The political problems of such geoengineering may be overwhelming. There could be unintended side effects. Moreover, the warming would return with a vengeance if the countermeasures were ever discontinued, and other consequences of rising CO2 levels (especially the deleterious effects of ocean acidification) would be unchecked. Geoengineering of this kind would be an utter political nightmare; not all nations would want to adjust the thermostat in the same way. Very elaborate climatic modelling would be needed in order to calculate the regional impacts of any artificial intervention. It would be a bonanza for lawyers if an individual or a nation could be blamed for bad weather!

…

See also electricity grids; internet neutron stars, 162–63 New Horizons spacecraft, 142 Newton, Isaac, 165, 171, 187, 194, 195, 196–97, 205 normal science, Kuhnian, 205 nuclear deterrence, 19 nuclear energy, 53–57; based on twentieth-century physics, 64; for low-carbon energy generation, 48; prospects for fusion, 48, 54–55; public fear of radiation and, 53, 55; for spaceflight, 148 nuclear fusion: as energy source, 48, 54–55; in Sun and stars, 122, 123 nuclear weapons: Cold War and, 17–20; collapse in global food supplies and, 216; not necessarily an existential threat, 110; public engagement of atomic scientists and, 222; in response to cyberattack, 21 nuclear winter, 19, 216 Obama, Barack, 48 ocean acidification, 58 online courses, 98–99 On the Origin of Species (Darwin), 121, 196 Open University of U.K., 98 optimism: about life’s destiny, 227; about moral progress, 6; about technological fixes for climate change, 42; about technology, 5, 225–26; machines surpassing human capabilities and, 108; Wells’s mix of anxiety and, 14 organ transplants, 71–72 origin of life, 128–29, 135–36 Our Final Hour (Rees), 12–13 ozone depletion, 31–32 pale blue dot, 10, 120, 133, 164 Paley, William, 197–98 pandemics: advances in microbiology and, 72; air travel and, 109; as global threat, 216, 217; magnitude of fallout from, 76–77 paradigm shifts, 205 Parfit, Derek, 116–17 Paris climate conference of 2015: Mission Innovation of, 48; papal encyclical and, 35; protocols following on, 219; temperature goal of, 41; uncertain results of, 44, 57 particle accelerators: Large Hadron Collider, 206–7; speculation on risks of, 110–16, 118; teams working on big projects of, 205–6 Pauli, Wolfgang, 209 Peierls, Rudolf, 222 personal identity, 105 pessimism, 226–27 Petrov, Stanislav, 18 Pfizer, abandoning neurological drugs, 212 philosophers of science, 203–5 physical reality: aliens with different perception of, 160, 190; human-induced threats and, 118; limited power of human minds and, 9, 189–90, 194; observable universe and, 181; our constricted concept of, 184.

The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac

3D printing, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, DeepMind, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, Donald Trump, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, Extinction Rebellion, F. W. de Klerk, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Gail Bradbrook, General Motors Futurama, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high-speed rail, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Benioff, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mustafa Suleyman, Nelson Mandela, new economy, ocean acidification, plant based meat, post-truth, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, the scientific method, trade route, uber lyft, urban planning, urban sprawl, Yogi Berra

For more useful resources, see American Security Project, “Climate Security Is National Security,” https://www.americansecurityproject.org/​climate-security/. 12. Polar Science Center, “Antarctic Melting Irreversible in 60 Years,” http://psc.apl.uw.edu/​antarctic-melting-irreversible-in-60-years/. 13. Ocean Portal Team, “Ocean Acidification,” Smithsonian Institute, April 2018, https://ocean.si.edu/​ocean-life/​invertebrates/​ocean-acidification. 14. Chang-Eui Park, Su-Jong Jeong, Manoj Joshi, et al., “Keeping Global Warming Within 1.5 °C Constrains Emergence of Aridification,” Nature Climate Change 8, no. 1 (January 2018): 70–74. 15. Regan Early, “Which Species Will Survive Climate Change?”

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, big-box store, bilateral investment treaty, Blockadia, Boeing 747, British Empire, business climate, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, Climategate, cognitive dissonance, coherent worldview, colonial rule, Community Supported Agriculture, complexity theory, crony capitalism, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, different worldview, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Dr. Strangelove, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, equal pay for equal work, extractivism, Exxon Valdez, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, financial deregulation, food miles, Food sovereignty, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, green transition, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, ice-free Arctic, immigration reform, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jones Act, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, land bank, light touch regulation, man camp, managed futures, market fundamentalism, Medieval Warm Period, Michael Shellenberger, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, new economy, Nixon shock, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, patent troll, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, post-oil, precautionary principle, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rana Plaza, remunicipalization, renewable energy transition, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, scientific management, smart grid, special economic zone, Stephen Hawking, Stewart Brand, structural adjustment programs, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, wages for housework, walkable city, Washington Consensus, Wayback Machine, We are all Keynesians now, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

“This position is shared by many senior scientists and economists advising government,” Anderson reports.54 In other words, changing the earth’s climate in ways that will be chaotic and disastrous is easier to accept than the prospect of changing the fundamental, growth-based, profit-seeking logic of capitalism. We probably shouldn’t be surprised that some climate scientists are a little spooked by the radical implications of their own research. Most of them were quietly measuring ice cores, running global climate models, and studying ocean acidification, only to discover, as Australian climate expert and author Clive Hamilton puts it, that in breaking the news of the depth of our collective climate failure, they “were unwittingly destabilizing the political and social order.”55 Nonetheless, that order has now been destabilized, which means that the rest of us are going to have to quickly figure out how to turn “managed degrowth” into something that looks a lot less like the Great Depression and a lot more like what some innovative economic thinkers have taken to calling “The Great Transition.”56 * * * Over the past decade, many boosters of green capitalism have tried to gloss over the clashes between market logic and ecological limits by touting the wonders of green tech, or the “decoupling” of environmental impacts from economic activity.

…

Giving the country partial credit for the collapse of the Russian economy, a New York Times Magazine piece in 2000 pronounced that “amid the recent proliferation of money-laundering centers that experts estimate has ballooned into a $5 trillion shadow economy, Nauru is Public Enemy #1.”13 These schemes have since caught up with Nauru too, and now the country faces a double bankruptcy: with 90 percent of the island depleted from mining, it faces ecological bankruptcy; with a debt of at least $800 million, Nauru faces financial bankruptcy as well. But these are not Nauru’s only problems. It now turns out that the island nation is highly vulnerable to a crisis it had virtually no hand in creating: climate change and the drought, ocean acidification, and rising waters it brings. Sea levels around Nauru have been steadily climbing by about 5 millimeters per year since 1993, and much more could be on the way if current trends continue. Intensified droughts are already causing severe freshwater shortages.14 A decade ago, Australian philosopher and professor of sustainability Glenn Albrecht set out to coin a term to capture the particular form of psychological distress that sets in when the homelands that we love and from which we take comfort are radically altered by extraction and industrialization, rendering them alienating and unfamiliar.

…

Beginning in August 2012, a coalition of groups established what they call the “first blockade camp of a coal mine in Australia’s history,” where for a year and a half (and counting) activists have chained themselves to various entrances of the Maules Creek project—the largest mine under construction in the country, which along with others in the area is set to decimate up to half of the 7,500-hectare (18,500 acre) Leard State Forest and to wield a greenhouse gas footprint representing more than 5 percent of Australia’s annual emissions, according to one estimate.16 Much of that coal is destined for export to Asia, however, so activists are also gearing up to fight port expansions in Queensland that would hugely increase the number of coal ships sailing from Australia each year, including through the vulnerable ecosystem of the Great Barrier Reef, a World Heritage Site and the earth’s largest natural structure made up of living creatures. The Australian Marine Conservation Society describes the dredging of the ocean floor to make way for increased coal traffic as an “unprecedented” threat to the fragile reef, which is already under severe stress from ocean acidification and various forms of pollution runoff.17 This is only the barest of sketches of the contours of Blockadia—but no picture would be complete without the astonishing rise of resistance against virtually any piece of infrastructure connected to the Alberta tar sands, whether inside Canada or in the United States.

Beyond: Our Future in Space by Chris Impey

3D printing, Admiral Zheng, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, AltaVista, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Berlin Wall, Biosphere 2, Buckminster Fuller, built by the lowest bidder, butterfly effect, California gold rush, carbon-based life, Charles Lindbergh, Colonization of Mars, cosmic abundance, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, Dennis Tito, discovery of DNA, Doomsday Clock, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Eratosthenes, Great Leap Forward, Haight Ashbury, Hans Moravec, Hyperloop, I think there is a world market for maybe five computers, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Late Heavy Bombardment, life extension, low earth orbit, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mars Rover, Mars Society, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, Nick Bostrom, ocean acidification, Oculus Rift, operation paperclip, out of africa, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, phenotype, private spaceflight, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, radical life extension, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, risk tolerance, Rubik’s Cube, Scaled Composites, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Searching for Interstellar Communications, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, Snow Crash, space junk, SpaceShipOne, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, supervolcano, technological singularity, telepresence, telerobotics, the medium is the message, the scientific method, theory of mind, There's no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home - Ken Olsen, Virgin Galactic, VTOL, wikimedia commons, world market for maybe five computers, X Prize, Yogi Berra

They lost weight in the first year but gained back much of it in the second year as their bodies adjusted to the low-calorie, nutrient-dense diet. Most of them emerged with improvements in cholesterol level, blood pressure, and immune-system indicators.6 Most of what we now know about the effect of ocean acidification on coral reefs was learned in the Biosphere.7 Wastewater was successfully treated in the artificial wetlands. And even though a few species ran amok for short periods, the overall food web stayed in reasonable balance. Before the Biosphere was built, many ecologists thought the experiment was so complex that it would be a catastrophic failure.

…

“Calorie Restriction in Biosphere 2: Alterations in Physiologic, Hematologic, Hormonal, and Biochemical Parameters in Humans Restricted for a Two-Year Period” by R. Walford, D. Mock, R. Verdery, and T. MacCallum 2002. The Journals of Gerontology, Series A, vol. 57, no. 6, pp. B211–24. 7. “Coral Reefs and Ocean Acidification” by J. A. Kleypas and K. K. Yates 2009. Oceanography, December, pp. 108–17. 8. “Lessons Learned from Biosphere 2: When Viewed as a Ground Simulation/Analog for Long Duration Human Space Exploration and Settlement” by T. MacCallum, J. Poynter, and D. Bearden 2004. SAE Technical Paper, online at http://www.janepoynter.com/documents/LessonsfromBio2.pdf. 9.

…

., 239 Los Angeles Times, 71 Losing My Virginity (Branson), 86, 87 Louis IX, king of France, 23 Louis XVI, king of France, 68 Lovelock, James, 286 Lowell, Percival, 163–64 Lucian of Samosata, 20 Lucretius, 18–19 Luna program, 50–51 Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, 156 Lunokhod rover, 143 Lynx rocket plane, 101 M5 fiber, 161 McAuliffe, Christa, 55, 74 Mack 3 Blackbird, 69 McKay, Chris, 173 McLellan, William, 283 magnetic implants, 207 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), 190 magnetic sails, 186, 223 magnitude of time, 248–50, 249 Manhattan Project, 36, 221 Manifest Destiny, applied to space, 146–47, 199 Manned Habitat Unit, 169 many worlds concept, 17–20, 17, 49, 267 Mao Zedong, 141 Marconi, Guglielmo, 237 Mariner 2, 51 Mariner 4, 164 Marino, Lori, 190 Marriott hotels, 145 Mars, 28, 237, 270 challenges of travel to, 166–70 distance from Earth to, 50, 148, 166 Earth compared to, 171–72, 216 establishing a colony on, 166–71, 169, 192, 195, 200–201, 203, 214, 248 evidence of water on, 124–25, 163–66, 165, 173 fly-bys of, 51, 170 imaginative perceptions of, 163–65 latency on, 178 map of, 163 obstacles to exploration of, 66–67, 148 one-way journey to, 166, 170–71, 200 as potentially habitable, 124–25, 163, 165–66, 171, 172–74, 234, 278 privately funded missions to, 170–71 probes to, 40, 51, 52, 164–65, 176, 246 projected exploration of, 94–98, 101, 104, 115, 119, 157, 161, 163–74, 178, 181, 182 property rights on, 145, 198–99 sex and reproduction on, 200 simulated journey to, 169–70 soil of, 170 staging points for, 161 terraforming of, 172–74, 182, 216, 227 tests for life on, 52 Mars Direct, 169 Mars500 mission, 169 Mars One, 170–71, 198–201 Mars Society, 166 Mars 3 lander, 51 Masai people, 120 Massachusetts General Hospital, 250 Masson-Zwaan, Tanja, 199 mathematics, 19 as universal language, 236–37 Matrix, The, 260 matter, manipulation of, 258 matter-antimatter annihilation, 220, 220, 221–22 Mavroidis, Constantinos, 182 Max-Q (maximum aerodynamic stress), 46 Maxwell, James Clerk, 183 Mayor, Michel, 126–28, 133 medicine: challenges and innovation in, 92–93, 263 cyborgs in, 205 medicine (continued) as lacking in space, 200 in life extension, 259 nanotechnology in, 225, 259 robots in, 180, 181, 182, 205 mediocrity, principle of, 261 Mendez, Abel, 278 mental models, 13–17, 18–19 Mercury: orbit of, 126, 215 property rights on, 145 as uninhabitable, 124 mercury poisoning, 118 Mercury program, 41, 42, 71, 74, 272 meta-intelligence, 94 meteorites, 152, 160, 160, 164, 195 methane, 52–53, 125, 132, 278 as biomarker, 217–18 methanogens, 217 “Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, A” (Goddard), 30, 31 Methuselah, 131 mice, in scientific research, 48–49, 250–51 microbes, microbial life, 97–98, 173, 174, 217, 241, 246, 286 habitable environments for, 122–25, 165–66, 186 microcephaly, 203 microgravity, 115 microsatellites, 90 Microsoft, 84, 188 microwaves: beaming of, 223–24 signals, 187 Microwave Sciences, 223 Middle East, population dispersion into, 8, 118 migration: early human population dispersion through, 5–9, 9, 15, 19 motivation for, 9–12, 11 military: covert projects of, 69–72 Eisenhower’s caveat about, 79 in Internet development, 77, 78–79 nanotechnology in, 180–81, 225 in rocket development, 30, 32–39, 55–56, 71 in space programs, 73, 76, 79, 144, 153 Milky Way galaxy, 227, 240, 253, 263, 270 ancient Greek concept of, 18 Drake equation for detectable life in, 188, 233–35 Earth-like exoplanets in, 129–33, 233, 291 formation and age of, 235 size of, 242 Millis, Marc, 290 mind control, 245 mind uploading, 259 miniaturization, see nanotechnology minimum viable population, 201, 251 mining: of asteroids, 155–56, 182, 214 of Enceladus, 227 on Moon, 214 by robots, 178, 182 Minsky, Marvin, 177, 179 MirCorp, 75 mirrors, 173 Mir Space Station, 75, 115, 167–68 Miss Baker (monkey), 47–48, 48 Mission Control, 43, 100, 158, 269 MIT, 38, 77, 90, 141, 226, 257 mitochondrial DNA, 6, 9 Mittelwerk factory, 33, 35 Mojave Desert, 71, 82, 83 population adaptation to heat in, 118–19 molecules, in nanotechnology, 151 Mongols, 23, 24 monkeys, in space research, 47–48, 48 Montgolfier brothers, 68 Moon: age of, 50 ancient Greek concept of, 18 in asteroid capture, 156 distance from Earth to, 49–50, 150, 166, 267 first animals on, 49 first man on, 71, 158 latency on, 178 lunar base proposed for, 157–63, 158, 160, 195, 214, 248 manned landings on, 44–45, 49–50, 54, 56, 63, 71, 84, 99, 104, 108, 143, 157, 158, 176, 219, 270, 272 obstacles to exploration of, 66 orbit of, 25 probes to, 40, 51, 129, 140, 143 projected missions to, 92, 143, 157–63, 166, 214, 275 property rights on, 145–47, 198–99 proposed commercial flights to, 102 in science fiction, 20, 26 soil of, 159, 160, 162 as staging point for Mars, 161 staging points for, 148 telescopic views of, 31, 49–50 as uninhabitable, 124, 166 US commitment to reach, 41–45 Moon Treaty (1979), 146 Moon Treaty, UN (1984), 279 Moore, John, 203 Moravec, 259–60 Morgan, Barbara, 74 Morrison, Philip, 187, 239 Mosaic web browser, 79 Moses, 148 motion, Newton’s laws of, 25, 67–68 multistage rockets, 29 multiverse, 252–57, 255 Musk, Elon, 94–98, 97, 100–101, 112–13, 148, 205 mutation, 6–7 cosmic rays and, 204 7R, 10–12, 11, 15 mutually assured destruction, 42 Mylar, 184, 225 N1/L3 rocket, 44, 54 nanobots, 179–82, 181, 224–28 NanoSail-D, 184, 185 nanosponges, 180 nanotechnology, 151–52, 179–82, 208, 214, 245, 280, 283 projected future of, 257–59 see also nanobots National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 83, 90, 96, 97–98, 114, 116–17, 128, 144, 153, 156, 176, 178, 182, 184–85, 185, 195, 200, 205, 206, 216, 224, 226, 271, 275, 280, 290 and Air Force, 71 artistic depiction of space colonies by, 196, 196 budget of, 39, 42, 43, 49, 54, 64, 75, 99, 104, 140, 144, 158, 166, 188, 238, 270, 272, 284 cut back of, 45, 49, 54, 188 formation of, 38–39, 145, 269 private and commercial collaboration with, 99–102, 104 revival of, 103–5 space program of, 51, 55–56, 71–76, 92, 157–58, 285–86 stagnation of, 63–67, 141, 147, 166 National Geographic Society, 7, 265 National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 187–88 National Science Foundation (NSF), 78–79 Native Americans, 118 naturalness, 256 natural selection, 6, 16, 123, 164, 251, 291 Nature, 187 Naval Research lab, 37 Navy, US: Bureau of Aeronautics, 30 in rocket development, 36–37 Nayr, Ernst, 238 Nazis, 48 Propaganda Ministry of, 32 von Braun and, 32–34, 141, 269 NBC, 75 Nedelin, Mitrofan, 43 “needle in a haystack” problem, 188–89, 242–43 “Nell” (rocket), 29 Neptune, 127, 131, 225 as uninhabitable, 125 Nergal, 163 Netscape, 80 New Mexico, 88, 88, 105 Newton, Isaac, 24–25, 25, 30, 67–68, 110, 262, 267 New York Times, 30, 94 Nicholas, Henry, 214 Niven, Larry, 198, 253 Nixon, Richard, 108, 167 Nobel Prize, 126, 180, 214 nomad planets, 128 Noonan, James, 266 nuclear fission, 220, 220, 221 nuclear fusion, 110, 161–62, 220, 221, 221, 222 nuclear reactors, 224 nuclear weapons, 36, 42, 78, 129, 146, 197–98, 222, 234–35, 244, 245, 246, 286 Nuremberg Chronicles, 17 Nyberg, Karen, 200 Obama, Barack, 104 Oberth, Hermann, 28, 31–32, 36, 268 oceans: acidification of, 195 sealed ecosystem proposed for, 197 Oculus Rift, 176 Ohio, astronauts from, 74 Okuda, Michael, 228 Olsen, Ken, 213 100 Year Starship project, 224 100 Year Starship Symposium, 229 101955 Bennu (asteroid), 156 O’Neill, Gerard, 196, 251–52 Opportunity rover, 165 optical SETI, 190, 243 Orbital Sciences Corporation, 100–101, 275 orbits: concept of, 25 geostationary, 149–50, 150 legislation on, 146 low Earth, 49, 54, 63, 70–71, 70, 74–75, 97, 100, 110, 113–14, 151, 155, 184 manned, 40–41, 141–42 staging points from, 148 orcas, 190 Orion spacecraft, 104 Orteig, Raymond, 90 Orteig Prize, 90–91 Orwell, George, 35 OSIRIS-REx, 156 Outer Space Treaty (1967), 145–47, 198–99 “Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking” (Clarke), 201 oxygen, 156, 159, 161, 170, 172, 173–74, 182, 193–95, 214 Oymyakon, Siberia, population adaptation to cold in, 119–20 ozone, as biomarker, 217 Pacific Ocean, 9, 224 Pac-Man, 175 Page, Larry, 92 Paine, Thomas, 167 Pale Blue Dot (Sagan), 121 “Pale Blue Dot,” Earth as, 53, 118–22, 121, 130 Paperclip, Operation, 141 parabolic flight, 93 paradox, as term, 241 Paratrechina longicornis (crazy ant), 193 Parkinson’s disease, 202–3 particle physics, standard model of, 256 Pascal, Blaise, 120 Pauley, Phil, 196–97 PayPal, 95, 97 Pensées (Pascal), 120 People’s Daily, 162 People’s Liberation Army, 144 Pericles, 18 Pettit, Don, 100, 273 phenotype, 6 philanthropy, 95 PhoneSat, 185 photons, 183, 186 in teleportation, 229, 230, 231 photosynthesis, as biomarker, 217 pigs, 250 Pinker, Steven, 16 Pioneer probes, 50, 51–52 piracy, 24 Pitcairn Island, 202 planetary engineering, 172 Planetary Resources, 156 planetary science, 51–52, 176 Planetary Society, 184 planets: exploration of, 49–53 formation of, 156 plate techtonics, 132, 241 play, imagination in, 10, 14 pluralism, 17–20, 17, 49 plutonium, 66 poetry, space, 272–73 politics, space exploration and, 63–64, 104, 141, 214, 238 Polyakov, Valeri, 115, 167–68 population bottleneck, 201–2, 287 Poynter, Jane, 193 Princess of Mars, A (Burroughs), 164 Principia (Newton), 25 Project Orion, 221, 221 Project Ozma, 187–88, 237, 253 prokaryotes, 172 property rights, in space, 145–47, 198 Proton rockets, 65, 113 proton scoop, 222–23 Proxmire, William, 238 Puerto Rico, 239, 243 pulsar, 131 Pythagorean Theorem, 238 Qian Xuesen, 141 Qi Jiguang, 24 Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize, 92 quantum entanglement, 230–32, 230 quantum genesis, 255 quantum mechanics, 258 quantum teleportation, 230–32, 230 quantum theory, 189 qubits, 230 Queloz, Didier, 126–28, 133 R-7 rocket, 37 R-16 rocket, 43 radiation, infrared, 109, 253–54, 254 radioactivity, as energy source, 124, 181 radio waves, 66, 187, 189, 242 ramjets, 222–23 RAND Corporation, 222 Rare Earth hypothesis, 241 RCS Energia, 106 RD-180 engine, 72 Reagan, Ronald, administration of, 167, 271 reality TV, 75, 171, 214, 282 “Realm of Fear,” 229 reasoning, human capacity for, 13–17, 18–19 red dwarfs, 131 Red Mars (Stanley), 174 Red Scare, 141 Redstone rocket, 36–37, 71 reindeer, 119–20 remote sensing, 175–91, 224 RepRap Project, 227 reproduction, sexual, 6, 172 Ride, Sally, 74 “Right Stuff,” as term, 71, 114 Right Stuff, The (Wolfe), 272 Ringworld series (Niven), 253 risk: as basic to human nature, 9, 262 genetic factor in, 10–12 of living on Mars, 167–70 in pushing human limits, 120 of space tourism, 102, 105–9, 155 of space travel, 42–43, 55–56, 56, 106–9, 152–53 Robinson, Kim Stanley, 174 robonaut project, 179 robots, robotics: as aids to humans, 249, 250 in asteroid redirection, 104 commercial, 178 ethical issues of, 179 nanotechnology in, 179–82, 181 remote control of, 177–78 remote sensing through, 176 self-assembly and self-replication by, 226–28, 258, 259 in spacecraft, 50, 100, 100 space exploration by, 53–57, 66, 98, 133, 161, 177–79, 179, 208, 224–28 see also cyborgs; nanobots Rocketdyne, 112 rocket equation, 27, 53, 72–73, 110–11, 111, 148, 220, 268 rocket fuel, 110–13, 148, 156, 159, 161 comparison of efficiency of, 219–24 Rocket Performance Calculator, 222 rockets: alternatives to, 148–53 “bible” of, 267 challenges in launching of, 43–44, 46–49, 106, 107, 111–12, 148 comparison of US and Soviet, 44 cost of, 112–13, 113 developing technology of, 21–39, 43, 101, 103, 112–13, 183, 262 fuel for, 110–13, 148, 156, 159, 161, 220–21 launched from planes, 84 liquid-fueled, 28–29, 29 physics and function of, 110–14 proposed energy technologies for, 220–24 reusable, 101, 103, 111, 112, 113 solar sails compared to, 183 as term, 23 visionaries in development of, 26–30, 94 in warfare, 22–24, 30, 32–34 see also specific rockets “Rockets to the Planets in Space, The” (Oberth), 28 Rogers Commission, 271 Rohrabacher, Dana, 284 Rome, ancient, 18, 67, 163 Rovekamp, Roger, 207 rovers, 66–67, 92, 125, 140, 143, 158, 165, 167 nanotechnology in, 181–82 remote sensing through, 176 Rozier, Jean-François de, 68 RP-1 kerosine, 110 RS-25 rocket, 112 Russia, 23, 26–27, 149, 178 space program of, 37, 65–66, 72, 75, 84, 91, 104, 106, 107–8, 113, 114, 140, 143, 168, 184, 195, 200, 271 space tourism by, 75, 102 tensions between US and, 72 see also Soviet Union Russian Revolution, 27, 47 Russian Space Agency, 102 Rutan, Burt, 72, 82–86, 85, 88, 88, 89, 91, 97–98, 105–6, 214 Rutan, Dick, 83–84 Rutan Aircraft Factory, 83 Saberhagen, Fred, 177, 259 Sagan, Carl, 53, 121–22, 121, 176–77, 184, 198, 234–35, 238, 240 Sahakian, Barbara, 98 Sahara Desert, 238 sails: solar, 183–86, 185 wind-driven, 67–68, 183, 262 Salyut space station, 54, 108 satellites: artificial Earth, 36–39, 37, 40, 65, 71, 106 commercial, 96, 105 communications, 101, 142, 153 in energy capture, 253 geostationary, 149 GPS, 144 launching of, 154, 154 miniature, 90, 184–85 Saturn: moon of, 125, 227 probes to, 52–53 as uninhabitable, 125 Saturn V rocket, 43, 44, 46, 54, 83, 104, 111, 113, 113, 166 Scaled Composites, 83, 89 science fiction, 192, 196, 222, 223, 239, 250, 253 aliens in, 186–87 in film, 28, 204 Mars in, 164, 174 roots of, 20 technologies of, 228–32, 259 see also specific authors and works scientific method, 213 Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), 187–90, 234, 239, 254 evolution and technology of, 237–39, 242–43, 242 lack of signals detected by, 236–37, 240–44 new paradigms for, 258 “Searching for Interstellar Communications” (Cocconi and Morrison), 187 sea travel: early human migration through, 8, 9 exploration by, 109, 262 propulsion in, 67–68 self-replication, 226–28, 258, 259 Senate, US, Armed Services Preparedness Committee of, 39 SETI Institute, 188 78–6 (pig), 250 sex: promiscuous, 12 in reproduction, 6, 172 in space, 200, 214 Shackleton Energy Company, 161 Shane, Scott, 98 Shatner, William, 88–89 Shelley, Mary, 206 Shenlong (“Divine Dragon”), 145 Shenzhou 10, 142–43 Shepard, Alan, 41, 84 Shostak, Seth, 243 Siberia, 65, 119–20, 238 population dispersion into, 8, 118, 218 Sidereal Messenger, The (Galileo), 270 Siemienowicz, Kazimierz, 267 Simonyi, Charles, 75 Sims, 175 simulation: infinite regression in, 261 living in, 257–62 simulation hypothesis, 261 Sinatra, Frank, 45 singularity, 207 in origin of cosmos, 255 and simulation, 257–62 technological, 258–59 Singularity University, 94, 259 Skylab space station, 54, 116 Skype video, 176 smart motes, 181, 225 smartphones, 92, 185 Smithsonian Institution, 30, 81 Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 85, 91, 271 Snow Crash (Stephenson), 103 Snowden, Edward, 178 social media, 195 Sojourner rover, 165 SolarCity, 96–97 solar flares, 167 solar power, 96, 181, 183–86 solar sails, solar sailing, 183–86, 185, 223, 225, 227 Solar System: discovery of first planet beyond, 126–27 edge of, 50, 53, 121 formation of, 156 habitability potential in, 122, 124–26 latency variations in, 178 probes into, 51–52, 66, 177, 185–86, 208, 270 projected travel within, 248–49, 263 property rights in, 145–47, 198 worlds beyond, 126–29, 156, 208, 215, 250, 263 solar wind, 162, 223 sound barrier, breaking of, 69, 71 South America, 11, 202, 218 Soviet Union, 30, 34, 37, 141 fall of, 47, 65, 75, 197, 271–72 rocket development in, 35–39 space program failures and losses of, 43, 47, 50–51, 54, 269 space program of, 37–39, 40–43, 141, 149, 237, 271 Soyuz spacecraft, 43, 55, 75, 84, 91, 102, 106, 113, 143 crash of, 107–8 space: civilians in, 55, 74 civilian vs. military control of, 37–39, 69–71, 79, 153 commercialization of, 55, 63, 73–76, 79–80, 88–89, 92, 97, 99–109, 100, 110, 147, 153–56, 154, 199, 214, 249, 275 debris in, 144, 152 first American in, 41 first man in, 40–41, 41 first women in, 40, 74 as infinite, 18, 19, 22 as inhospitable to human beings, 53–54, 114–17, 121 legislation on, 39, 78, 90, 144, 145–47, 198–200 living in, 192–208 “living off the land” in, 166, 200 peaceful exploration of, 39 potential for human habitabilty in, 123 prototype for sealed ecosystem in, 192–97 Space Act (1958), 39, 90 Space Adventures, 102, 275 space colonization: challenges of, 197–201 cyborgs in, 204–8 evolutionary diversion in, 201–4 legal issues in, 198–200 of Mars, 166–71, 169, 192, 195, 203 off-Earth human beings in, 215, 250–51 prototype experiments for, 192–97 space elevators, 27, 148–53, 150, 160–61, 185, 280 “Space Exploration via Telepresence,” 178 Spaceflight Society, 28 space hotels, 102–3 Space Launch System (SLS), 104 space mining, 155–56, 161–62 “Space Oddity,” 142 spaceplanes, 71–72, 85, 144 Spaceport America, 1–6, 105 Space Race, 35–39, 37, 40–43, 50, 55, 139 SpaceShipOne, 72, 85, 85, 88–89, 88, 91 SpaceShipTwo, 88, 101, 105 Space Shuttle, 45, 46, 49, 64, 72, 84, 85, 111–13, 112, 159, 167, 194, 219–20, 222, 275 disasters of, 55–56, 56, 74–75, 107, 111–13 final flight of, 271 limitations of, 55–56, 64–65 as reusable vehicle, 54–55 space sickness, 114 spacesuits, 89, 182, 195–96 space-time, 255, 255 manipulation of, 258 space tourism, 63, 73, 75–76, 79–80, 88–89, 91, 101–3, 154, 170, 214 celebrities in, 88, 101–2 revenue from, 154–55, 155 risks of, 102, 105–9, 155 rules for, 105 space travel: beyond Solar System, see interstellar travel bureaucracy of, 105–10, 271 cost of, 39, 42, 45, 49, 54, 55, 66, 75, 81–82, 91, 112–14, 113, 139–49, 153, 155–56, 158–59, 161, 166, 179, 183, 198, 214, 217, 222, 224–26, 252, 270, 275, 284 early attempts at, 21–22, 22 effect of rocket equation in, see rocket equation entrepreneurs of, 81–98 erroneous predictions about, 214 failures and disasters in, 21–22, 22, 38, 43, 47, 50–51, 54–56, 56, 63–64, 68, 72, 74–75, 101, 102, 107, 142, 184, 269, 271, 275 fatality rate of, 107–9 fictional vignettes of, 1–4, 59–62, 135–38, 209–12 Internet compared to, 76–80, 77, 80 life extension for, 250–51 lifetimes lived in, 251 living conditions in, 114–17 new business model for, 99–105 Newton’s theories as basis of, 25 obstacles to, 21, 63, 66–67, 105–109 space travel (continued) as part of simulation, 261–62 public engagement in, 45, 73, 85, 93, 162, 177, 217 remote sensing vs., 175–91 risks of, 43–44, 83, 89, 93, 105–9 speculation on future of, 76–80, 133, 213–32, 248–52 suborbital, 84 telescopic observation vs., 49–50 visionaries of, 26–39, 80, 94, 109 SpaceX, 96, 97, 100–103, 113–14, 275 SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, 96, 100, 100, 102, 170 special theory of relativity, 228, 231 specific impulse, 220 spectroscopy, 127, 165, 176 spectrum analyzer, 237 Speer, Albert, 34 Spielberg, Steven, 238 Spirit of St.

Diet for a New America by John Robbins

Albert Einstein, carbon footprint, clean water, disinformation, Flynn Effect, haute cuisine, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, ocean acidification, placebo effect, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Review

Bill McKibben, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet (New York: Holt, 2010), xii. 12. “Suffering the Science: Climate Change, People, and Poverty,” Oxfam briefing paper 130, July 6, 2009, http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp130-suffering-the-science.pdf (accessed May 14, 2012). 13. “What Is Ocean Acidification?” Oceana.org, http://oceana.org/en/our-work/climate-energy/ocean-acidification/learn-act/what-is-ocean-acidification (accessed May 14, 2012). 14. Jessica Ellis, “Montana’s Melting Glaciers: The Poster-Child for Climate Change,” CNN, October 6, 2010, http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-06/world/montana.glaciers.climate_1_glaciers-mountain-ecosystems-climate-change?

…

., 227, 316 North Carolina, 308 Norum, Kaare, 195–96 Norway, WWII meat consumption diminished in, 133, 134 Norwegian Medical Association, 195–96 “No Veal This Meal” campaign, 100–101 Novick, Richard, 278 nuclear power plants, 343 Nurmi, Paavo, 140 nutrition “basic four” propaganda about, 273 cancer and, 229–31 health consequences of, 129–30, 133–36 medical community ignorance about, 130–32 nutritional science, 230 O oats, 326 obesity, 75, 245, 264–66 Occupy Wall Street protests, 356 ocean acidification, 361–62 Ogallala Aquifer, 344 Ogonyok (Soviet journal), 6 Ohio State University, 349 Oklahoma, 300, 344 Oreffice, Paul, 323 Oregon, 342–43 “organic,” use of term, 52 organic farming, 314, 315–18 organic produce, 318 Ornish, Dean, 357–58 Oscar Mayer meat company, 110–11, 214 osteoarthritis, 268 osteoporosis dairy industry obfuscations and, 178–79 health consequences of, 169–70, 170 protein excess as cause of, 169–73, 172 t., 178–80 research on, 173–75 treatment for, 244 in U.S., 179–80 vegetarianism and, 175–76 ostriches, 25–26 ovarian cancer, 247 ovarian cysts, 287 Overseas Development Council, 327 oxygen, 337 ozone depletion, 334 P Pace, Henry F., 86 Pachauri, Rajendra, 366 Panama, 338 pancreas, 253, 254, 256 pancreatic cancer, 181 Paramount Chickens, 40 Pauling, Linus, 227 PBBs (polybrominated biphenyls), 301 PCBs, 291, 305–8, 311, 320, 321 Pelorus Jack (dolphin), 4–5 Penguin (ship), 4–5 Perdue, Frank, 35 Perdue, Inc., 35 Perkins, Mike, 84 permafrost, methane emissions from, 364 pesticides alternatives to, 314–18 “banning” of, 293–95, 301–2 in breast milk, 319–21 chemical stability of, 290–91, 294 chlorinated hydrocarbon, 290–91, 306 corporate obfuscations, 308–10 environmental effects of, 289–90 in food chain, 291–92, 296, 298–99 future threat posed by, 322–23 in GMOs, 359–60 human consumption of products containing, 289 in livestock feed, 307–8, 310–11 management/regulation of, 292–93 marketing of, 292 mass poisonings from, 299–301 meat inspections and, 313–14 mutagenic effect of, 322–23 production rates, 290 public unawareness of, 300, 302 reducing intake of, 318–19 resistance to, 315–17 time lag between ingestion and effects, 299–300, 304–5 in U.S. diet, 294 t.

News and How to Use It: What to Believe in a Fake News World by Alan Rusbridger

airport security, basic income, Bellingcat, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Climategate, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, crisis actor, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Filter Bubble, future of journalism, George Floyd, ghettoisation, global pandemic, Google Earth, green new deal, hive mind, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeremy Corbyn, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Murray Gell-Mann, Narrative Science, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Nicholas Carr, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, post-truth, profit motive, public intellectual, publication bias, Seymour Hersh, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, tech baron, the scientific method, TikTok, universal basic income, WikiLeaks, yellow journalism

<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jul/04/climatechange-hacked-emails-muir-russell> Peppiatt, Richard. ‘Richard Peppiatt’s letter to Daily Star proprietor Richard Desmond’. The Guardian, 4 March 2011. <https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/04/daily-star-reporter-letter-full> Phil Williamson. ‘Two views of ocean acidification – which is fatally flawed?’ Marine Biological Association, 2016. <https://www.mba.ac.uk/two-views-ocean-acidification-which-fatally-flawed> Philp, Catherine and Richard Spencer. ‘Critics leap on reporter Robert Fisk’s failure to find signs of gas attack’. The Times, 18 April 2018. <https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/critics-leap-on-reporter-robert-fisk-s-failure-to-find-signs-of-gas-attack-fx7f3fs2r> Pickard, Victor.

…

Nor does he confine himself to climate change. At the height of the Covid-19 crisis he took to retweeting the claims of quack doctors who claimed to be able to cure coronavirus patients and led a movement to refuse to wear face masks. He has rubbished the organic food movement and dismissed ocean acidification as alarmist and of no danger to marine life (‘Almost everything that could be factually wrong, is wrong’ – ocean scientist Dr Phil Williamson). He notoriously cheered on his friend, the writer Toby Young, for attacking the Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore and ‘[giving her] such a seeing-to she’ll be walking bow-legged for months’.

Twilight of Abundance: Why the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short by David Archibald

Bakken shale, carbon tax, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, deindustrialization, energy security, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Great Leap Forward, Herman Kahn, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), means of production, Medieval Warm Period, mutually assured destruction, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, out of africa, peak oil, price discovery process, rising living standards, sceptred isle, South China Sea, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, Yom Kippur War

The fact that Met officials expect to take three years to complete the task gives an indication of the magnitude of the problem. As alarm about “global warming” has become increasingly difficult to maintain in the face of the reality of global cooling, the climate change alarmists have turned their attention to other supposed deleterious effects of our use of carbon-based fuels. Ocean acidification is, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, the last refuge of the global warming scoundrel. To put this scare into context of actual science, the current pH of the oceans is 8.1 (anything less than 7.0 is acid). If humanity burns all the rocks we can economically burn, the alkalinity of the oceans may temporarily fall to a pH of 8.0.

…

There is evidence that marine organisms can very happily live with very high levels of carbon dioxide in seawater. In a reef off Dobu Island in Papua New Guinea, corals grow above active hydrothermal vents bubbling carbon dioxide, in seawater with a pH of 7.3. Consideration of the geological record also shows that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide cannot cause detrimental ocean acidification. The reef-building organisms first evolved about 500 million years ago when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were up to twenty times what they are currently. The second last refuge of the global warming scoundrel is sea-level rise. In fact, sea level has been rising since the world’s glaciers started retreating in 1859.

Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, Asperger Syndrome, Bernie Sanders, Bob Geldof, Boeing 747, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, clean tech, clean water, climate anxiety, Corn Laws, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Elon Musk, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, failed state, Garrett Hardin, Gary Taubes, gentleman farmer, global value chain, Google Earth, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hydraulic fracturing, index fund, Indoor air pollution, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, land tenure, Live Aid, LNG terminal, long peace, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microplastics / micro fibres, Murray Bookchin, ocean acidification, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, Potemkin village, precautionary principle, purchasing power parity, Ralph Nader, renewable energy transition, Rupert Read, School Strike for Climate, Solyndra, Stephen Fry, Steven Pinker, supervolcano, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, WikiLeaks, Y2K

The IPCC did not say the world would end, nor that civilization would collapse, if temperatures rose above 1.5 degrees Celsius.24 Scientists had a similarly negative reaction to the extreme claims made by Extinction Rebellion. Stanford University atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira, one of the first scientists to raise the alarm about ocean acidification, stressed that “while many species are threatened with extinction, climate change does not threaten human extinction.”25 MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel told me, “I don’t have much patience for the apocalypse criers. I don’t think it’s helpful to describe it as an apocalypse.”26 An AOC spokesperson told Axios, “We can quibble about the phraseology, whether it’s existential or cataclysmic.”

…

Pfaff, and Ken Ferschweiler, “Human Presence Diminishes the Importance of Climate in Driving Fire Activity Across the United States,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114, no. 52 (December 2017): 13750–55, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1713885114. 35. Alexandria Symonds, “Amazon Rainforest Fires: Here’s What’s Really Happening,” New York Times, August 23, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com. 36. Timothy D. Clark, Graham D. Raby, Dominique G. Roche et al., “Ocean Acidification Does Not Impair the Behaviour of Coral Reef Fishes,” Nature 557 (2020): 370–75, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1903-y. John Ross, “Ex-judge to Investigate Controversial Marine Research,” Times Higher Education, January 8, 2020. 37. The Future of Food and Agriculture: Alternative Pathways to 2050, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2018, http://www.fao.org/3/I8429EN/i8429en.pdf, 76–77. 38.

…

Germany, 151–53 Green Nuclear Deal, 278 renewables vs., 151–55 subsidies for, 145–46, 153 Nuclear waste, 152–53, 164, 165 Nuclear weapons, 157–63, 171–74, 278–79 Obama, Barack, 13, 188, 201, 206–7, 208, 217–18, 248, 258, 259 Obesity, 132–33 Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria, 3–4, 154, 187, 217 Occidental Petroleum, 214 Ocean acidification, 4, 60, 66 Ocean desalination, 241 Ocean storage of carbon dioxide, 5–6 Ohio, nuclear energy, 163–64, 166–67 Oil drilling, 82–83 Omnivore’s Dilemma, The (Pollan), 139 Oppenheimer, Michael, 2, 15–16 Oppenheimer, Robert, 157–58, 174 Oreskes, Naomi, 250–51, 252 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 114 O’Shaughnessy Dam, 386n Our Common Future (Brundtland Report), 226–27 Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind (Condorcet), 229–30, 231 Overfishing, 56, 58, 59, 121 Oxford University, 30 Pachauri, Rajendra, 139 Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), 150, 156–57, 161, 170, 215, 216–17 Pakistan-India relations, 173 Palm oil, 41, 61, 70, 112, 276 Palo Verde Nuclear Plant, 220 Pandora’s Promise (film), 171 Paper bags, 60 Paradise within the Reach of all Men, The (Etzler), 185–86, 188 Paris Agreement, 42 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, 161–62 Pauling, Linus, 161 Peace Research Institute Oslo, 8–9 Peevey, Michael, 216 Penguin Place Conservation Reserve, 56–58 Penguins, 56–58 PepsiCo, 62–63 Perry, John, 251, 252 Perry, Katy, 222 Pertamina, 211–12 Pesonen, David, 161–62, 167 PETA, 136–40, 144 Peters, Bjorn, 283 Petroleum, 115, 116 Pew Charitable Trusts, 243 Phidias, 53 Philippines, plastic waste, 49 Philippsburg Nuclear Power Plant, 283 Picker, Michael, 213 Pielke, Roger, Jr., 13–15, 24–25, 255, 257–60, 284 Pierrehumbert, Ray, 120 Pinker, Steven, 93–94, 95 Pittsburgh Press, 164 Plastic bag ban, 60, 64 Plastic bags, 47 Plastic degradation, 50–52 Plastics consumption, 48 Plastic straws ban on, 46, 47, 59–60 Figgener and sea turtle rescue, 45–46, 47 Plastic waste, 47–52, 59–60 Figgener and sea turtle rescue, 45–46, 47 persistence of, 47–50 Plato, 265 Plumptre, Andrew, 76–79, 82 Podesta, John, 258 Polar bears, 250–53 Pollan, Michael, 139 Polystyrene, 51–52 Polyunsaturated fats, 140 Population Bomb, The (Ehrlich), 237, 242 Porter Ranch, 215 Potsdam Institute, 11, 12 Poverty reduction, 225–26 Precourt Institute for Energy, 219 Primary energy, 115 Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, 222, 223, 247 Princeton University, 2 Productivity.

Global Catastrophic Risks by Nick Bostrom, Milan M. Cirkovic

affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, anthropic principle, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, availability heuristic, backpropagation, behavioural economics, Bill Joy: nanobots, Black Swan, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Charles Babbage, classic study, cognitive bias, complexity theory, computer age, coronavirus, corporate governance, cosmic microwave background, cosmological constant, cosmological principle, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, death of newspapers, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, distributed generation, Doomsday Clock, Drosophila, endogenous growth, Ernest Rutherford, failed state, false flag, feminist movement, framing effect, friendly AI, Georg Cantor, global pandemic, global village, Great Leap Forward, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hans Moravec, heat death of the universe, hindsight bias, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, Kevin Kelly, Kuiper Belt, Large Hadron Collider, launch on warning, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, means of production, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, millennium bug, mutually assured destruction, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, Oklahoma City bombing, P = NP, peak oil, phenotype, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, reversible computing, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, scientific worldview, Singularitarianism, social intelligence, South China Sea, strong AI, superintelligent machines, supervolcano, synthetic biology, technological singularity, technoutopianism, The Coming Technological Singularity, the long tail, The Turner Diaries, Tunguska event, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, uranium enrichment, Vernor Vinge, War on Poverty, Westphalian system, Y2K

Unlike the previous two examples which are additional sources of GH G, tropical forest dieback is a reduction in the strength of a carbon sink (Cox et al., 2004) . As temperatures rise, Amazonia dries and warms, initiating the loss of forest, leading to a reduction in the uptake of carbon dioxide (Cox et al., 2000) . • Ocean acidification (F) is an oceanic analogue to forest dieback from a carbon cycle perspective in that it is the reduction in the efficacy of a sink. Carbon dioxide is scrubbed out of the system by phytoplankton. As carbon dioxide builds up the ocean acidifies, rendering the phytoplankton less able to perform this role, weakening the ocean carbon cycle (Orr et al., 2005)

…

Though preliminary analysis suggests the idea of attempting to tune global mean temperatures by lowering insolation might ought not be dismissed out of hand (Govindasamy and Caldeira, 2000), more full analyses are required before this becomes a serious policy option (Kiehl, 2006). In any case, some problems of the direct effects of carbon - such as ocean acidification - are likely to remain significant issues, inviting the pessimistic possibility that geoengineering may carry its own severe climate-related risks. Climate change and global risk 28 1 This sort of intuition has implied that our best-guess, linear model of climate change leads to a preference for price controls.

…

Key, Keith Lindsay, Ernst Maier-Reimer, Richard Matear, Patrick Monfray, Anne Mouchet, Raymond G. Najjar, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Keith B. Rodgers, Christopher L. Sabine, Jorge L. Sarmiento, Reiner Schlitzer, Richard D. Slater, Ian J. Totterdell, Marie-France Wei rig, Yasuhiro Yamanaka and Andrew Yool, (2005). Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms. Nature, 437, 681-686. Pinto, J . P., Turco, R.P., and Toon, O.B. (1989) Self-limiting physical and chemical effects in volcanic eruption clouds. ]. Geophys. Res., 94, 1 1 1 65- 1 1 174. Pizer, W.A. (2003). Climate change catastrophes.

The Ages of Globalization by Jeffrey D. Sachs

Admiral Zheng, AlphaGo, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, British Empire, Cape to Cairo, circular economy, classic study, colonial rule, Columbian Exchange, Commentariolus, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, DeepMind, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, domestication of the camel, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, European colonialism, general purpose technology, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, income per capita, invention of agriculture, invention of gunpowder, invention of movable type, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, job automation, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, low skilled workers, mass immigration, Nikolai Kondratiev, ocean acidification, out of africa, packet switching, Pax Mongolica, precision agriculture, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, rewilding, South China Sea, spinning jenny, Suez canal 1869, systems thinking, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, Turing machine, Turing test, urban planning, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, wikimedia commons, zoonotic diseases

Starting from due north and moving counter-clockwise around the circle, the planetary boundaries are climate change (from greenhouse-gas emissions); biospheric integrity (both genetic diversity and functional diversity); land-system change (notably deforestation); freshwater use (heavily related to irrigation); biogeochemical flows (notably nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer use); ocean acidification (from the high concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere); atmospheric aerosol loading (from burning fossil fuels and biomass); stratospheric ozone depletion (from the use of chlorofluorocarbons); and novel entities (chemical pollutants including pesticides and plastics). 8.10 Planetary Boundaries Source: J.

…

See New International Economic Order Nine Years’ War (1688–97), 122 nomadic populations, 43–45, 60 North America: Eurasia compared to, 63; European colonists settling, 22; European sea routes linking, 125–26; geographical bounties of, 21–22; horse extinction in, 56; horses in, 101; King William’s War in, 122; land use in, 103; population of, 102, 103; slave plantations of, 119; technologies cut off from, 51–52 North Atlantic, 98–101 Novum Organum (Bacon, F.), 106 Noyce, Robert, 171 nuclear powers, 30 ocean acidification, 188 Ocean Age, 2, 4, 7, 195; global reach in, 11; lessons from, 126–27 ocean navigation, 97–101 ocean shipping, 134 Ogedei Khan, 91 oil reserves, 18 Old World, 100–101, 228n10 Old World technologies, 21 Opium War, 146–47 organic economy, 133 Ottoman Empire, 89, 111, 158 Our Common Future (report), 197 overland transport, 25 oxen, 47 ozone depletion, 188 pack animals, 56 packet switching, 171 Paleolithic Age, 2–3, 7, 195; dog domestication in, 54–55; human dispersal during, 35; hunter/gatherers in, 15–16; lessons from, 40; Middle Paleolithic of, 34; migration and human settlement in, 10–11; productive activity in, 15; sub-periods of, 226n1 papermaking, 82 Paris Climate Agreement, 232n4 Parthasarathi, Prasannan, 149 Parthian Empire, 82–83 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963), 213 Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), 182 patents, 182 pathogens, 101, 101–2 Paul III (pope), 106 Pax Mongolica, 92 PCT.

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Abraham Maslow, agricultural Revolution, air freight, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bernie Madoff, British Empire, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, charter city, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, dematerialisation, demographic dividend, demographic transition, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, Edward Glaeser, Edward Jenner, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, falling living standards, feminist movement, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Flynn Effect, food miles, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hans Rosling, happiness index / gross national happiness, haute cuisine, hedonic treadmill, Herbert Marcuse, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invisible hand, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, John Nash: game theory, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kula ring, Large Hadron Collider, Mark Zuckerberg, Medieval Warm Period, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Northern Rock, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, packet switching, patent troll, Pax Mongolica, Peter Thiel, phenotype, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, Productivity paradox, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Solow, Silicon Valley, spice trade, spinning jenny, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supervolcano, technological singularity, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, ultimatum game, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, Vernor Vinge, Vilfredo Pareto, wage slave, working poor, working-age population, world market for maybe five computers, Y2K, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

In my own adult lifetime, I have listened to implacable predictions of growing poverty, coming famines, expanding deserts, imminent plagues, impending water wars, inevitable oil exhaustion, mineral shortages, falling sperm counts, thinning ozone, acidifying rain, nuclear winters, mad-cow epidemics, Y2K computer bugs, killer bees, sex-change fish, global warming, ocean acidification and even asteroid impacts that would presently bring this happy interlude to a terrible end. I cannot recall a time when one or other of these scares was not solemnly espoused by sober, distinguished and serious elites and hysterically echoed by the media. I cannot recall a time when I was not being urged by somebody that the world could only survive if it abandoned the foolish goal of economic growth.

…

It is also apparent from recent research that corals become more resilient the more they experience sudden warmings. Some reefs may yet die if the world warms rapidly in the twenty-first century, but others in cooler regions may expand. Local threats are far more immediate than climate change. Ocean acidification looks suspiciously like a back-up plan by the environmental pressure groups in case the climate fails to warm: another try at condemning fossil fuels. The oceans are alkaline, with an average pH of about 8.1, well above neutral (7). They are also extremely well buffered. Very high carbon dioxide levels could push that number down, perhaps to about 7.95 by 2050 – still highly alkaline and still much higher than it was for most of the last 100 million years.

…

Kung people 44, 135, 136–7 Kuznets curve 106 Kwakiutl people 92 Lagos 322 Lagrange Point 346 lakes, acidification of 305–6 Lamalera people 87 Lancashire 214, 217, 232, 263 Landes, David 223, 406 Lang, Tim 392 language: and exchange 58; genes for 55; Indo-European 129; and isolationism 73; Neanderthals 4, 55; numbers of languages 73; as unique human development 4 Laos 209 lapis lazuli 162, 164 Lascaux caves, France 6 lasers 272 Lassa fever 307 Laurion, Attica 171 Law, John 29, 259 Lawson, Nigel, Baron 331 Lay, Ken 29, 385 Layard, Richard 25 lead 167, 174, 177, 213 Leadbetter, Charles 290 Leahy, Michael 92 leather 70, 122, 167, 176 Lebanon 167 LeBlanc, Steven 137 LEDs (light-emitting diodes) 21–2 lentils 129 Leonardo da Vinci 196, 251 Levy, Stephen 355 Liang Ying (farm worker) 220 liberalism 108, 109–110, 290 Liberia 14, 316 libertarianism 106 Libya 171 lice 68 lichen 75 life expectancy: in Africa 14, 316, 422; in Britain 13, 15, 284; improvements in 12, 14, 15, 17–18, 205, 284, 287, 298, 316; in United States 298; world averages 47 Life (magazine) 304 light, artificial 13, 16, 17, 20–22, 37, 233, 234, 240, 245, 272, 368 light-emitting diodes (LEDs) 21–2 Limits to Growth (report) 303–4, 420 Lindsey, Brink 102, 109 linen 216, 218 lions 43, 87 literacy 106, 201, 290, 353, 396 Liverpool 62, 283 local sourcing (of goods) 35, 41–2, 149, 392; see also food miles Locke, John 96 Lodygin, Alexander 272 Lombardy 178, 196 Lomborg, Björn 280 London 12, 116, 186, 199, 218, 222, 282; as financial centre 259 longitude, measurement of 261 Longshan culture 397 Los Angeles 17, 142 Lothal, Indus valley 162, 164 Louis XI, King of France 184 Louis XIV, King of France 36, 37, 38, 184, 259 Lowell, Francis Cabot 263 Lübeck 180 Lucca 178, 179 Lunar Society 256 Luther, Martin 102 Luxembourg 331 Lyon 184 Macao 183 MacArthur, General Douglas 141 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 1st Baron 11, 285–7, 359 McCloskey, Deirdre 109, 366–7 Mace, Ruth 73 McEwan, Ian 47 Machiguenga people 87 MacKay, David 342 McKendrick, Neil 224 McKibben, Bill 293 Macmillan, Harold, 1st Earl of Stockton 16 McNamara, Robert 203 mad-cow disease (vCJD) 280, 308 Madagascar 70, 299 Maddison, Angus 180 Maddox, John 207 Madoff, Bernard 28–9 Maghribis 178, 180 magnesium 213 maize 126, 146–7, 153, 155, 156, 163; for biofuel 240, 241 malaria 135, 157, 275, 299, 310, 318, 319, 331, 336, 353, 428, 429 Malawi 40–41, 132, 316, 318 Malawi, Lake 54 Malay Peninsula 66 Malaysia 35, 89, 242, 332 Mali 316, 326 Malinowski, Bronislaw 134 malnutrition 154, 156, 337 Maltese Falcon, The (film) 86 Malthus, Robert 139, 140, 146, 191, 249, 303 Malthusianism 141, 193, 196, 200, 202, 401 mammoths 68, 69, 71, 73, 302 Manchester 214, 218, 283 Mandell, Lewis 254 manganese 150, 213 mangoes 156, 327, 392 Manhattan 83 manure 147, 150, 198, 200, 282 Mao Zedong 16, 187, 262, 296, 311 Marchetti, Cesare 345–6 Marcuse, Herbert 291 Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France 199 markets (in capital and assets) 9, 258–60 markets (in goods and services): and collective betterment 9–10, 36–9, 103–110, 115–16, 281; disdain for 102–3, 104, 291–2, 358; etiquette and ritual of 133–4; and generosity 86–7; global interdependence 42–3; market failure 182, 250; ‘perfect markets’ 249–50; and population control 210–211; and preindustrial economies 133–4; and trust 98–100, 103; and virtue 100–104, 105; see also bartering; exchange; trade Marne, River 234 Martu aborigines 62 Marx, Karl 102, 104, 107–8, 291, 406 Marxism 101, 217–18, 319, 356 Maskelyne, Nevil 221 Maudslay, Henry 221 Mauritius 187, 316 Mauryan empire 172–3, 201, 357 Maxwell, James Clerk 412 measles 14, 135, 310 meat eating 51, 60, 62, 68–9, 126, 147, 156, 241, 376 Mecca 177 Mediterranean Sea: prehistoric settlements 56, 68–9, 159; trade 89, 164, 167–8, 169, 171, 176, 178 meerkats 87 Mehrgarh, Baluchistan 162 Mehta, Suketa 189 Meissen 185 memes 5 Menes, Pharaoh of Egypt 161 mercury 183, 213, 237 Mersey, River 62 Merzbach valley, Germany 138 Mesopotamia 38, 115, 158–61, 163, 177, 193, 251, 357; see also Assyrian empire; Iraq metal prices, reductions in 213 Metaxas, Ioannis 186 methane 140, 329, 345 Mexico: agriculture 14, 123, 126, 142, 387; emigration to United States 117; hurricanes 335; life expectancy 15; nature conservation 324; swine flu 309 Mexico City 190 Meyer, Warren 281 Mezherich, Ukraine 71 mice 55, 125 Michelangelo 115 Microsoft (corporation) 24, 260, 268, 273 migrations: early human 66–70, 82; rural to urban 158, 188–9, 210, 219–20, 226–7, 231, 406; see also emigration Milan 178, 184 Miletus 170–71 milk 22, 55, 97, 135 Mill, John Stuart 34, 103–4, 108, 249, 274, 276, 279 Millennium Development goals 316 Miller, Geoffrey 44, 274 millet 126 Mills, Mark 244 Ming empire 117, 181–4, 260, 311 Minoan civilisation 166 Mississippi Company 29 Mittal, Lakshmi 268 mobile phones 37, 252, 257, 261, 265, 267, 297, 326–7 Mohamed (prophet) 176 Mohawk Indians 138–9 Mohenjo-Daro, Indus valley 161–2 Mojave Desert 69 Mokyr, Joel 197, 252, 257, 411, 412 monarchies 118, 162, 172, 222 monasteries 176, 194, 215, 252 Monbiot, George 291, 311, 426 money: development of 71, 132, 392; ‘trust inscribed’ 85 Mongolia 230 Mongols 161, 181, 182 monkeys 3, 57, 59, 88; capuchins 96–7, 375 monopolies 107, 111, 166, 172, 182 monsoon 174 Montesquieu, Charles, Baron de 103 moon landing 268–9, 275 Moore, Gordon 221, 405 Moore, Michael 291 Morgan, J.P. 100 Mormonism 205 Morocco 53, 209 Morse, Samuel 272 mortgages 25, 29, 30, 323; sub-prime 296 Moses 138 mosquito nets 318 ‘most favoured nation’ principle 186 Moyo, Dambisa 318 Mozambique 132, 316 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 267 Mugabe, Robert 262 Mumbai 189, 190 murder 14, 20, 85, 88, 106, 118, 201 Murrays’ Mills, Manchester 214 music 70, 115, 266–7, 326 Myceneans 166 Nairobi 322 Namibia 209, 324 Napoleon I 184 NASA 269 Nashville 326 Nassarius shells 53, 56, 65 National Food Service 268 National Health Service 111, 261 nationalisation (of industry) 166, 182 nationalism 357 native Americans 62, 92–3, 138–9 Natufians 125 natural selection 5–6, 27, 49–50, 350 nature conservation 324, 339; see also wilderness land, expansion of Neanderthals 3, 4, 53, 55, 64, 65, 68, 71, 79, 373, 378 Nebuchadnezzar 169 needles 43, 70 Nehru, Jawaharlal 187 Nelson, Richard 5 Nepal 15, 209 Netscape (corporation) 259 New Deal 109 New Guinea: agriculture 123, 126, 387; languages 73; malaria 336; prehistoric 66, 123, 126; tribes 87, 92, 138 New York 12, 16, 83, 169, 190 New York Times 23, 295, 305 New Zealand 17, 35, 42, 70 Newcomen, Thomas 244, 256 newspapers 270, 295; licensing copyrights 267 Newsweek (magazine) 329 Newton, Sir Isaac 116, 256 nickel 34, 213 Niger 208–9, 210, 324 Nigeria 15, 31, 99, 117, 210, 236, 316 Nike (corporation) 115, 188 Nile, River 161, 164, 167, 171 nitrogen fertlisers 140, 146, 147, 149–50, 155, 305 nitrous oxide 155 Nobel Peace Prize 143, 280 ‘noble savage’ 43–4, 135–8 Norberg, Johann 187 Nordau, Max 288 Nordhaus, William 331 Norte Chico civilisation 162–3 North, Douglass 324, 397 North Carolina 219–20 North Korea 15, 116–17, 187, 333 North Sea 180, 185 North Sentinel islanders 67 Northern Rock (bank) 9 Northumberland 407 Norton, Seth 211 Norway 97–8, 332, 344 Norwich 225 nostalgia 12–13, 44, 135, 189, 284–5, 292 Novgorod 180 Noyce, Robert 221, 405 nuclear accidents 283, 293–4, 308, 345, 421 nuclear power 37, 236, 238, 239, 245, 246, 343, 344, 345 nuclear war, threat of 280, 290, 299–300, 333 Obama, Barack 203 obesity 8, 156, 296, 337 obsidian 53, 92, 127 occupational safety 106–7 ocean acidification 280, 340–41 ochre 52, 53, 54, 92 octopi 3 Oersted, Hans Christian 272 Oetzi (mummified ‘iceman’) 122–3, 132–3, 137 Ofek, Haim 131 Ohalo II (archaeological site) 124 oil: and ‘curse of resources’ 31, 320; drilling and refining 242, 343; and generation of electricity 239; manufacture of plastics and synthetics 237, 240; pollution 293–4, 385; prices 23, 238; supplies 149, 237–8, 280, 281, 282, 296, 302–3 old age, quality of life in 18 olive oil 167, 169, 171 Olson, Ken 282 Omidyar, Pierre 99 onchoceriasis 310 open-source software 99, 272–3, 356 Orang Asli people 66 orang-utans 60, 239, 339 organic farming 147, 149–52, 393 Orinoco tar shales, Venezuela 238 Orma people 87 ornament, personal 43, 52, 53, 54, 70, 71, 73 O’Rourke, P.J. 157 Orwell, George 253, 290, 354 Ostia 174 otters 297, 299 Otto I, Holy Roman emperor 178 Ottoman empire 161 Oued Djebanna, Algeria 53 oxen 130, 136, 195, 197, 214–15 oxytocin (hormone) 94–5, 97–8 ozone layer 280, 296 Paarlberg, Robert 154 Pacific islanders 134 Pacific Ocean 184 Paddock, William and Paul 301 Padgett, John 103 Page, Larry 114 Pagel, Mark 73 Pakistan 142–3, 204, 300 palm oil 57–8, 239, 240, 242, 339 Pan Am (airline) 24 paper 282, 304 Papin, Denis 256 papyrus 171, 175 Paraguay 61 Pareto, Vilfredo 249 Paris 215, 358; electric lighting 233; restaurants 264 parrots 3 Parsons, Sir Charles 234 Parthian empire 161 Pasadena 17 Pataliputra 173 patents 223, 263, 264–6, 269, 271, 413–14 patriarchy 136 Paul, St 102 PayPal (e-commerce business) 262 peacocks 174 peanuts 126 peat 215–16 Peel, Sir Robert 185 Pemberton, John 263 pencils 38 penicillin 258 Pennington, Hugh 308 pensions 29, 40, 106 Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, The 174 Persia 89, 161, 171, 177 Persian Gulf 66, 164, 340, 429 Peru 97–8, 126, 162–3, 320, 387; silver 31, 132, 183–4 pessimism: and belief in turning points in history 287–9, 301, 311; natural pessimism of human nature 294–5; in nineteenth century 283–8; in twentieth century 281, 282, 288–91, 292–4, 296–308, 328–9; in twenty-first century 8–9, 17, 28, 281–2, 291–2, 308–311, 314–15; ubiquity of 280–85, 291–2, 294–7, 341, 352 pesticides 151–2, 154, 155, 336; DDT 297–8, 299; natural 298–9 Peto, Richard 298 Petty, Sir William 185, 199, 254, 256 pharmaceutical industry 260, 266 philanthropy 92, 105, 106, 295, 318–19, 356 Philip II, King of Spain 30–31 Philip II of Macedon 171 Philippines 61–2, 89, 234 Philistines 166, 170, 396 Phillips, Adam 103, 292 Phoenicians 166–70, 177 photography 114, 283, 386 physiocrats 42 pi, calculation of 173 pig farming 135, 145, 148, 197 Pinnacle Point, South Africa 52, 83 Pisa 115, 178 plagues 135, 176, 195–6, 197; forecasts of 280, 284, 307–310; see also Black Death plastics 237, 240, 270 Plate, River 186 platinum 213 Plato 292 Plautus 44 ploughing 129–30, 136, 145, 150, 195, 197, 198, 215 pneumonia 13, 353 Polanyi, Karl 164–5 polar bears 338–9 polio 261, 275, 310 political fragmentation 170–73, 180–81, 184, 185 pollution: effects on wildlife 17, 297, 299, 339; and industrialisation 218; pessimism about 293–4, 304–6; reduction in 17, 106, 148, 279, 293–4, 297, 299 polygamy 136 Pomeranz, Kenneth 201–2 Ponzi, Charles 29 Ponzi schemes 28–9 population control policies 202–4, 210–211 population growth: and food supply 139, 141, 143–4, 146–7, 192, 206, 208–9; global population totals 3, 12, 14, 191, 206, 332; and industrialisation 201–2; and innovation 252; pessimism about 190, 193, 202–3, 281, 290, 293, 300–302, 314; population explosions 8, 139, 141, 202, 206, 281; and specialisation 192–3, 351; see also birth rates; demographic transition; infant mortality; life expectancy porcelain 181, 183, 184–5, 225, 251 Porritt, Jonathan 314 Portugal 75, 183, 184, 317, 331 Post-it notes 261 Postrel, Virginia 290–91 potatoes 199 Potrykus, Ingo 154 pottery 77, 158, 159, 163, 168, 177, 225, 251 Pound, Ezra 289 poverty: and charitable giving 106; current levels 12, 15, 16–17, 41, 316, 353–4; and industrialisation 217–20; pessimism about 280, 290, 314–15; reduction in 12, 15, 16–17, 290; and self-sufficiency 42, 132, 200, 202, 226–7; solutions to 8, 187–8, 316–17, 322, 326–8, 353–4 Prebisch, Raul 187 preservatives (in food) 145 Presley, Elvis 110 Priestley, Joseph 256 printing: on paper 181, 251, 252, 253, 272; on textiles 225, 232 prisoner’s dilemma game 96 property rights 130, 223, 226, 320, 321, 323–5 protectionism 186–7, 226 Ptolemy III 171 Pusu-Ken (Assyrian merchant) 165–6 putting out system 226, 227, 230 pygmy people 54, 67 Pythagoras 171 Quarterly Review 284 quasars 275 Quesnay, François 42 racial segregation 108 racism 104, 415 radioactivity 293–4, 345 radios 264–5, 271 railways 252; and agriculture 139, 140–41; opposition to 283–4; speed of 283, 286; travel costs 23 rainforests 144, 149, 150, 240, 243, 250–51, 338 Rajan, Raghuram 317 Rajasthan 162, 164 Ramsay, Gordon 392 rape seed 240 Ratnagar, Shereen 162 ravens 69 Rawls, John 96 Read, Leonard 38 recession, economic 10, 28, 113, 311 reciprocity 57–9, 87, 95, 133 Red Sea 66, 82, 127, 170, 174, 177 Rees, Martin 294 Reformation 253 refrigeration 139 regress, technological 78–84, 125, 181–2, 197–200, 351, 380 Reiter, Paul 336, 428 religion 4, 104, 106, 170, 357, 358, 396; and population control 205, 207–8, 211; see also Buddhism; Christianity; Islam Rembrandt 116 Renaissance 196 research and development budgets, corporate 260, 262, 269 Research in Motion (company) 265 respiratory disease 18, 307, 310 restaurants 17, 37, 61, 254, 264 Rhine, River 265–6 rhinoceroses 2, 43, 51, 68, 73 Rhodes, Cecil 322 Ricardo, David 75, 169, 187, 193, 196, 249, 274 rice 32, 126, 143, 146–7, 153, 154, 156, 198 Rifkin, Jeremy 306 Riis, Jacob 16 Rio de Janeiro, UN conference (1992) 290 risk aversion 294–5 Rivers, W.H.R. 81 Rivoli, Pietra 220, 228 ‘robber-barons’ 23–4, 100, 265–6 Rockefeller, John D. 23, 281 Rocky Mountains 238 Rogers, Alex 340 Roman empire 161, 166, 172, 173–5, 184, 214, 215, 259–60, 357 Rome 158, 175 Romer, Paul 269, 276–7, 328, 354 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 109 Roosevelt, Theodore 288 Rosling, Hans 368 Rothschild, Nathan 89 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 43, 96, 104, 137 Royal Institution 221 rubber 220 rule of law 116–18, 325 Rumford, Benjamin Thompson, Count 221 rural to urban migration 158, 188–9, 210, 219–20, 226–7, 231, 406 Ruskin, John 104 Russia, post-Soviet 14; oil and gas production 31, 37; population decline 205 Russia, prehistoric 71, 73 Russia, Tsarist 216, 229, 324 Rwanda 14, 316 rye 124, 125, 199, 224, 286 Sachs, Jeffrey 208 Saddam Hussein 161 Sahel region 123, 334 Sahlins, Marshall 133, 135 Sahul (landmass) 66, 67 Salisbury, Wiltshire 194 Salk, Jonas 38, 261 salmon 297 Salmon, Cecil 142 saltpetre 140 Sanger, Frederick 412 Sanskrit 129 São Paulo 190, 315 Sargon of Akkad 164 SARS virus 307, 310 satellites 252, 253 satnav (satellite navigation systems) 268 Saudi Arabia 238 Saunders, Peter 102 Schumpeter, Joseph 113–14, 227, 260, 276, 302 science, and innovation 255–8, 412 Scientific American 280 Scotland 103, 199–200, 227, 263, 315 scrub jays 87 scurvy 14, 258 sea level, changes in 128, 314, 333–4 Seabright, Paul 93, 138 seals (for denoting property) 130 search engines 245, 256, 267 Second World War 289 segregation, racial 108 Seine, River 215 self-sufficiency 8, 33–5, 39, 82, 90, 133, 192, 193, 351; and poverty 41–2, 132, 200, 202, 226–7 selfishness 86, 87, 93–4, 96, 102, 103, 104, 106, 292 Sematech (non-profit consortium) 267–8 Sentinelese people 67 serendipity 257, 346 serfs 181–2, 222 serotonin 156, 294 sexism 104, 136 sexual division of labour 61–5, 136, 376 sexual reproduction 2, 6, 7, 45, 56, 271; of ideas 6–7, 270–72 Sforza, house of 184 Shady, Ruth 162 Shakespeare, William 2; The Merchant of Venice 101, 102 Shang dynasty 166 Shapiro, Carl 265 sheep 97, 176, 194, 197 Shell (corporation) 111 shellfish 52, 53, 62, 64, 79, 92, 93, 127, 163, 167 Shennan, Stephen 83, 133 Shermer, Michael 101, 106, 118 ship-building 185, 229; see also boat-building shipping, container 113, 253, 386 Shirky, Clay 356 Shiva, Vandana 156 Siberia 145 Sicily 171, 173, 178 Sidon 167, 170 Siemens, William 234 Sierra Leone 14, 316 Silesia 222 silicon chips 245, 263, 267–8 Silicon Valley 221–2, 224, 257, 258, 259, 268 silk 37, 46, 172, 175, 178, 179, 184, 187, 225 Silk Road 182 silver 31, 132, 164, 165, 167, 168, 169, 171, 177, 183–4, 213 Silver, Lee 122–3 Simon, Julian 83, 280, 303 Singapore 31, 160, 187 Skhul, Israel 53 slash-and-burn farming 87, 130 slave trade 167, 170, 177, 229, 319, 380; abolition 214, 221 slavery 34, 214–15, 216, 407; ancient Greece 171; hunter-gatherer societies 45, 92; Mesopotamia 160; Roman empire 174, 176, 214; United States 216, 228–9, 415; see also anti-slavery sleeping sickness 310, 319 Slovakia 136 smallpox 13, 14, 135, 310; vaccine 221 smelting 131–2, 160, 230 smiling 2, 94 Smith, Adam 8, 80, 96, 101, 104, 199, 249, 272, 350; Das Adam Smith Problem 93–4; Theory of Moral Sentiments 93; The Wealth of Nations vii, 37–8, 39, 56, 57, 93, 123, 236, 283 Smith, Vernon 9, 90, 192 smoke, indoor 13, 338, 342, 353, 429 smoking 297, 298 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act 186 soap 176, 215 social networking websites 262, 268, 356 socialism 106, 115, 357, 406 software, computer 99, 257, 272–3, 304, 356 solar energy 216, 243, 244 solar power 234–5, 238, 239, 245–6, 343, 344–5, 408 solar wind 346 solid-state electronics 257 Solomon, Robert 94 Solow, Robert 276 Somalia 14, 316, 337, 353 songbirds 55 Sony (corporation) 261 sorghum 126, 156 South Africa: agriculture 154; economy 316, 322; life expectancy 316; pre-historic 52, 53, 54, 83 South Korea 15, 31, 116–17, 187, 212, 322 South Sea Company 29 Southey, Robert 284–5 Soviet Union 16, 107, 109, 289, 299, 318, 324 soybeans 147, 148, 155, 156, 242 space travel 268–9, 275, 282 Spain: agriculture 129; climate 334; Franco regime 186, 289; Peruvian silver 30–31, 183–4; tariffs 222 spears 6, 43, 48, 50, 52, 70, 80, 81, 91 specialisation: by sex 61–5, 136, 376; and division of labour 7, 33, 38, 46, 61–5, 175; and exchange 7, 10, 33, 35, 37–8, 46, 56, 58, 75, 90, 132–3, 350–52, 355, 358–9; and innovation 56, 71–2, 73–4, 76–7, 119, 251; and population growth 192–3, 351; and rule of law 116, 117–18 speech 2, 55; see also language Spencer, Herbert 108 Spengler, Oswald 289 sperm counts 280, 293, 329 spice trade 167, 175, 176, 177, 179, 185 Spinoza, Baruch de 116 Sputnik 282 squashes (vegetables) 126, 163 Sri Lanka 35, 38, 66, 205, 208, 299 Stalin, Joseph 16, 262 stamp seals 130 Stangler, Dane 294 steam engines 126, 214, 221, 228, 231–2, 244, 256, 258, 270, 271, 413–14 steamships 139, 253, 283 Stein, Gil 159 Stein, Herb 281 stem-cell research 358 Stephenson, George 256, 412 Steptoe, Patrick 306 sterilisation, coerced 203–4 Stern (magazine) 304 Stern, Nicholas, Baron 330–31, 332, 425 Stiner, Mary 64, 69 storms 314, 333, 335 Strabo 174 string 70 strokes (cerebral accidents) 18 Strong, Maurice 311 Subramanian, Arvind 317 subsidies: farming 188, 328; renewable energy supplies 344 subsistence farming 87, 138, 175–6, 189, 192, 199–200 substantivism 164–5 suburbia 108, 110, 190 Sudan 316 suffrage, universal 107 sugar 179, 202, 215 sugar beet 243 sugar cane 240, 241, 242 Sun Microsystems (corporation) 259 Sunda (landmass) 66 sunflowers 126 Sungir, Russia 71, 73 superconductivity, high-temperature 257 Superior, Lake 131 supermarkets 36, 112, 148, 268, 292, 297 surfboards 273 Sussex 285 Swan, Sir Joseph 234, 272 Swaziland 14 Sweden 17, 184, 229, 305, 340, 344 Swift, Jonathan 121, 240 Switzerland 264 swords, Japanese 198–9 Sybaris 170–71 symbiosis 75, 351 synergy 6, 101 Syria 124, 130, 164, 174 Szilard, Leo 412 Tahiti 169 Taiwan 31, 187, 219, 322 Talheim, Germany 138 Tanzania 316, 325, 327–8; Hadza people 61, 63, 87 Tapscott, Don 262 Tarde, Gabriel 5 tariffs 185–7, 188, 222–3 taro (vegetable plant) 126 Tartessians 169 Tasman, Abel 80 Tasmania 78–81, 83–4 Tattersall, Ian 73 Taverne, Dick, Baron 103 taxation: carbon taxes 346; and charitable giving 319; and consumption 27; and declining birth rates 211; early development of 160; and housing 25; and innovation 255; and intergenerational transfer 30; Mauryan empire 172; Roman empire 184; United States 25 Taylor, Barbara 103 tea 181, 182, 183, 202, 327, 392 telegraph 252–3, 257, 272, 412 telephones 252, 261; charges 22–3, 253; mobile 37, 252, 257, 261, 265, 267, 297, 326–7 television 38, 234, 252, 268 Telford, Thomas 221 Tennessee Valley Authority 326 termites 75–6 terrorism 8, 28, 296, 358 Tesco (retail corporation) 112 Tesla, Nikola 234 text messaging 292, 356 Thailand 320, 322 Thales of Miletus 171 Thames, River 17 thermodynamics 3, 244, 256 Thiel, Peter 262 Thiele, Bob 349 Thoreau, Henry David 33, 190 3M (corporation) 261, 263 threshing 124, 125, 130, 153, 198; machines 139, 283 thumbs, opposable 4, 51–2 Thwaites, Thomas 34–5 Tiberius, Roman emperor 174, 259 tidal and wave power 246, 343, 344 Tierra del Fuego 45, 62, 81–2, 91–2, 137 tigers 146, 240 timber 167, 216, 229; trade 158, 159, 180, 202 time saving 7, 22–4, 34–5, 123 Timurid empire 161 tin 132, 165, 167, 168, 213, 223, 303 ‘tipping points’ 287–9, 290, 291, 293, 301–2, 311, 329 Tiwi people 81 Tokyo 190, 198 Tol, Richard 331 Tooby, John 57 tool making: early Homo sapiens 53, 70, 71; machine tools 211, 221; Mesopotamian 159, 160; Neanderthals 55, 71, 378; Palaeolithic hominids 2, 4, 7, 48–51; technological regress 80 Torres Strait islanders 63–4, 81 tortoises 64, 68, 69, 376 totalitarianism 104, 109, 181–2, 290 toucans 146 Toulouse 222 Townes, Charles 272 ‘toy trade’ 223 Toynbee, Arnold 102–3 tractors 140, 153, 242 trade: and agriculture 123, 126, 127–33, 159, 163–4; early human development of 70–75, 89–93, 133–4, 159–60, 165; female-centred 88–9; and industrialisation 224–6; and innovation 168, 171; and property rights 324–5; and trust 98–100, 103; and urbanisation 158–61, 163–4, 167; see also bartering; exchange; markets trade unions and guilds 113, 115, 223, 226 trademarks 264 traffic congestion 296 tragedy of the commons 203, 324 Trajan, Roman Emperor 161 transistors 271 transport costs 22, 23, 24, 37, 229, 230, 253, 297, 408 transport speeds 22, 252, 253, 270, 283–4, 286, 287, 296 trebuchets 275 Tressell, Robert 288 Trevithick, Richard 221, 256 Trippe, Juan 24 Trobriand islands 58 trust: between strangers 88–9, 93, 94–8, 104; and trade 98–100, 103, 104; within families 87–8, 89, 91 Tswana people 321, 322 tungsten 213 Turchin, Peter 182 Turkey 69, 130, 137 Turnbull, William (farm worker) 219 Turner, Adair, Baron 411 turning points in history, belief in 287–9, 290, 291, 293, 301–2, 311, 329 Tuscany 178 Tyneside 231 typhoid 14, 157, 310 typhus 14, 299, 310 Tyre 167, 168–9, 170, 328 Ubaid period 158–9, 160 Uganda 154, 187, 316 Ukraine 71, 129 Ulrich, Bernd 304 Ultimatum Game 86–7 unemployment 8, 28, 114, 186, 289, 296 United Nations (UN) 15, 40, 205, 206, 290, 402, 429 United States: affluence 12, 16–17, 113, 117; agriculture 139, 140–41, 142, 219–20; biofuel production 240, 241, 242; birth rates 211, 212; civil rights movement 108, 109; copyright and patent systems 265, 266; credit crunch (2008) 9, 28–9; energy use 239, 245; GDP, per capita 23, 31; Great Depression (1930s) 31, 109, 192; happiness 26–7; immigration 108, 199–200, 202, 259; income equality 18–19; industrialisation 219; life expectancy 298; New Deal 109; oil supplies 237–8; pollution levels 17, 279, 304–5; poverty 16–17, 315, 326; productivity 112–13, 117; property rights 323; rural to urban migration 219; slavery 216, 228–9, 415; tax system 25, 111, 241; trade 186, 201, 228 Upper Palaeolithic Revolution 73, 83, 235 urbanisation: and development of agriculture 128, 158–9, 163–4; global urban population totals 158, 189, 190; and population growth 209–210; and trade 158–61, 163–4, 167, 189–90; see also rural to urban migration Uruguay 186 Uruk, Mesopotamia 159–61, 216 vaccines 17, 287, 310; polio 261, 275; smallpox 221 Vandals 175 Vanderbilt, Cornelius 17, 23, 24 vCJD (mad-cow disease) 280, 308 Veblen, Thorstein 102 Veenhoven, Ruut 28 vegetarianism 83, 126, 147, 376 Venezuela 31, 61, 238 Venice 115, 178–9 venture capitalists 223, 258, 259 Veron, Charlie 339–40 Victoria, Lake 250 Victoria, Queen 322 Vienna exhibition (1873) 233–4 Vietnam 15, 183, 188 Vikings 176 violence: decline in 14, 106, 201; homicide 14, 20, 85, 88, 106, 118, 201; in pre-industrial societies 44–5, 136, 137–9; random 104 Visby, Gotland 180 vitamin A 353 vitamin C 258 vitamin D 129 Vivaldi, Antonio 115 Vladimir, Russia 71 Vogel, Orville 142 Vogelherd, Germany 70 voles 97 Voltaire 96, 103, 104, 256 Wagner, Charles 288 Wal-Mart (retail corporation) 21, 112–14, 263 Wales 132 Wall Street (film) 101 Walton, Sam 112–13, 263 Wambugu, Florence 154 war: in Africa 316; in hunter-gatherer societies 44–5; threat of nuclear war 280, 290, 299–300; twentieth-century world wars 289, 309; unilateral declarations of 104 water: contaminated 338, 353, 429; pricing of 148; supplies 147, 280, 281, 324, 334–5; see also droughts; irrigation water snakes 17 watermills 176, 194, 198, 215, 216–17, 234 Watson, Thomas 282 Watt, James 221, 244, 256, 271, 411, 413–14 wave and tidal power 246, 343, 344 weather forecasting 3, 4, 335 weather-related death rates 335–6 Wedgwood, Josiah 105, 114, 225, 256 Wedgwood, Sarah 105 weed control 145, 152 Weiss, George David 349 Weitzman, Martin 332–3 Welch, Jack 261 welfare benefits 16, 106 Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of 89 Wells, H.G. 65, 313, 352, 354 West Germany 289–90 West Indies 202, 216, 310 Western Union (company) 261 Westinghouse, George 234 whales 6, 281, 302 whaling 87, 185, 281 wheat 42, 71, 124, 125, 129, 139, 140, 146–7, 149, 153, 156, 158, 161, 167, 300–301; new varieties 141–3 Wheeler, Sir Mortimer 162 wheels, invention of 176, 274 Whitehead, Alfred North 255 Wikipedia (online encyclopedia) 99, 115, 273, 356 Wilberforce, William 105, 214 Wilder, Thornton 359 wilderness land, expansion of 144, 147, 148, 239, 337–8, 347, 359 wildlife conservation 324, 329 William III, King 223 Williams, Anthony 262 Williams, Joseph 254 Williams, Rowan, Archbishop of Canterbury 102 Wilson, Bart 90, 324 Wilson, E.O. 243, 293 Wiltshire 194 wind power 239, 246, 343–4, 346, 408 wolves 87, 137 women’s liberation 108–9 wool 37, 149, 158, 167, 178, 179, 194, 224 working conditions, improvements in 106–7, 114, 115, 188, 219–20, 227, 285 World Bank 117, 203, 317 World Health Organisation 336–7, 421 World Wide Web 273, 356 World3 (computer model) 302–3 Wrangham, Richard 59, 60 Wright brothers 261, 264 Wright, Robert 101, 175 Wrigley, Tony 231 Y2K computer bug 280, 290, 341 Yahgan Indians 62 Yahoo (corporation) 268 Yangtze river 181, 199, 230 Yeats, W.B. 289 yellow fever 310 Yellow river 161, 167 Yemen 207, 209 Yir Yoront aborigines 90–91 Yong-Le, Chinese emperor 183, 184, 185 Yorkshire 285 Young, Allyn 276 young people, pessimism about 292 Young, Thomas 221 Younger Dryas (climatic period) 125 Yucatan 335 Zak, Paul 94–5, 97 Zambia 28, 154, 316, 317, 318, 331 zero, invention of 173, 251 zero-sum thinking 101 Zimbabwe 14, 28, 117, 302, 316 zinc 213, 303 Zuckerberg, Mark 262 Acknowledgements It is one of the central arguments of this book that the special feature of human intelligence is that it is collective, not individual – thanks to the invention of exchange and specialisation.

Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism by John Elkington

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, anti-fragile, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Boeing 747, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, David Attenborough, deglobalization, degrowth, discounted cash flows, distributed ledger, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Future Shock, Gail Bradbrook, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Akerlof, global supply chain, Google X / Alphabet X, green new deal, green transition, Greta Thunberg, Hans Rosling, hype cycle, impact investing, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Iridium satellite, Jeff Bezos, John Elkington, Jony Ive, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, M-Pesa, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, microplastics / micro fibres, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, Nikolai Kondratiev, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, placebo effect, Planet Labs, planetary scale, plant based meat, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, radical decentralization, Ralph Nader, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, space junk, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, systems thinking, The future is already here, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tim Cook: Apple, urban planning, Whole Earth Catalog

Even though it is one of the countries most likely to be hit by climate-induced societal collapse,10 India has long insisted that it is its right to burn fossil fuels to tackle the needs of its immense population—arguing that America should lead the way in squeezing carbon out of the economy, and then share the resulting clean technologies to compensate for the damage American growth has already caused. 2.It’s hard, perhaps impossible, to measure or claim success with wicked problems because they bleed into one another This is very different from traditional problems, Rittel noted, which can usually be articulated or defined. Sticking with climate breakdown, it is clear that there are hugely complex linkages between global warming and other challenges such as water security, human migrations, ocean acidification, the bleaching of coral reefs, and the spread of tropical diseases like malaria to former temperate zones. 3.Solutions to wicked problems can be only good or bad, not true or false Since there is no idealized end state to arrive at, we are told, approaches to wicked problems should try to improve a situation rather than solve it.

…

Impacts •Often drive breakdowns •Produce net negative impacts across TBL •Corrode social capital, via intensifying cycles of blame and shame •Counterintuitively, can trigger positive unintended consequences, including Green Swan solutions •Spur breakthroughs •Produce net positive impacts across TBL •Generally require robust social capital to achieve—and also help build it •Counterintuitively, can trigger negative unintended consequences, tomorrow’s Gray or Black Swans 3. Carbon examples •Climate weirding, driven by e.g., greenhouse gases, ecosystem destruction, ocean acidification, unpriced externalities, rejection of science, myopia, and selfishness •Icons of Black Swan carbon futures: e.g., Donald Trump, the Koch Brothers7, ExxonMobil, Jair Bolsonaro, and Vladimir Putin •Carbon increasingly brought back into technological, economic, and ecological loops via policy incentives and investment in the circular economy, promoting resilience and regeneration •Icons of Green Swan carbon futures: e.g., James Lovelock, Margrethe Vestager, Tesla, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and Greta Thunberg 4.

Net Zero: How We Stop Causing Climate Change by Dieter Helm

3D printing, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, blockchain, Boris Johnson, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, congestion charging, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, demand response, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, electricity market, Extinction Rebellion, fixed income, food miles, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Haber-Bosch Process, high-speed rail, hydrogen economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jevons paradox, lockdown, market design, means of production, microplastics / micro fibres, North Sea oil, ocean acidification, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, planetary scale, precautionary principle, price mechanism, quantitative easing, remote working, reshoring, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, smart meter, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, systems thinking, Thomas Malthus

., Beddington, J., Carter, E. A., Fuss, S., MacDowell, N., Minx, J. C., Smith, P. and Williams, C. K., ‘The technological and economic prospects for CO2 utilization and removal’, Nature, 575, 2019, pp 87–97. Back to text 5. See Goldthorpe, S. ‘Potential for Very Deep Ocean Storage of CO2 Without Ocean Acidification: A Discussion Paper’, Energy Procedia, 114, July 2017, pp 5417–5429. See also British Geological Survey, ‘How can CO2 be stored?’, www.bgs.ac.uk/discoveringGeology/climateChange/CCS/howCanCo2BeStored.html. Back to text 6. See Woodland Trust, ‘The Northern Forest’, www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/we-plant-trees/the-northern-forest/.

…

., ‘Environmental taxes’, in Institute for Fiscal Studies, Reforming the Tax System for the 21st Century: The Mirrlees Review. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011 Garnett, S., Selvidge, J., Westerberg, S. and Thompson P., ‘RSPB Geltsdale – A case study of upland management’, British Wildlife, 30(6), August 2019, pp 409–417 Goldthorpe, S. ‘Potential for Very Deep Ocean Storage of CO2 Without Ocean Acidification: A Discussion Paper’, Energy Procedia, 114, July 2017, pp 5417–5429 Hamilton, C., Growth Fetish. London: Allen & Unwin, 2003 Hayhow, D. B., Eaton, M. A., Stanbury, A. J., Burns, F., Kirby, W. B., Bailey, N., Beckmann, B., Bedford, J., Boersch-Supan, P. H., Coomber, F., Dennis, E. B., Dolman, S.

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, 23andMe, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, An Inconvenient Truth, Anne Wojcicki, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, artificial general intelligence, Bernie Sanders, Bill Joy: nanobots, biodiversity loss, Burning Man, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, CRISPR, David Attenborough, deep learning, DeepMind, degrowth, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, ending welfare as we know it, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Flynn Effect, gigafactory, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Hyperloop, impulse control, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James Bridle, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kim Stanley Robinson, life extension, light touch regulation, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, megacity, Menlo Park, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, ocean acidification, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, paperclip maximiser, Paris climate accords, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, San Francisco homelessness, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart meter, Snapchat, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, strong AI, supervolcano, tech baron, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, traffic fines, Tragedy of the Commons, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, urban sprawl, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Y Combinator, Y2K, yield curve

“So profound was this Indian volcanism that it would have been enough to cover the entire lower forty-eight United States in 600 feet of lava,” according to Brannen. And enough to do most of the work of driving the fifth great mass extinction via the usual route: carbon dioxide, global warming, ocean acidification. It’s possible that the asteroid “was the gun and the Deccan Traps the bullet.”17 The volcanic eruptions were already under way when the asteroid hit, but studies released in 2018 indicate that its impact “fueled an acceleration,”18 perhaps opening new fissures underwater along the edges of the tectonic plates.19 In our time, another cloud of carbon dioxide once again envelops the planet.

…

Christopher Knaus and Nick Evershed, “Great Barrier Reef at Terminal Stage; Scientists Despair at Latest Bleaching Data,” Guardian, April 9, 2017. 6. Amy Remeikis, “Great Barrier Reef Tourism Spokesman Attacks Scientist Over Slump in Visitors,” Guardian, January 12, 2018. 7. P. G. Brewer, “A Short History of Ocean Acidification Science in the 20th Century: A Chemist’s View,” Biogeosciences 10 (2013): 7411–22. 8. Rohling, Oceans, p. 181. 9. Ibid., p. 72. 10. Ibid., 161. 11. Seth Borenstein, “Scientists Warn of Hot, Sour, Breathless Oceans,” Associated Press, November 14, 2013. 12. Elena Becatoros, “More than 90 Percent of World’s Coral Reefs Will Die by 2050,” Independent, March 13, 2017. 13.

Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History by Lewis Dartnell

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, bioinformatics, clean water, Columbian Exchange, decarbonisation, discovery of the americas, Donald Trump, Eratosthenes, financial innovation, Google Earth, Khyber Pass, Malacca Straits, megacity, meta-analysis, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Pax Mongolica, peak oil, phenotype, rewilding, Rosa Parks, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, spice trade, Suez crisis 1956, supervolcano, trade route, transatlantic slave trade

‘A 12,000-year-old Shaman burial from the southern Levant (Israel)’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105(46): 17665–9. Guimaraes, P. R., M. Galetti and P. Jordano (2008). ‘Seed Dispersal Anachronisms: Rethinking the Fruits Extinct Megafauna Ate’, PLoS One 3(3). Guinotte, J. M. and V. J. Fabry (2008). ‘Ocean Acidification and Its Potential Effects on Marine Ecosystems’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1134(1): 320–42. Gunn, G. (2014). ‘Platinum-group metals’, Critical Metals Handbook, ed. G. Gunn, AGU/Wiley: 284–311. Gupta, S., J. S. Collier, D. Garcia-Moreno, F. Oggioni, A. Trentesaux, K. Vanneste, M.

…

Svirskaya and T. Vekshina (2016). ‘Siberian Traps in the Norilsk Area: A Corrected Scheme of Magmatism Evolution’, IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science 44: 042008. Kroeker, K. J., R. L. Kordas, R. N. Crim and G. G. Singh (2010). ‘Meta-analysis reveals negative yet variable effects of ocean acidification on marine organisms’, Ecology Letters 13(11): 1419–34. Kukula, M. (2016). The Intimate Universe: How the stars are closer than you think, Quercus. Laitin, D. D., J. Moortgat and A. L. Robinson (2012). ‘Geographic axes and the persistence of cultural diversity’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109(26): 10263–8.

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations by Thomas L. Friedman

3D printing, additive manufacturing, affirmative action, Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, Apple Newton, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, Bob Noyce, business cycle, business process, call centre, carbon tax, centre right, Chris Wanstrath, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive load, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, demand response, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, end-to-end encryption, Erik Brynjolfsson, fail fast, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ferguson, Missouri, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Flash crash, fulfillment center, game design, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, indoor plumbing, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of the steam engine, inventory management, Irwin Jacobs: Qualcomm, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, land tenure, linear programming, Live Aid, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Maui Hawaii, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, ocean acidification, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, planetary scale, power law, pull request, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, Solyndra, South China Sea, Steve Jobs, subscription business, supercomputer in your pocket, synthetic biology, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas L Friedman, Tony Fadell, transaction costs, Transnistria, uber lyft, undersea cable, urban decay, urban planning, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y2K, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

A “black elephant,” it was explained to me by the London-based investor and environmentalist Adam Sweidan, is a cross between a “black swan”—a rare, low-probability, unanticipated event with enormous ramifications—and “the elephant in the room: a problem that is widely visible to everyone, yet that no one wants to address, even though we absolutely know that one day it will have vast, black-swan-like consequences.” “Currently,” Sweidan told me, “there are a herd of environmental black elephants gathering out there”—global warming, deforestation, ocean acidification, and mass biodiversity extinction, just to name four. “When they hit, we’ll claim they were black swans that no one could have predicted, but in fact they are black elephants, very visible right now”—we’re just not dealing with them with the scale and speed that are necessary. A 163-degree heat index in Iran is, indeed, a black elephant: you can see it sitting in the room, you can feel it, and you can read about it in the newspaper.

…

Climate change can cause top-down tipping, and overuse of fertilizers and pesticides can create bottom-up tipping. Right now, said Rockström, “we have to go down to twenty-five percent of current usage.” In four other realms, we have managed to stay just inside the levels set by the planetary boundaries team, but not with much room to spare. One is rising ocean acidification. Some of the CO2 we emit goes into the atmosphere, but a lot is actually absorbed by the oceans. This, however, is increasingly harming fish and coral reefs, which are like the tropical rain forests of the ocean. When you mix CO2 with water you get carbonic acid, which dissolves the calcium carbonate that is the essential building block for all marine organisms, particularly those with shells, and for coral reefs.

…

Norman, Greg Norman, Jeff North American Free Trade Agreement North Korea; nuclear program of Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ) Noyce, Robert nuclear testing moratorium nuclear weapons Nutch (search engine) Obama, Barack; foreign policy of; gay marriage and Obama, Michelle Obama, Sasha and Malia obesity Occupy Central movement oceans, acidification of Odanabi.com oil prices Olin College of Engineering 1G wireless networks 123D Catch ONOS (Open Network Operating System) On the Origin of Species (Darwin) open-source community open-source software OpenStack opinion writing, craft of Opportunity@Work Oracle SQL Orenstein, Peggy Origin of Wealth, The (Beinhocker) Ornstein, Norm Oromo people Osofsky, Justin Ottoman Empire outsourcing ownership; political innovation and; resilience and ozone layer Packard, Wayne Pakistan Palantir Technologies Paleolithic era Palestine Palestine Liberation Organization Palmer, Arnold Palm Pilot Paprocki, Loren Parenti, Christian Paris climate agreement (2016) Park Nicollet Health Services passwords patents, technological change and patience pausing, importance of Pawlenty, Tim PayPal; Working Capital of Peace Corps, expansion of Pearl Harbor, Japanese attack on peer-to-peer payment system Periscope (app) Perry, Matthew Persian Gulf personal drones Personal Genetics Program pesticides, overuse of Peter Hobart Elementary School Petritsch, Wolfgang phase changes, supernova and Philippines Phillips, Richard phosphorus “Physics in Finance: Trading at the Speed of Light” (Nature) “ping” command PINs Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley (Clodd) Pires, Clint Placed Inc.

The Ministry for the Future: A Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, airport security, Anthropocene, availability heuristic, basic income, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, cakes and ale, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, cryptocurrency, dark matter, decarbonisation, degrowth, distributed ledger, drone strike, European colonialism, failed state, fiat currency, Food sovereignty, full employment, Gini coefficient, global village, green new deal, happiness index / gross national happiness, High speed trading, high-speed rail, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, Jevons paradox, Kim Stanley Robinson, land reform, liberation theology, liquidity trap, Mahbub ul Haq, megacity, megastructure, Modern Monetary Theory, mutually assured destruction, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, off grid, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, place-making, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, precariat, price stability, public intellectual, quantitative easing, rewilding, RFID, Robert Solow, seigniorage, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, special economic zone, structural adjustment programs, synthetic biology, time value of money, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, wage slave, Washington Consensus

The current rate of extinctions compared to the geological norm is now several thousandfold faster, making this the sixth great mass extinction event in Earth’s history, and thus the start of the Anthropocene in its clearest demarcation, which is to say, we are in a biosphere catastrophe that will be obvious in the fossil record for as long as the Earth lasts. Also the mass extinction is one of the most obvious examples of things done by humans that cannot be undone, despite all the experimental de-extinction efforts, and the general robustness of life on Earth. Ocean acidification and deoxygenation are other examples of things done by humans that we can’t undo, and the relation between this ocean acidification/deoxygenation and the extinction event may soon become profound, in that the former may stupendously accelerate the latter. Evolution itself will of course eventually refill all these emptied ecological niches with new species.

…

The biosphere generally: loss of habitat, of safe habitat corridors, of wildlife numbers. Extinctions. Invasive biology problems. Watershed health. Insect loss, including bee loss. Where to store the CO2 they were drawing out of the atmosphere. Even with the progress made, these were still acute problems. Ocean health. They could do nothing about ocean acidification, nor the heating of the ocean that was baked in by the previous century’s carbon burn, nor the deoxygenation. Thus die-offs were happening, and presumably extinctions they didn’t even know about, that might have catastrophic cascading results. Ocean health would be an outstanding problem for centuries to come, and little to nothing they could do about it, except to leave big parts of the ocean, half of it at least, alone, so that its biomes and creatures could adapt as best they might.

Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow by Tim Jackson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, basic income, biodiversity loss, bonus culture, Boris Johnson, business cycle, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, circular economy, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, critique of consumerism, David Graeber, decarbonisation, degrowth, dematerialisation, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, financial deregulation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hans Rosling, Hyman Minsky, impact investing, income inequality, income per capita, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, means of production, meta-analysis, Money creation, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, new economy, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, paradox of thrift, peak oil, peer-to-peer lending, Philip Mirowski, Post-Keynesian economics, profit motive, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, retail therapy, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, secular stagnation, short selling, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, Works Progress Administration, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

Crossing these boundaries, claimed the team, would imply unacceptable environmental change with ‘serious, potentially disastrous consequences’ for society.37 The lessons were salutary. The team discovered that current levels of economic activity already lie beyond the ‘safe operating space’ of the planet, for four of these critical boundaries. Excess nutrient loading, species loss, ocean acidification and climate change already represent a serious threat to the integrity of ecological systems. In doing so they also threaten to undermine the foundations for human society. Climate change is probably the most familiar of these threats. Brought to the world’s attention in the late 1980s by climate scientist James Hansen and others, climate change has risen inexorably up the political agenda over the last two decades.

…

INDEX Locators in italic refer to figures absolute decoupling 84–6; historical perspectives 89–96, 90, 92, 94, 95; mathematical relationship with relative decoupling 96–101, 111 abundance see opulence accounting errors, decoupling 84, 91 acquisition, instinctive 68 see also symbolic role of goods adaptation: diminishing marginal utility 51, 68; environmental 169; evolutionary 226 advertising, power of 140, 203–4 Africa 73, 75–7; life-expectancy 74; philosophy 227; pursuit of western lifestyles 70; growth 99; relative income effect 58, 75; schooling 78 The Age of Turbulence (Greenspan) 35 ageing populations 44, 81 agriculture 12, 148, 152, 220 Aids/HIV 77 algebra of inequality see inequality; mathematical models alienation: future visions 212, 218–19; geographical community 122–3; role of the state 205; selfishness vs. altruism 137; signals sent by society 131 alternatives: economic 101–2, 139–40, 157–8; hedonism 125–6 see also future visions; post-growth macroeconomics; reform altruism 133–8, 196, 207 amenities see public services/amenities Amish community, North America 128 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Smith) 123, 132 angelised growth see green growth animal welfare 220 anonymity/loneliness see alienation anthropological perspectives, consumption 70, 115 anti-consumerism 131 see also intrinsic values anxiety: fear of death 69, 104, 115, 212–15; novelty 116–17, 124, 211 Argentina 58, 78, 78, 80 Aristotle 48, 61 The Art of Happiness (Dalai Lama) 49 arts, Baumol’s cost disease 171–2 assets, stranded 167–8 see also ownership austerity policies xxxiii–xxxv, 189; and financial crisis 24, 42–3; mathematical models 181 Australia 58, 78, 128, 206 authoritarianism 199 autonomy see freedom/autonomy Ayres, Robert 143 backfire effects 111 balance: private interests/common good 208; tradition/innovation 226 Bank for International Settlements 46 bank runs 157 banking system 29–30, 39, 153–7, 208; bonuses 37–8 see also financial crisis; financial system basic entitlements: enterprise as service 142; income 67, 72–9, 74, 75, 76, 78; limits to growth 63–4 see also education; food; health Basu, Sanjay 43 Baumol, William 112, 147, 222, 223; cost disease 170, 171, 172, 173 BBC survey, geographical community 122–3 Becker, Ernest 69 Belk, Russ 70, 114 belonging 212, 219 see also alienation; community; intrinsic values Bentham, Jeremy 55 bereavement, material possessions 114, 214–15 Berger, Peter 70, 214 Berry, Wendell 8 Better Growth, Better Climate (New Climate Economy report) 18 big business/corporations 106–7 biodiversity loss 17, 47, 62, 101 biological perspectives see evolutionary theory; human nature/psyche biophysical boundaries see limits (ecological) Black Monday 46 The Body Economic (Stuckler and Basu) 43 bond markets 30, 157 bonuses, banking 37–8 Bookchin, Murray 122 boom-and-bust cycles 157, 181 Booth, Douglas 117 borrowing behaviour 34, 118–21, 119 see also credit; debt Boulding, Elise 118 Boulding, Kenneth 1, 5, 7 boundaries, biophysical see limits (ecological) bounded capabilities for flourishing 61–5 see also limits (flourishing within) Bowen, William 147 Bowling Alone (Putnam) 122 Brazil 58, 88 breakdown of community see alienation; social stability bubbles, economic 29, 33, 36 Buddhist monasteries, Thailand 128 buen vivir concept, Ecuador xxxi, 6 built-in obsolescence 113, 204, 220 Bush, George 121 business-as-usual model 22, 211; carbon dioxide emissions 101; crisis of commitment 195; financial crisis 32–8; growth 79–83, 99; human nature 131, 136–7; need for reform 55, 57, 59, 101–2, 162, 207–8, 227; throwaway society 113; wellbeing 124 see also financial systems Canada 75, 206, 207 capabilities for flourishing 61–5; circular flow of the economy 113; future visions 218, 219; and income 77; progress measures 50–5, 54; role of material abundance 67–72; and prosperity 49; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; role of shame 123–4; role of the state 200 see also limits (flourishing within); wellbeing capital 105, 107–10 see also investment Capital in the 21st Century (Piketty) 33, 176, 177 Capital Institute, USA 155 capitalism 68–9, 80; structures 107–13, 175; types 105–7, 222, 223 car industry, financial crisis 40 carbon dioxide emissions see greenhouse gas emissions caring professions, valuing 130, 147, 207 see also social care Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Williams) 213 causal path analysis, subjective wellbeing 59 Central Bank 154 central human capabilities 64 see also capabilities for flourishing The Challenge of Affluence (Offer) 194 change see alternatives; future visions; novelty/innovation; post-growth macroeconomics; reform Chicago school of economics 36, 156 children: advertising to 204; labour 62, 154; mortality 74–5, 75, 206 Chile xxxiii, xxxvii, 58, 74, 74, 75, 76 China: decoupling 88; GDP per capita 75; greenhouse gas emissions 91; growth 99; life expectancy 74; philosophy 7; post-financial crisis 45–6; pursuit of western lifestyles 70; relative income effect 58; resource use 94; savings 27; schooling 76 choice, moving beyond consumerism 216–18 see also freedom/autonomy Christian doctrine see religious perspectives chromium, commodity price 13 Cinderella economy 219–21, 224 circular economy 144, 220 circular flow of the economy 107, 113 see also engine of growth citizen’s income 207 see also universal basic income civil unrest see social stability Clean City Law, São Paulo 204 climate change xxxv, 22, 47; critical boundaries 17–20; decoupling 85, 86, 87, 98; fatalism 186; investment needs 152; role of the state 192, 198, 201–2 see also greenhouse gas emissions Climate Change Act (2008), UK 198 clothing see basic entitlements Club of Rome, Limits to Growth report xxxii, xxxiii, 8, 11–16, Cobb, John 54 collectivism 191 commercial bond markets 30, 157 commitment devices/crisis of 192–5, 197 commodity prices: decoupling 88; financial crisis 26; fluctuation/volatility 14, 21; resource constraints 13–14 common good: future visions 218, 219; vs. freedom and autonomy 193–4; vs. private interests 208; role of the state 209 common pool resources 190–2, 198, 199 see also public services/amenities communism 187, 191 community: future visions of 219–20; geographical 122–3; investment 155–6, 204 see also alienation; intrinsic values comparison, social 115, 116, 117 see also relative income effect competition 27, 112; positional 55–61, 58, 71, 72 see also struggle for existence complexity, economic systems 14, 32, 108, 153, 203 compulsive shopping 116 see also consumerism Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (CoP21) 19 conflicted state 197, 201, 209 connectedness, global 91, 227 conspicuous consumption 115 see also language of goods consumer goods see language of goods; material goods consumer sovereignty 196, 198 consumerism 4, 21, 22, 103–4, 113–16; capitalism 105–13, 196; choice 196; engine of growth 104, 108, 120, 161; existential fear of death 69, 212–15; financial crisis 24, 28, 39, 103; moving beyond 216–18; novelty and anxiety 116–17; post-growth economy 166–7; role of the state 192–3, 196, 199, 202–5; status 211; tragedy of 140 see also demand; materialism contemplative dimensions, simplicity 127 contraction and convergence model 206–7 coordinated market economies 27, 106 Copenhagen Accord (2009) 19 copper, commodity prices 13 corporations/big business 106–7 corruption 9, 131, 186, 187, 189 The Cost Disease: Why Computers get Cheaper and Health Care Doesn’t (Baumol) 171, 172 Costa Rica 74, 74, 76 countercyclical spending 181–2, 182, 188 crafts/craft economies 147, 149, 170, 171 creative destruction 104, 112, 113, 116–17 creativity 8, 79; and consumerism 113, 116; future visions 142, 144, 147, 158, 171, 200, 220 see also novelty/innovation credit, private: deflationary forces 44; deregulation 36; financial crisis 26, 27, 27–31, 34, 36, 41; financial system weaknesses 32–3, 37; growth imperative hypothesis 178–80; mortgage loans 28–9; reforms in financial system 157; spending vs. saving behaviour of ordinary people 118–19; and stimulation of growth 36 see also debt (public) credit unions 155–6 crises: of commitment 192–5; financial see financial crisis critical boundaries, biophysical see limits (ecological) Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi 127 Cuba: child mortality 75; life expectancy 74, 77, 78, 78; response to economic hardship 79–80; revolution 56; schooling 76 Cushman, Philip 116 Dalai Lama 49, 52 Daly, Herman xxxii, 54, 55, 160, 163, 165 Darwin, Charles 132–3 Das Kapital (Marx) 225 Davidson, Richard 49 Davos World Economic Forum 46 Dawkins, Richard 134–5 de Mandeville, Bernard 131–2, 157 death, denial of 69, 104, 115, 212–15 debt, public-sector 81; deflationary forces 44; economic stability 81; financial crisis 24, 26–32, 27, 37, 41, 42, 81; financial systems 28–32, 153–7; money creation 178–9; post-growth economy 178–9, 223 Debt: The First Five Thousand Years (Graeber) 28 decoupling xix, xx, xxxvii, 21, 84–7; dilemma of growth 211; efficiency measures 84, 86, 87, 88, 95, 104; green growth 163, 163–5; historical perspectives 87–96, 89, 90, 92, 94, 95; need for new economic model 101–2; relationship between relative and absolute 96–101 deep emission and resource cuts 99, 102 deficit spending 41, 43 deflationary forces, post-financial crisis 43–7, 45 degrowth movement 161–3, 177 demand 104, 113–16, 166–7; post-financial crisis 44–5; post-growth economy 162, 164, 166–9, 171–2, 174–5 dematerialisation 102, 143 democratisation, and wellbeing 59 deposit guarantees 35 deregulation 27, 34, 36, 196 desire, role in consumer behaviour 68, 69, 70, 114 destructive materialism 104, 112, 113, 116–17 Deutsche Bank 41 devaluation of currency 30, 45 Dichter, Ernest 114 digital economy 44, 219–20 dilemma of growth xxxi, 66–7, 104, 210; basic entitlements 72–9, 74, 75, 76, 78; decoupling 85, 87, 164; degrowth movement 160–3; economic stability 79–83, 174–6; material abundance 67–72; moving beyond 165, 166, 183–4; role of the state 198 diminishing marginal utility: alternative hedonism 125, 126; wellbeing 51–2, 57, 60, 73, 75–6, 79 disposable incomes 27, 67, 118 distributed ownership 223 Dittmar, Helga 126 domestic debt see credit dopamine 68 Dordogne, mindfulness community 128 double movement of society 198 Douglas, Mary 70 Douthwaite, Richard 178 downshifting 128 driving analogy, managing change 16–17 durability, consumer goods 113, 204, 220 dynamic systems, managing change 16–17 Eastern Europe 76, 122 Easterlin, Richard 56, 57, 59; paradox 56, 58 eco-villages, Findhorn community 128 ecological investment 101, 166–70, 220 see also investment ecological limits see limits (ecological) ecological (ecosystem) services 152, 169, 223 The Ecology of Money (Douthwaite) 178 economic growth see growth economic models see alternatives; business-as-usual model; financial systems; future visions; mathematical models; post-growth macroeconomics economic output see efficiency; productivity ‘Economic possibilities for our grandchildren’ (Keynes) 145 economic stability 22, 154, 157, 161; financial system weaknesses 34, 35, 36, 180; growth 21, 24, 67, 79–83, 174–6, 210; post-growth economy 161–3, 165, 174–6, 208, 219; role of the state 181–3, 195, 198, 199 economic structures: post-growth economy 227; financial system reforms 224; role of the state 205; selfishness 137 see also business-as-usual model; financial systems ecosystem functioning 62–3 see also limits (ecological) ecosystem services 152, 169, 223 Ecuador xxxi, 6 education: Baumol’s cost disease 171, 172; and income 67, 76, 76; investment in 150–1; role of the state 193 see also basic entitlements efficiency measures 84, 86–8, 95, 104, 109–11, 142–3; energy 41, 109–11; growth 111, 211; investment 109, 151; of scale 104 see also labour productivity; relative decoupling Ehrlich, Paul 13, 96 elasticity of substitution, labour and capital 177–8 electricity grid 41, 151, 156 see also energy Elgin, Duane 127 Ellen MacArthur Foundation 144 emissions see greenhouse gas emissions employee ownership 223 employment intensity vs. carbon dioxide emissions 148 see also labour productivity empty self 116, 117 see also consumerism ends above means 159 energy return on investment (EROI) 12, 169 energy services/systems 142: efficiency 41, 109–11; inputs/intensity 87–8, 151; investment 41, 109–10, 151–2; renewable xxxv, 41, 168–9 engine of growth 145; consumerism 104, 108, 161; services 143, 170–4 see also circular flow of the economy enough is enough see limits enterprise as service 140, 141–4, 158 see also novelty/innovation entitlements see basic entitlements entrepreneur as visionary 112 entrepreneurial state 220 Environmental Assessment Agency, Netherlands 62 environmental quality 12 see also pollution environmentalism 9 EROI (energy return on investment) 12, 169 Essay on the Principle of Population (Malthus) 9–11, 132–3 evolutionary map, human heart 136, 136 evolutionary theory 132–3; common good 193; post-growth economy 226; psychology 133–5; selfishness and altruism 196 exchange values 55, 61 see also gross domestic product existential fear of death 69, 104, 115, 212–15 exponential expansion 1, 11, 20–1, 210 see also growth external debt 32, 42 extinctions/biodiversity loss 17, 47, 62, 101 Eyres, Harry 215 Fable of the Bees (de Mandeville) 131–2 factor inputs 109–10 see also capital; labour; resource use fast food 128 fatalism 186 FCCC (Framework Convention on Climate Change) 92 fear of death, existential 69, 104, 115, 212–15 feedback loops 16–17 financial crisis (2008) 6, 23–5, 32, 77, 103; causes and culpability 25–8; financial system weaknesses 32–7, 108; Keynesianism 37–43, 188; nationalisation of financial sector 188; need for financial reforms 175; role of debt 24, 26–32, 27, 81, 179; role of state 191; slowing of growth 43–7, 45; spending vs. saving behaviour of ordinary people 118–21, 119; types/definitions of capitalism 106; youth unemployment 144–5 financial systems: common pool resources 192; debt-based/role of debt 28–32, 153–7; post-growth economy 179, 208; systemic weaknesses 32–7; and wellbeing 47 see also banking system; business-as-usual model; financial crisis; reform Findhorn community 128 finite limits of planet see limits (ecological) Fisher, Irving 156, 157 fishing rights 22 flourishing see capabilities for flourishing; limits; wellbeing flow states 127 Flynt, Larry 40 food 67 see also basic entitlements Ford, Henry 154 forestry/forests 22, 192 Forrester, Jay 11 fossil fuels 11, 20 see also oil Foucault, Michel 197 fracking 14, 15 Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) 92 France: GDP per capita 58, 75, 76; inequality 206; life-expectancy 74; mindfulness community 128; working hours 145 free market 106: financial crisis 35, 36, 37, 38, 39; ideological controversy/conflict 186–7, 188 freedom/autonomy: vs. common good 193–4; consumer 22, 68–9; language of goods 212; personal choices for improvement 216–18; wellbeing 49, 59, 62 see also individualism Friedman, Benjamin 176 Friedman, Milton 36, 156, 157 frugality 118–20, 127–9, 215–16 fun (more fun with less stuff) 129, 217 future visions 2, 158, 217–21; community banking 155–6; dilemma of growth 211; enterprise as service 140, 141–4, 147–8, 158; entrepreneur as visionary 112; financial crisis as opportunity 25; and growth 165–6; investment 22, 101–2, 140, 149–53, 158, 169, 208; money as social good 140, 153–7, 158; processes of change 185; role of the state 198, 199, 203; timescales for change 16–17; work as participation 140, 144–9, 148, 158 see also alternatives; post-growth macroeconomics; reform Gandhi, Mahatma 127 GDP see gross domestic product gene, selfish 134–5 Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) 54, 54 geographical community 122–3 Germany xxxi; Federal Ministry of Finance 224–5; inequality 206; relative income effect 58; trade balance 31; work as participation 146 Glass Steagal Act 35 Global Commodity Price Index (1992–2015) 13 global corporations 106–7 global economy 98: culture 70; decoupling 86–8, 91, 93–5, 95, 97, 98, 100; exponential expansion 20–1; inequality 4, 5–6; interconnectedness 91, 227; post-financial crisis slowing of growth 45 Global Research report (HSBC) 41 global warming see climate change Godley, Wynne 179 Goldman Sachs 37 good life 3, 6; moral dimension 63, 104; wellbeing 48, 50 goods see language of goods; material goods; symbolic role of goods Gordon, Robert 44 governance 22, 185–6; commons 190–2; crisis of commitment 192–5, 197; economic stability 34, 35; establishing limits 200–8, 206; growth 195–9; ideological controversy/conflict 186–9; moving towards change 197–200, 220–1; post-growth economy 181–3, 182; power of corporations 106; for prosperity 209; signals 130 government as household metaphor 30, 42 governmentality 197, 198 GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) 54, 54 Graeber, David 28 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act 35 Great Depression 39–40 Greece: austerity xxxiii–xxxiv, xxxvii, 43; energy inputs 88; financial crisis 28, 30, 31, 77; life expectancy 74; schooling 76; relative income effect 58; youth unemployment 144 Green Economy initiative 41 green: growth xxxvii, 18, 85, 153, 166, 170; investment 41 Green New Deal, UNEP 40–1, 152, 188 greenhouse gas emissions 18, 85, 86, 91, 92; absolute decoupling 89–92, 90, 92, 98–101, 100; dilemma of growth 210–11; vs. employment intensity 148; future visions 142, 151, 201–2, 220; Kyoto Protocol 18, 90; reduction targets 19–20; relative decoupling 87, 88, 89, 93, 98–101, 100 see also climate change Greenspan, Alan 35 gross domestic product (GDP) per capita 3–5, 15, 54; climate change 18; decoupling 85, 93, 94; financial crisis 27, 28, 32; green growth 163–5; life expectancy 74, 75, 78; as measure of prosperity 3–4, 5, 53–5, 54, 60–1; post-financial crisis 43, 44; post-growth economy 207; schooling 76; wellbeing 55–61, 58 see also income growth xxxvii; capitalism 105; credit 36, 178–80; decoupling 85, 96–101; economic stability 21, 24, 67, 80, 210; financial crisis 37, 38; future visions 209, 223, 224; inequality 177; labour productivity 111; moving beyond 165, 166; novelty 112; ownership 105; post-financial crisis slowing 43–7, 45; prosperity as 3–7, 23, 66; role of the state 195–9; sustainable investment 166–70; wellbeing 59–60; as zero sum game 57 see also dilemma of growth; engine of growth; green growth; limits to growth; post-growth macroeconomy growth imperative hypothesis 37, 174, 175, 177–80, 183 habit formation, acquisition as 68 Hall, Peter 106, 188 Hamilton, William 134 Hansen, James 17 happiness see wellbeing/happiness Happiness (Layard) 55 Hardin, Garrett 190–1 Harvey, David 189, 192 Hayek, Friedrich 187, 189, 191 health: Baumol’s cost disease 171, 172; inequality 72–3, 205–6, 206; investment 150–1; and material abundance 67, 68; personal choices for improvement 217; response to economic hardship 80; role of the state 193 see also basic entitlements Heath, Edward 66, 82 hedonism 120, 137, 196; alternatives 125–6 Hirsch, Fred xxxii–xxxiii historical perspectives: absolute decoupling 86, 89–96, 90, 92, 94, 95; relative decoupling 86, 87–9, 89 Holdren, John 96 holistic solutions, post-growth economy 175 household finances: house purchases 28–9; spending vs. saving behaviour 118–20, 119 see also credit household metaphor, government as 30, 42 HSBC Global Research report 41 human capabilities see capabilities for flourishing human happiness see wellbeing/happiness human nature/psyche 3, 132–5, 138; acquisition 68; alternative hedonism 125; evolutionary map of human heart 136, 136; intrinsic values 131; meaning/purpose 49–50; novelty/innovation 116; selfishness vs. altruism 133–8; short-termism/living for today 194; spending vs. saving behaviour 34, 118–21, 119; symbolic role of goods 69 see also intrinsic values human rights see basic entitlements humanitarian perspectives: financial crisis 24; growth 79; inequality 5, 52, 53 see also intrinsic values hyperbolic discounting 194 hyperindividualism 226 see also individualism hyper-materialisation 140, 157 I Ching (Chinese Book of Changes) 7 Iceland: financial crisis 28; life expectancy 74, 75; relative income effect 56; response to economic hardship 79–80; schooling 76; sovereign money system 157 identity construction 52, 69, 115, 116, 212, 219 IEA (International Energy Agency) 14, 152 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 45, 156–7 immaterial goods 139–40 see also intrinsic values; meaning/purpose immortality, symbolic role of goods 69, 104, 115, 212–14 inclusive growth see inequality; smart growth income 3, 4, 5, 66, 124; basic entitlements 72–9, 74, 75, 76, 78; child mortality 74–5, 75; decoupling 96; economic stability 82; education 76; life expectancy 72, 73, 74, 77–9, 78; poor nations 67; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; tax revenues 81 see also gross domestic product INDCs (intended nationally determined commitments) 19 India: decoupling 99; growth 99; life expectancy 74, 75; philosophy 127; pursuit of western lifestyles 70; savings 27; schooling 76 indicators of environmental quality 96 see also biodiversity; greenhouse gas emissions; pollution; resource use individualism 136, 226; progressive state 194–7, 199, 200, 203, 207 see also freedom/autonomy industrial development 12 see also technological advances inequality 22, 67; basic entitlements 72; child mortality 75, 75; credible alternatives 219, 224; deflationary forces 44; fatalism 186; financial crisis 24; global 4, 5–6, 99, 100; financial system weaknesses 32–3; post-growth economy 174, 176–8; role of the state 198, 205–7, 206; selfishness vs. altruism 137; symbolic role of goods 71; wellbeing 47, 104 see also poverty infant mortality rates 72, 75 inflation 26, 30, 110, 157, 167 infrastructure, civic 150–1 Inglehart, Ronald 58, 59 innovation see novelty/innovation; technological advances inputs 80–1 see also capital; labour productivity; resource use Inside Job documentary film 26 instant gratification 50, 61 instinctive acquisition 68 Institute for Fiscal Studies 81 Institute for Local Self-Reliance 204 institutional structures 130 see also economic structures; governance intended nationally determined commitments (INDCs) 19 intensity factor, technological 96, 97 see also technological advances intentional communities 127–9 interconnectedness, global 91, 227 interest payments/rates 39, 43, 110; financial crisis 29, 30, 33, 39; post-growth economy 178–80 see also credit; debt Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 18, 19, 201–2 International Energy Agency (IEA) 14, 152 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 45, 156–7 intrinsic values 126–31, 135–6, 212; role of the state 199, 200 see also belonging; community; meaning/purpose; simplicity/frugality investment 107–10, 108; ecological/sustainable 101, 152, 153, 166–70, 220; and innovation 112; loans 29; future visions 22, 101–2, 140, 149–53, 158, 169, 208, 220; and savings 108; social 155, 156, 189, 193, 208, 220–3 invisible hand metaphor 132, 133, 187 IPAT equation, relative and absolute decoupling 96 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 18, 19, 201–2 Ireland 28; inequality 206; life expectancy 74, 75; schooling 76; wellbeing 58 iron cage of consumerism see consumerism iron ore 94 James, Oliver 205 James, William 68 Japan: equality 206; financial crisis 27, 45; life expectancy 74, 76, 79; relative income effect 56, 58; resource use 93; response to economic hardship 79–80 Jefferson, Thomas 185 Jobs, Steve 210 Johnson, Boris 120–1 Kahneman, Daniel 60 Kasser, Tim 126 keeping up with the Joneses 115, 116, 117 see also relative income effect Kennedy, Robert 48, 53 Keynes, John Maynard/Keynesianism 23, 34, 120, 174, 181–3, 187–8; financial crisis 37–43; financial system reforms 157; part-time working 145; steady state economy 159, 162 King, Alexander 11 Krugman, Paul 39, 85, 86, 102 Kyoto Protocol (1992) 18, 90 labour: child 62, 154; costs 110; division of 158; elasticity of substitution 177, 178; intensity 109, 148, 208; mobility 123; production inputs 80, 109; structures of capitalism 107 labour productivity 80–1, 109–11; Baumol’s cost disease 170–2; and economic growth 111; future visions 220, 224; investment as commitment 150; need for investment 109; post-growth economy 175, 208; services as engine of growth 170; sustainable investment 166, 170; trade off with resource use 110; work-sharing 145, 146, 147, 148, 148, 149 Lahr, Christin 224–5 laissez-faire capitalism 187, 195, 196 see also free market Lakoff, George 30 language of goods 212; material footprint of 139–40; signalling of social status 71; and wellbeing 124 see also consumerism; material goods; symbolic role of goods Layard, Richard 55 leadership, political 199 see also governance Lebow, Victor 120 Lehman Brothers, bankruptcy 23, 25, 26, 118 leisure economy 204 liberal market economies 106, 107; financial crisis 27, 35–6 life expectancy: and income 72, 73, 74, 77–9, 78; inequality 206; response to economic hardship 80 see also basic entitlements life-satisfaction 73; inequality 205; relative income effect 55–61, 58 see also wellbeing/happiness limits, ecological 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, 20–2; climate change 17–20; decoupling 86; financial crisis 23–4; growth 21, 165, 210; post-growth economy 201–2, 226–7; role of the state 198, 200–2, 206–7; and social boundaries 141; wellbeing 62–63, 185 limits, flourishing within 61–5, 185; alternative hedonism 125–6; intrinsic values 127–31; moving towards 215, 218, 219, 221; paradox of materialism 121–23; prosperity 67–72, 113, 212; role of the state 201–2, 205; selfishness 131–8; shame 123–4; spending vs. saving behaviour 118–21, 119 see also sustainable prosperity limits to growth: confronting 7–8; exceeding 20–2; wellbeing 62–3 Limits to Growth report (Club of Rome) xxxii, xxxiii, 8, 11–16 ‘The Living Standard’ essay (Sen) 50, 123–4 living standards 82 see also prosperity Lloyd, William Forster 190 loans 154; community investment 155–6; financial system weaknesses 34 see also credit; debt London School of Economics 25 loneliness 123, 137 see also alienation long-term: investments 222; social good 219 long-term wellbeing vs. short-term pleasures 194, 197 longevity see life expectancy love 212 see also intrinsic values low-carbon transition 19, 220 LowGrow model for the Canadian economy 175 MacArthur Foundation 144 McCracken, Grant 115 Malthus, Thomas Robert 9–11, 132–3, 190 market economies: coordinated 27, 106; liberal 27, 35–6, 106, 107 market liberalism 106, 107; financial crisis 27, 35–6; wellbeing 47 marketing 140, 203–4 Marmot review, health inequality in the UK 72 Marx, Karl/Marxism 9, 189, 192, 225 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 11, 12, 15 material abundance see opulence material goods 68–9; identity 52; language of 139–40; and wellbeing 47, 48, 49, 51, 65, 126 see also symbolic role of goods material inputs see resource use materialism: and fear of death 69, 104, 115, 212–15; and intrinsic values 127–31; paradox of 121–3; price of 126; and religion 115; values 126, 135–6 see also consumerism mathematical models/simulations 132; austerity policies 181; countercyclical spending 181–2, 182; decoupling 84, 91, 96–101; inequality 176–8; post-growth economy 164; stock-flow consistent 179–80 Mawdsley, Emma 70 Mazzucato, Mariana 193, 220 MDG (Millennium Development Goals) 74–5 Meadows, Dennis and Donella 11, 12, 15, 16 meaning/purpose 2, 8, 22; beyond material goods 212–16; consumerism 69, 203, 215; intrinsic values 127–31; moving towards 218–20; wellbeing 49, 52, 60, 121–2; work 144, 146 see also intrinsic values means and ends 159 mental health: inequality 206; meaning/purpose 213 metaphors: government as household 30, 42; invisible hand 132, 133, 187 Middle East, energy inputs 88 Miliband, Ed 199 Mill, John Stuart 125, 159, 160, 174 Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 74–5 mindfulness 128 Minsky, Hyman 34, 35, 40, 182, 208 MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 11, 12, 15 mixed economies 106 mobility of labour, loneliness index 123 Monbiot, George 84, 85, 86, 91 money: creation 154, 157, 178–9; and prosperity 5; as social good 140, 153–7, 158 see also financial systems monopoly power, corporations 106–7 The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth (Friedman) 82, 176 moral dimensions, good life 63 see also intrinsic values moral hazards, separation of risk from reward 35 ‘more fun with less stuff’ 129, 217 mortality fears 69, 104, 115, 212–15 mortality rates, and income 74, 74–6, 75 mortgage loans 28–9, 35 multinational corporations 106–7 national debt see debt, public-sector nationalisation 191; financial crisis 38, 188 natural selection 132–3 see also struggle for existence nature, rights of 6–7 negative emissions 98–9 negative feedback loops 16–17 Netherlands 58, 62, 206, 207 neuroscientific perspectives: flourishing 68, 69; human behaviour 134 New Climate Economy report Better Growth, Better Climate 18 New Deal, USA 39 New Economics Foundation 175 nickel, commodity prices 13 9/11 terrorist attacks (2001) 121 Nordhaus, William 171, 172–3 North America 128, 155 see also Canada; United States Norway: advertising 204; inequality 206; investment as commitment 151–2; life expectancy 74; relative income effect 58; schooling 76 novelty/innovation 104, 108, 113; and anxiety 116–17, 124, 211; crisis of commitment 195; dilemma of growth 211; human psyche 135–6, 136, 137; investment 150, 166, 168; post-growth economy 226; role of the state 196, 197, 199; as service 140, 141–4, 158; symbolic role of goods 114–16, 213 see also technological advances Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Thaler and Sunstein) 194–5 Nussbaum, Martha 64 nutrient loading, critical boundaries 17 nutrition 67 see also basic entitlements obesity 72, 78, 206 obsolescence, built in 113, 204, 220 oceans: acidification 17; common pool resources 192 Offer, Avner 57, 61, 71, 194, 195 oil prices 14, 21; decoupling 88; financial crisis 26; resource constraints 15 oligarchic capitalism 106, 107 opulence 50–1, 52, 67–72 original sin 9, 131 Ostrom, Elinor and Vincent 190, 191 output see efficiency; gross domestic product; productivity ownership: and expansion 105; private vs. public 9, 105, 191, 219, 223; new models 223–4; types/definitions of capitalism 105–7 Oxfam 141 paradoxes: materialism 121–3; thrift 120 Paris Agreement 19, 101, 201 participation in society 61, 114, 122, 129, 137; future visions 200, 205, 218, 219, 225; work as 140–9, 148, 157, 158 see also social inclusion part-time working 145, 146, 149, 175 Peccei, Aurelio 11 Perez, Carlota 112 performing arts, Baumol’s cost disease 171–2 personal choice 216–18 see also freedom/autonomy personal property 189, 191 Pickett, Kate 71, 205–6 Piketty, Thomas 33, 176, 177 planetary boundaries see limits (ecological) planning for change 17 pleasure 60–1 see also wellbeing/happiness Plum Village mindfulness community 128 Polanyi, Karl 198 policy see governance political leadership 199 see also governance Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts 41 pollution 12, 21, 53, 95–6, 143 polycentric governance 191, 192 Poor Laws 10 poor nations see poverty population increase 3, 12, 63, 96, 97, 190; Malthus on 9–11, 132–3 porn industry 40 Portugal 28, 58, 88, 206 positional competition 55–61, 58, 71, 72 see also social comparison positive feedback loops 16–17 post-growth capitalism 224 post-growth macroeconomics 159–60, 183–4, 221; credit 178–80; degrowth movement 161–3; economic stability 174–6; green growth 163–5; inequality 176–8; role of state 181–3, 182, 200–8, 206; services 170–4; sustainable investment 166–70 see also alternatives; future visions; reform poverty 4, 5–6, 216; basic entitlements 72; flourishing within limits 212; life expectancy 74, 74; need for new economic model 101; symbolic role of goods 70; wellbeing 48, 59–60, 61, 67 see also inequality; relative income effect power politics 200 predator–prey analogy 103–4, 117 private credit see credit private vs. public: common good 208; ownership 9, 105, 191, 219, 223; salaries 130 privatisation 191, 219 product lifetimes, obsolescence 113, 204, 220 production: inputs 80–1; ownership 191, 219, 223 productivity: investment 109, 167, 168, 169; post-growth economy 224; services as engine of growth 171, 172, 173; targets 147; trap 175 see also efficiency measures; labour productivity; resource productivity profits: definitions of capitalism 105; dilemma of growth 211; efficiency measures 87; investment 109; motive 104; post-growth economy 224; and wages 175–8 progress 2, 50–5, 54 see also novelty/innovation; technological advances progressive sector, Baumol’s cost disease 171 progressive state 185, 220–2; contested 186–9; countering consumerism 202–5; equality measures 205–7, 206; governance of the commons 190–2; governance as commitment device 192–5; governmentality of growth 195–7; limit-setting 201–2; moving towards 197–200; post-growth macroeconomics 207–8, 224; prosperity 209 prosocial behaviour 198 see also social contract prosperity 1–3, 22, 121; capabilities for flourishing 61–5; and growth 3–7, 23, 66, 80, 160; and income 3–4, 5, 66–7; limits of 67–72, 113, 212; materialistic vision 137; progress measures 50–5, 54; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; social perspectives 2, 22, 48–9; state roles 209 see also capabilities for flourishing; post-growth macroeconomics; sustainable prosperity; wellbeing prudence, financial 120, 195, 221; financial crisis 33, 34, 35 public sector spending: austerity policies 189; countercyclical spending strategy 181–2, 182; welfare economy 169 public services/amenities: common pool resources 190–2, 198, 199; future visions 204, 218–20; investment 155–6, 204; ownership 223 see also private vs. public; service-based economies public transport 41, 129, 193, 217 purpose see meaning/purpose Putnam, Robert 122 psyche, human see human nature/psyche quality, environmental 12 see also pollution quality of life: enterprise as service 142; inequality 206; sustainable 128 quality to throughput ratios 113 quantitative easing 43 Queen Elizabeth II 25, 32, 34, 37 quiet revolution 127–31 Raworth, Kate 141 Reagan, Ronald 8 rebound phenomenon 111 recession 23–4, 28, 81, 161–3 see also financial crisis recreation/leisure industries 143 recycling 129 redistribution of wealth 52 see also inequality reforms 182–3, 222; economic structures 224; and financial crisis 103; financial systems 156–8, 180 see also alternatives; future visions; post-growth economy relative decoupling 84–5, 86; historical perspectives 87–9, 89; relationship with absolute decoupling 96–101, 111 relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72 see also social comparison religious perspectives 9–10, 214–15; materialism as alternative to religion 115; original sin 9, 131; wellbeing 48, 49 see also existential fear of death renewable energy xxxv, 41, 168–169 repair/renovation 172, 220 resource constraints 3, 7, 8, 11–15, 47 resource productivity 110, 151, 168, 169, 220 resource use: conflicts 22; credible alternatives 101, 220; decoupling 84–9, 92–5, 94, 95; and economic output 142–4; investment 151, 153, 168, 169; trade off with labour costs 110 retail therapy 115 see also consumerism; shopping revenues, state 222–3 see also taxation revolution 186 see also social stability rights: environment/nature 6–7; human see basic entitlements risk, financial 24, 25, 33, 35 The Road to Serfdom (Hayek) 187 Robinson, Edward 132 Robinson, Joan 159 Rockström, Johan 17, 165 romantic movement 9–10 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 35, 39 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 9, 131 Russia 74, 76, 77–80, 78, 122 sacred canopy 214, 215 salaries: private vs. public sector 130, 171; and profits 175–8 Sandel, Michael 150, 164, 218 São Paulo, Clean City Law 204 Sardar, Zia 49, 50 Sarkozy, Nicolas xxxi, 53 savage state, romantic movement 9–10 savings 26–7, 28, 107–9, 108; investment 149; ratios 34, 118–20, 119 scale, efficiencies of 104 Scandinavia 27, 122, 204 scarcity, managing change 16–17 Schumpeter, Joseph 112 Schwartz, Shalom 135–6, 136 schooling see education The Science of Desire (Dichter) 114 secular stagnation 43–7, 45, 173 securitisation, mortgage loans 35 security: moving towards 219; and wellbeing 48, 61 self-development 204 self-expression see identity construction self-transcending behaviours see transcendence The Selfish Gene (Dawkins) 134–5 selfishness 133–8, 196 Sen, Amartya 50, 52, 61–2, 123–4 service concept/servicization 140–4, 147–8, 148, 158 service-based economies 219; engine of growth 170–4; substitution between labour and capital 178; sustainable investment 169–70 see also public services SFC (stock-flow consistent) economic models 179–80 shame 123–4 shared endeavours, post-growth economy 227 Sheldon, Solomon 214 shelter see basic entitlements shopping 115, 116, 130 see also consumerism short-termism/living for today 194, 197, 200 signals: sent out by society 130, 193, 198, 203, 207; social status 71 see also language of goods Simon, Julian 13 simplicity/simple life 118–20, 127–9, 215–16 simulations see mathematical models/simulations slow: capital 170; movement 128 smart growth 85, 163–5 see also green growth Smith, Adam 51, 106–7, 123, 132, 187 social assets 220 social boundaries (minimum standards) 141 see also basic entitlements social care 150–1 see also caring professions social comparison 115, 116, 117 see also relative income effect social contract 194, 198, 199, 200 social inclusion 48, 69–71, 114, 212 see also participation in society social investment 155, 156, 189, 193, 208, 220–3 social justice 198 see also inequality social logic of consumerism 114–16, 204 social stability 24, 26, 80, 145, 186, 196, 205 see also alienation social status see status social structures 80, 129, 130, 137, 196, 200, 203 social tolerance, and wellbeing 59, 60 social unrest see social stability social wage 40 social welfare: financial reforms 182–3; public sector spending 169 socialism 223 Sociobiology (Wilson) 134 soil integrity 220 Solon, quotation 47, 49, 71 Soper, Kate 125–6 Soros, George 36 Soskice, David 106 Soviet Union, former 74, 76, 77–80, 78, 122 Spain 28, 58, 144, 206 SPEAR organization, responsible investment 155 species loss/extinctions 17, 47, 62, 101 speculation 93, 99, 149, 150, 154, 158, 170; economic stability 180; financial crisis 26, 33, 35; short-term profiteering 150; spending: behaviour of ordinary people 34, 119, 120–1; countercyclical 181–2, 182, 188; economic stability 81; as way out of recession 41, 44, 119, 120–1; and work cycle 125 The Spirit Level (Wilkinson and Pickett) 71, 205–6 spiritual perspectives 117, 127, 128, 214 stability see economic stability; social stability stagflation 26 stagnant sector, Baumol’s cost disease 171 stagnation: economic stability 81–2; labour productivity 145; post-financial crisis 43–7, 45 see also recession state capitalism, types/definitions of capitalism 106 state revenues, from social investment 222–3 see also taxation state roles see governance status 207, 209, 211; and possessions 69, 71, 114, 115, 117 see also language of goods; symbolic role of goods Steady State Economics (Daly) xxxii steady state economies 82, 159, 160, 174, 180 see also post-growth macroeconomics Stern, Nicholas 17–18 stewardship: role of the state 200; sustainable investment 168 Stiglitz, Joseph 53 stock-flow consistent (SFC) economic models 179–80 Stockholm Resilience Centre 17, 201 stranded assets 167–8 see also ownership structures of capitalism see economic structures struggle for existence 8–11, 125, 132–3 Stuckler, David 43 stuff see language of goods; material goods; symbolic role of goods subjective wellbeing (SWB) 49, 58, 58–9, 71, 122, 129 see also wellbeing/happiness subprime lending 26 substitution, between labour and capital 177–178 suffering, struggle for existence 10 suicide 43, 52, 77 Sukdhev, Pavan 41 sulphur dioxide pollution 95–6 Summers, Larry 36 Sunstein, Cass 194 sustainability xxv–xxvi, 102, 104, 126; financial systems 154–5; innovation 226; investment 101, 152, 153, 166–70, 220; resource constraints 12; role of the state 198, 203, 207 see also sustainable prosperity Sustainable Development Strategy, UK 198 sustainable growth see green growth sustainable prosperity 210–12; creating credible alternatives 219–21; finding meaning beyond material commodities 212–16; implications for capitalism 222–5; personal choices for improvement 216–18; and utopianism 225–7 see also limits (flourishing within) SWB see subjective wellbeing; wellbeing/happiness Switzerland 11, 46, 157; citizen’s income 207; income relative to wellbeing 58; inequality 206; life expectancy 74, 75 symbolic role of goods 69, 70–1; existential fear of death 212–16; governance 203; innovation/novelty 114–16; material footprints 139–40; paradox of materialism 121–2 see also language of goods; material goods system dynamics model 11–12, 15 tar sands/oil shales 15 taxation: capital 177; income 81; inequality 206; post-growth economy 222 technological advances 12–13, 15; decoupling 85, 86, 87, 96–8, 100–3, 164–5; dilemma of growth 211; economic stability 80; population increase 10–11; role of state 193, 220 see also novelty/innovation Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre 8 terror management, and consumption 69, 104, 115, 212–15 terrorist attacks (9/11) 121 Thailand, Buddhist monasteries 128 Thaler, Richard 194 theatre, Baumol’s cost disease 171–2 theology see religious perspectives theory of evolution 132–3 thermodynamics, laws of 112, 164 Thich Nhat Hanh 128 thrift 118–20, 127–9, 215–16 throwaway society 113, 172, 204 timescales for change 16–17 tin, commodity prices 13 Today programme interview xxix, xxviii Totnes, transition movement 128–9 Towards a Green Economy report (UNEP) 152–3 Townsend, Peter 48, 61 trade balance 31 trading standards 204 tradition 135–6, 136, 226 ‘Tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin) 190–1 transcendence 214 see also altruism; meaning/purpose; spiritual perspectives transition movement, Totnes 128–9 Triodos Bank 156, 165 Trumpf (machine-tool makers) Germany 146 trust, loss of see alienation tungsten, commodity prices 13 Turkey 58, 88 Turner, Adair 157 21st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (2015) 19 UBS (Swiss bank) 46 Ubuntu, African philosophy 227 unemployment 77; consumer goods 215; degrowth movement 162; financial crisis 24, 40, 41, 43; Great Depression 39–40; and growth 38; labour productivity 80–1; post-growth economy 174, 175, 183, 208, 219; work as participation 144–6 United Kingdom: Green New Deal group 152; greenhouse gas emissions 92; labour productivity 173; resource inputs 93; Sustainable Development Strategy 198 United Nations: Development Programme 6; Environment Programme 18, 152–3; Green Economy initiative 41 United States: credit unions 155–6; debt 27, 31–32; decoupling 88; greenhouse gas emissions 90–1; subprime lending 26; Works Progress Administration 39 universal basic income 221 see also citizen’s income University of Massachusetts, Political Economy Research Institute 41 utilitarianism/utility, wellbeing 50, 52–3, 55, 60 utopianism 8, 38, 125, 179; post-growth economy 225–7 values, materialistic 126, 135–6 see also intrinsic values Veblen, Thorstein 115 Victor, Peter xxxviii, 146, 175, 177, 180 vision of progress see future visions; post-growth economy volatility, commodity prices 14, 21 wages: and profits 175–8; private vs. public sector 130, 171 walking, personal choices for improvement 217 water use 22 Wealth of Nations, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes (Smith) 123, 132 wealth redistribution 52 see also inequality Weber, Axel 46 welfare policies: financial reforms 182–3; public sector spending 169 welfare of livestock 220 wellbeing/happiness 47–50, 53, 121–2, 124; collective 209; consumer goods 4, 21, 22, 126; growth 6, 165, 211; intrinsic values 126, 129; investment 150; novelty/innovation 117; opulence 50–2, 67–72; personal choices for improvement 217; planetary boundaries 141; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; simplicity 129; utilitarianism 50, 52–3, 55, 60 see also capabilities for flourishing western lifestyles 70, 210 White, William 46 Whybrow, Peter 68 Wilhelm, Richard 7 Wilkinson, Richard 71, 205–6 Williams, Tennessee 213 Wilson, Edward 134 wisdom traditions 48, 49, 63, 128, 213–14 work: as participation 140–9, 148, 157, 158; and spend cycle 125; sharing 145, 146, 149, 175 Works Progress Administration, USA 39 World Bank 160 World Values Survey 58 youth unemployment, financial crisis 144–5 zero sum game, growth as 57, 71

What We Need to Do Now: A Green Deal to Ensure a Habitable Earth by Chris Goodall

blockchain, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, decarbonisation, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, food miles, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Haber-Bosch Process, hydroponic farming, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it's over 9,000, Kickstarter, microplastics / micro fibres, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Ocado, ocean acidification, plant based meat, smart grid, smart meter

Nevertheless, small experiments with a small number of vessels would surely be worthwhile. As with sulphur seeding (see below), we can hope that temperatures will be held down by these fine sprays. This will help reduce the pace at which ice melts and possibly restrain extreme weather. However, the droplets won’t affect the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, so problems of rising ocean acidification will not be solved. SULPHUR AEROSOLS Large volcanic eruptions throw up millions of tonnes of tiny particles, including sulphur compounds into the stratosphere many miles above the earth’s surface. We have seen lower temperatures after such events around the world. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 put about 16 million tonnes of dust high into the atmosphere and reduced average temperatures by about 0.6 degrees over the following year.

Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America by Shawn Lawrence Otto

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, anthropic principle, Apollo 11, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Brownian motion, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cepheid variable, clean water, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, commoditize, cosmological constant, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Dean Kamen, desegregation, different worldview, disinformation, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, energy security, Exxon Valdez, fudge factor, Garrett Hardin, ghettoisation, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, Harvard Computers: women astronomers, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Large Hadron Collider, Louis Pasteur, luminiferous ether, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, ocean acidification, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, sharing economy, smart grid, stem cell, synthetic biology, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, University of East Anglia, War on Poverty, white flight, Winter of Discontent, working poor, yellow journalism, zero-sum game

Can we manage the new science revolution to our best advantage, or will we be its unwilling victims? At the same time that we are being overwhelmed by progress, we are facing a host of legacy challenges from the science of the last century that are now being pushed to the forefront by global development. They include climate change and energy; ocean acidification and overfishing; biodiversity loss and habitat fragmentation; pandemics and biosecurity management; freshwater resource management; transportation; waste management; chemical, biological, nanotechnological, and genetic pollution; population control; national security; science education and economic competitiveness; and economic growth on a finite planet without degrading it.

…

THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS In December of 1968, a little-known University of California Santa Barbara biologist named Garrett Hardin published a paper in Science that would change the way we look at economics. The core dilemma it identified, which came to be called “the tragedy of the commons” after the paper’s title, lies at the heart of the unresolved environmental challenges of the twentieth century, among them climate change, ocean acidification, overfishing, biodiversity loss, habitat fragmentation, overdevelopment, pollution, exploding population, and unsustainable energy use, to name a few. The dilemma suggests that politicians are paralyzed by a fundamental conflict between the environment and the economy that arises from the deeply held, mistaken belief that freedom and regulation are incompatible.

Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time by James Suzman

agricultural Revolution, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, basic income, biodiversity loss, carbon footprint, clean water, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, cyber-physical system, David Graeber, death from overwork, deepfake, do-ocracy, double entry bookkeeping, double helix, fake news, financial deregulation, Ford Model T, founder crops, Frederick Winslow Taylor, gentrification, Great Leap Forward, interchangeable parts, invention of agriculture, invention of writing, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kibera, Kickstarter, late capitalism, lateral thinking, market bubble, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, Parkinson's law, Peter Singer: altruism, post-industrial society, post-work, public intellectual, Rubik’s Cube, Schrödinger's Cat, scientific management, sharing economy, social intelligence, spinning jenny, The Future of Employment, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, urban planning, work culture , zoonotic diseases

The evidence is now so overwhelming that debate within the scientific community on the scale of human impact on our planet has shifted to asking whether the current geological era merits being redubbed the Anthropocene – the human era. In John Maynard Keynes’s economic utopia, there was no anthropogenic climate change. Nor was there ocean acidification or large-scale biodiversity loss. But if there were, it would almost certainly be under better control than it is now. His utopia was, after all, a place where the scientific method was respected, scientists were admired, and laypeople paid serious heed to their warnings. But more importantly, it was a place where meeting the energy-expensive ‘relative needs’ that animate our urge to consume had diminished to the point that people were no longer inclined to periodically upgrade and replace everything they owned simply to keep the wheels of commerce turning.

…

Thomas Robert here, here, here Malthusian Society here Mapungubwe here Marie Antoinette, Queen of France here Marx, Karl here, here Master and Servants Act here mathematics here Mayans here, here, here Meadows, Dennis here measles here Melanesian islands here Memphis here, here mental health issues here Mesopotamia, Islamic conquest of here metalwork here Midvale Steel Works here Miller, George Armitage here mockery here Model T Ford here mole rats here, here money, origins of here, here, here monopolies here ‘moral harassment’ here Mount Carmel Project here Muaryan Empire here Mughal India here mutualism here, here Namibian independence here nationalism here, here, here Native Americans here, here, here, here, here Natufians here, here, here, here, here, here natural selection here, here, here, here, here, here see also sexual selection Navajo hunters here navigation here Nayaka here Neanderthals here, here, here, here, here, here, here Dorothy Garrod and here needs, ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ here, here, here, here nettle soup here neuroplasticity here, here, here, here, here, here ‘New Class’ here newborns, human here Newcomen, Thomas here Newton, Sir Isaac here, here, here, here Nietzsche, Friedrich here Noah’s Ark here Nuer here nutritional deficiencies here, here Oates, Pastor Wayne here Occupy movement here ocean acidification here Oldowan tools here Olmecs here Olorgesailie flakes here Orangi Town here orang-utans here orcas here Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) here, here, here overwork here oxpeckers here oxygen, atmospheric here ozone layer here, here Pacific North West Coast peoples here, here, here Paiute here palaeogenetics, see genomic studies Palmyra here pangolins here Papua New Guinea here, here ‘paradox of value’ here parasite economy here parasites here, here parasitism here Parkinson’s Law here Parthenon here passerine birds here pathogens here Patterson, Orlando here Patterson, Penny here Pax Romana here peacocks here Pennsylvania Gazette here, here Persian Empire here persistence hunting here pestles and mortars here, here pests here Peterson, Nicolas here Pfeffer, Jeffrey here photorespiration here photosynthesis here, here ‘physiocrats’ here plant domestication here, here, here, here, here Plato here Polanyi, Karl here Pompeii here population growth here, here, here, here, here post-capitalism here post-industrialisation here, here potlatch ceremonies here probability here prokaryotes here, here prostitutes here public wealth, transfer to private hands here purposive (purposeful) behaviour here, here Putamoyo River here Pyramids here, here pyrite here Pythagoras here, here Qesem Cave here Quarternary Ice Age here Reagan, Ronald here renewable energy here Ricardo, David here, here Rigollot, Marcel Jérôme here ritual burial here robots here, here, here, here rock and cave paintings here, here, here, here Roman Empire, endurance of here Rome, ancient here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here collegia (artisan colleges) here, here, here, here trades and professions here and urbanisation here, here and wealth inequalities here Romulus and Remus here Roosevelt, Franklin D. here, here Rubik’s cube here rubisco here Russian Revolution here Sado, Miwa here, here Sahlins, Marshall here St Paul’s Cathedral here SARS here Savery, Thomas here, here scarcity, problem of, see ‘economic problem’ Schmidt, Klaus here, here Schöningen spears here Schrödinger, Erwin here, here, here ‘scientific management’ here, here, here sculptures here, here second law of thermodynamics here, here seduction here self-interest here Semliki River here services sector here, here sexual relationships, and work here sexual selection here, here shamans here, here, here Shelley, Mary here, here Shelley, Percy Bysshe here shellfish here, here Sherman Act here Sibiloi National Park here Sibudu Cave here ‘skull cult’ here skull morphology here slavery here, here, here, here, here, here slaves, ceremonial murder of here Smith, Adam here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here snapping shrimp here social hierarchies here social learning here social networks here social welfare here South Korea here, here, here space, domestication of here Spencer, Herbert here, here spinning frame here steam engines here, here, here sticklebacks here Stonehenge here, here, here, here, here structuralism here sugar here, here, here suicide here, here, here see also karo jisatsu Sumerians here, here, here sumptuary laws here Sunghir here, here supply and demand here survival of the fittest here sustainability here, here, here, here, here symbiosis here, here synaptic pruning here Takahashi, Mariko here ‘talent’, myth of here, here, here Tarahumara hunters here taxation here, here Taylor, Freerick Winslow here, here, here, here Taylorism here, here technological unemployment here television here Tenochitlán here termites here, here, here, here, here, here, here Thatcher, Margaret here theft, tolerated here theological conservatism here Thieme, Hartmut here Thirty Years War here thumbs, opposable here time, transformation in understanding of here ‘time is money’ (the phrase) here, here, here Tower of Babel here toxoplasmosis here trade unions here, here, here, here, here Tsimshian here Turnbull, Colin here UK Office for National Statistics here UN Climate Change Conference here underwork here universal basic income here universe, creation of here universities here upright posture, and vocal capabilities here urbanisation here, here and agriculture here emergence of new professions here neighbourhoods and trades here Uruk here, here, here, here, here, here Urukagima, King here US Treasury here vervet monkeys here vestigial features here vocal abilities here vultures here, here wages improved here and productivity here waterwheels here Watson, James here Watt, James here weaver birds here, here, here, here weed species here, here whales here, here, here wheat, wild here, here, here wheels, pulleys and levers here Wilde, Oscar here, here wildebeest here, here, here Windhoek here, here windmills here Wonderwerk Cave here, here Woodburn, James here Wordnet database here work definition here the word here workaholism here, here working hours here, here, here, here, here workplace engagement here World Debating Championships here World Economic Forum here Wrangham, Richard here writing here Xerxes here Yanomamo here Yolngu here Younger Dryas here, here Yukhagir here Zen Buddhism here Zeus here, here Zilliboti, Fabrizio here A Note on the Author James Suzman is an anthropologist specialising in the Khoisan peoples of southern Africa.

The Second Intelligent Species: How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches by Marshall Brain

Amazon Web Services, basic income, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, digital map, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, full employment, Garrett Hardin, income inequality, job automation, knowledge worker, low earth orbit, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, Stephen Hawking, Tragedy of the Commons, working poor

We would gain control of human population, and then begin diminishing it through education and opportunity. We would begin a concerted effort to end and then reverse environmental destruction. We would stop pumping gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere, extract much of the carbon we have pumped, and sequester it to end ocean acidification and the mass extinction event it is about to bring. We would stop pumping plastic into the ocean and eliminate the ocean plastic problem. We would end the extinction of animals in the wild, and reverse the process. We would create many large human exclusion zones on the planet to let nature recover.

The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity by Toby Ord

3D printing, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, availability heuristic, biodiversity loss, Columbian Exchange, computer vision, cosmological constant, CRISPR, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, defense in depth, delayed gratification, Demis Hassabis, demographic transition, Doomsday Clock, Dr. Strangelove, Drosophila, effective altruism, Elon Musk, Ernest Rutherford, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, Hans Moravec, Herman Kahn, Higgs boson, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Large Hadron Collider, launch on warning, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Society, mass immigration, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, OpenAI, p-value, Peter Singer: altruism, planetary scale, power law, public intellectual, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, seminal paper, social discount rate, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supervolcano, survivorship bias, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, the scientific method, Tragedy of the Commons, uranium enrichment, William MacAskill

But the purpose of this chapter is finding and assessing threats that pose a direct existential risk to humanity. Even at such extreme levels of warming, it is difficult to see exactly how climate change could do so. Major effects of climate change include reduced agricultural yields, sea level rises, water scarcity, increased tropical diseases, ocean acidification and the collapse of the Gulf Stream. While extremely important when assessing the overall risks of climate change, none of these threaten extinction or irrevocable collapse. Crops are very sensitive to reductions in temperature (due to frosts), but less sensitive to increases. By all appearances we would still have food to support civilization.85 Even if sea levels rose hundreds of meters (over centuries), most of the Earth’s land area would remain.

…

This could involve blocking light before it hits the Earth, reflecting more light in the atmosphere before it hits the surface, or reflecting more of the light that hits the surface. It is an attempt to offset the warming effects of the carbon dioxide by cooling the Earth. It is typically cheaper than carbon dioxide removal and quicker to act, but has the downsides of ignoring other bad effects of carbon (such as ocean acidification) and requiring constant upkeep. A central problem with geoengineering is that the cure may be worse than the disease. For the very scale of what it is attempting to achieve could create a risk of massive unintended consequences over the entire Earth’s surface, possibly posing a greater existential risk than climate change itself.

50 Future Ideas You Really Need to Know by Richard Watson

23andMe, 3D printing, access to a mobile phone, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, BRICs, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon credits, Charles Babbage, clean water, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, computer age, computer vision, crowdsourcing, dark matter, dematerialisation, Dennis Tito, digital Maoism, digital map, digital nomad, driverless car, Elon Musk, energy security, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Ford Model T, future of work, Future Shock, gamification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, happiness index / gross national happiness, Higgs boson, high-speed rail, hive mind, hydrogen economy, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, life extension, Mark Shuttleworth, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, pattern recognition, peak oil, personalized medicine, phenotype, precision agriculture, private spaceflight, profit maximization, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Florida, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, semantic web, Skype, smart cities, smart meter, smart transportation, space junk, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, strong AI, Stuxnet, supervolcano, synthetic biology, tech billionaire, telepresence, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Turing test, urban decay, Vernor Vinge, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, web application, women in the workforce, working-age population, young professional

Other ideas include using the oceans to create clouds—scooping up seawater and spraying it into the air—or pumping nutrient-rich water from the bottom of the oceans to block sunlight, as well as various forms of carbon capture (sequestration). Or perhaps we can create artificial forests to remove CO2 from our atmosphere, or build a giant chemistry set to deal with ocean acidification or stored heat? The carbon credit fiasco Not so long ago, carbon trading didn’t exist. Now we have a whole industry based on the idea that you can precisely count offsets and that firms should be allowed to trade in pollution. One job that didn’t exist in the past is an emissions assessor.

Minimal: How to Simplify Your Life and Live Sustainably by Madeleine Olivia

Airbnb, An Inconvenient Truth, BIPOC, carbon footprint, clean water, climate anxiety, Extinction Rebellion, food desert, food miles, hustle culture, Mason jar, microplastics / micro fibres, Naomi Klein, ocean acidification

For example, many workers in the cashew industry, earning as little as £1.70 to £2.15 a day, suffer with debilitating burns to their hands as they aren’t provided with gloves to protect them from the harmful liquid that comes out of cashews.51 Our obsession with avocado toast also comes at a cost. Much of the production of the fruit in Mexico is controlled by drug cartels, where farmers are forced to give up a percentage of their income, risking their lives if they don’t.52 Overfishing, pollution of our waters, ocean acidification, coral bleaching and oceanwide migration of fish due to climate change are all greatly affecting communities around the world who rely on seafood as a main source of food. Indigenous people in the Arctic depend on hunting to support their local economy, and as a part of their cultural and social identity.

Dinosaurs Rediscovered by Michael J. Benton

All science is either physics or stamp collecting, Bayesian statistics, biofilm, bioinformatics, classic study, David Attenborough, Ernest Rutherford, Ford Model T, germ theory of disease, Isaac Newton, lateral thinking, North Sea oil, nuclear winter, ocean acidification

Dal Corso argued that the eruptions had been so huge that they had caused a shock climate change worldwide. Just as at the end of the Permian 252 million years ago, huge volumes of carbon dioxide pumped out of the volcanic vents caused global warming, as well as acid rain. The warming and acid rain killed life on land, and led to ocean acidification and loss of oxygen in bottom waters, and Dal Corso noted extensive evidence of extinctions in the sea in localities across Europe and North America. The warming also led to mega-monsoonal conditions around the broad equatorial belt, which at that time encompassed all the dinosaur localities in North and South America, Europe, and India.

A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies by Matt Simon

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Anthropocene, biofilm, carbon footprint, clean water, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, decarbonisation, Easter island, epigenetics, food desert, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microbiome, microplastics / micro fibres, ocean acidification, precautionary principle, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, South China Sea, the built environment

At the same time, oceans are acidifying due to the chemical reaction of excess atmospheric carbon dioxide with the water. And now Arctic animals are eating microplastics. “Often studies just look at the effect of ingestion,” Bergmann says, “but not at the effects of ingestion and chemicals; or ingestion and temperature change; or ingestion, temperature change, and ocean acidification. But the animals in the environment, of course, experience all these different effects.” Plus, Bergmann and other scientists are concerned that microplastics themselves may be changing the albedo of the Arctic. They’re finding the stuff sprinkled across the ice, and if enough dark-colored particles amass here, they’ll absorb more of the sun’s energy—just like microplastics are warming up beaches—and accelerate melting.

No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends by Richard Dobbs, James Manyika

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, access to a mobile phone, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, asset light, autonomous vehicles, Bakken shale, barriers to entry, business cycle, business intelligence, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, circular economy, cloud computing, corporate governance, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, demographic dividend, deskilling, digital capitalism, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, financial innovation, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global village, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, illegal immigration, income inequality, index fund, industrial robot, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, inventory management, job automation, Just-in-time delivery, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, M-Pesa, machine readable, mass immigration, megacity, megaproject, mobile money, Mohammed Bouazizi, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, old age dependency ratio, openstreetmap, peer-to-peer lending, pension reform, pension time bomb, private sector deleveraging, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, recommendation engine, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, stem cell, Steve Jobs, subscription business, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Great Moderation, trade route, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, urban sprawl, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working-age population, Zipcar

For a century, the world essentially ignored the externalities and impacts of production. Now, governments around the world are taking the first steps to impose costs to compensate for environmental factors related to local resource production and for global issues such as increasingly frequent climate change events, ocean acidification, and deforestation. The 2013 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that its signatories were now 95 percent certain that humans are the main cause of climate change.34 Climate-change-related damage to the environment is having a significant economic impact. Storms and drought that wreck harvests cause spikes in food prices; floods add huge costs; future-proofing infrastructure for a more extreme climate adds to an already large investment bill.

Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places by Bill Streever

Albert Einstein, carbon footprint, coastline paradox / Richardson effect, company town, Easter island, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Exxon Valdez, Mason jar, Medieval Warm Period, ocean acidification, refrigerator car, San Francisco homelessness, South China Sea, Thales of Miletus, the scientific method, University of East Anglia

Guy Callendar’s first paper on climate change and carbon dioxide seems to have been “The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and Its Influence on Temperature” (1938, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, vol. 64, pp. 223–37). Carbon dioxide dissolved in water is an acid. The impact of ocean acidification is only beginning to be understood, but it may turn out that acidification equals or exceeds climate change in its ability to disrupt ecosystems and affect the lives of humans. A paper by Roger Revelle and Hans Suess titled “Carbon Dioxide Exchange Between Atmosphere and Ocean and the Question of an Increase of Atmospheric CO2 During the Past Decades” (1957, Tellus, vol. 9, pp. 18–27) is often considered to be an especially significant paper in the development of current thinking about climate change.

The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Anthropocene, carbon footprint, centre right, clean water, climate change refugee, creative destruction, data science, desegregation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Elon Musk, failed state, fixed income, Frank Gehry, global pandemic, Google Earth, Higgs boson, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Large Hadron Collider, megacity, Murano, Venice glass, negative emissions, New Urbanism, ocean acidification, Paris climate accords, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart cities, South China Sea, space junk, urban planning, urban renewal, wikimedia commons

Although reflecting away some sunlight before it hits the Earth could slow the melting of the ice sheets on the surface, it would be a very long time before this had any impact on the warming of the oceans, which is the most immediate threat to the big glaciers in West Antarctica. Nor would it do anything to reduce ocean acidification, which is caused by high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and is already damaging coral reefs and threatening the ocean food chain. There are also risks to the ozone layer, not to mention the fact that people would be breathing in these particles as they slowly fall out of the sky (today about 6.5 million people die prematurely each year from air pollution; Keith estimated that a full-scale geoengineering program might lead to thousands of additional deaths each year, but those deaths would likely be offset by hundreds of thousands of lives saved by reduced heat exposure).

No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need by Naomi Klein

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, antiwork, basic income, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Brewster Kahle, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Celebration, Florida, clean water, collective bargaining, Corrections Corporation of America, data science, desegregation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, energy transition, extractivism, fake news, financial deregulation, gentrification, Global Witness, greed is good, green transition, high net worth, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, impact investing, income inequality, Internet Archive, Kickstarter, late capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, new economy, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, Paris climate accords, Patri Friedman, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, private military company, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, sexual politics, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon, subprime mortgage crisis, tech billionaire, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, trickle-down economics, Upton Sinclair, urban decay, W. E. B. Du Bois, women in the workforce, working poor

The Revenge of Reality Another hallmark of the Trump era is the war on facts: not only has the press been cast as an enemy of the people, but scientific information has disappeared from government websites and there has been a de facto ban on talking about climate change through official government communications channels. In response, several creative initiatives have emerged to defend objective reality. Days after the inauguration, the Badlands National Park Twitter account was the first to defect from the administration’s clamp-down on science, tweeting out facts about ocean acidification and the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The posts were taken down shortly after they were issued, but not before sparking a trend of rogue Twitter accounts. With key scientific research mysteriously disappearing from government websites, there’s been a concerted international effort to save it from the memory hole.

Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth by Michael Jacobs, Mariana Mazzucato

Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, circular economy, collaborative economy, complexity theory, conceptual framework, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Detroit bankruptcy, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, endogenous growth, energy security, eurozone crisis, factory automation, facts on the ground, fiat currency, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, Ford Model T, forward guidance, full employment, G4S, general purpose technology, Gini coefficient, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, military-industrial complex, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, non-tariff barriers, ocean acidification, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, planned obsolescence, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, private sector deleveraging, quantitative easing, QWERTY keyboard, railway mania, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, systems thinking, the built environment, The Great Moderation, The Spirit Level, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, vertical integration, very high income

(‘Net emissions’ allows for the fact that some emissions can be sequestered, either through an increase in natural carbon sinks, such as forests, or through carbon capture and storage technologies. ‘Geoengineering’ techniques may also have the potential to offset some of the effects of global warming, but are untried, carry significant risks and do not address other impacts such as ocean acidification.) The IPCC’s climate modelling shows that to have a likely chance of holding warming to 2°C, carbon emissions must be reduced to net zero by 2065–2085, and all GHGs by the end of the century.7 This will require a fundamental structural transformation in all economies. Though we obviously cannot foresee every technology or method which will be involved in the future, the outlines of how such a transformation could come about are already visible.8 Fossil fuels for energy will have to be more or less phased out, to be replaced by nuclear and renewable energy combined with electricity storage (and some role for carbon capture and storage).

The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World by Paul Gilding

"World Economic Forum" Davos, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, biodiversity loss, Bob Geldof, BRICs, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, Climategate, commoditize, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, data science, decarbonisation, energy security, Exxon Valdez, failed state, fear of failure, geopolitical risk, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), John Elkington, Joseph Schumpeter, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, Medieval Warm Period, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, new economy, nuclear winter, Ocado, ocean acidification, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, purchasing power parity, retail therapy, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, systems thinking, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, union organizing, University of East Anglia, warehouse automation

However, with nine billion people aspiring to a Western standard of material living, we can be sure the limits will be hit. The Planetary Boundaries report released by the Stockholm Resilience Centre suggested there were nine boundaries we cannot cross and maintain a sustainable economy. They are climate change, stratospheric ozone, land use change, freshwater use, biological diversity, ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorous inputs to the biosphere and oceans, aerosol loading, and chemical pollution. Of course, such individual boundaries are useful to define the challenge and measure progress, but as the report points out, the system is all connected and crossing one boundary will increase the likelihood we will cross others.

MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them by Nouriel Roubini

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, 9 dash line, AI winter, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, business process, call centre, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, cashless society, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, deglobalization, Demis Hassabis, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, failed state, fake news, family office, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, future of work, game design, geopolitical risk, George Santayana, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, GPS: selective availability, green transition, Greensill Capital, Greenspan put, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, initial coin offering, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge worker, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, M-Pesa, margin call, market bubble, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meme stock, Michael Milken, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Mustafa Suleyman, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, negative equity, Nick Bostrom, non-fungible token, non-tariff barriers, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, paradox of thrift, pets.com, Phillips curve, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price mechanism, price stability, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, reshoring, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Savings and loan crisis, Second Machine Age, short selling, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, the payments system, Thomas L Friedman, TikTok, too big to fail, Turing test, universal basic income, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working-age population, Yogi Berra, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

Instead of solving climate change, they argue, it merely distracts attention from the primary cause: too much carbon entering the atmosphere. “At best it’s a Band-Aid or perhaps a pain killer that quite literally masks the underlying problem of carbon pollution,” says economist and Climate Shock coauthor Gernot Wagner.39 If implemented it would not prevent ocean acidification that is killing fish and bleaching corals. Artificial shade might harm global agriculture that needs sunlight. Solar power production would suffer under a white sky. And longer-term consequences are totally unknown.40 Without a breathtaking technological breakthrough, geoengineering resembles a freak-science solution to global warming.

The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us by Diane Ackerman

23andMe, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, airport security, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, augmented reality, back-to-the-land, carbon footprint, clean water, climate change refugee, dark matter, dematerialisation, digital divide, double helix, Drosophila, epigenetics, Google Earth, Google Glasses, haute cuisine, Higgs boson, hindcast, Internet of things, Lewis Mumford, Loebner Prize, Louis Pasteur, Masdar, mass immigration, Medieval Warm Period, megacity, microbiome, mirror neurons, Neil Armstrong, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, personalized medicine, phenotype, Ray Kurzweil, refrigerator car, rewilding, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI@home, skunkworks, Skype, space junk, stem cell, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, TED Talk, the High Line, theory of mind, urban planning, urban renewal, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

., 55, 73 New York University, 197–98 night fiddlers, 172–73 Nile perch, 131 Nin, Anaïs, 186 nitrogen, 36 NOAA, 210 Norrbotten, Sweden, 275–76, 277–78, 280 North Africa, 106 North Carolina, 46 northern goshawks, 132 Northwest Passage, 135 Norway, 101, 124, 132 Norway maples, 132 nuclear bomb, 191 nuclear power, 22, 100 nuclear winter, 8, 9 Obama, Barack, 177 Obama administration, 233 obesity, 196 ocean, acidification of, 65, 66, 154 octopuses, 202, 216 Ohio, 77 Ohyama, Ken, 23 oil, 99, 106 oil refineries, 22 oil spills, 300 Oman, 132 1D farming, see mariculture Operation Acoustic Kitty, 146 Operation Migration, 139–40 opossums, 129 Orangutan Awareness program, 28 Orangutan Outreach, 5, 6, 313 orangutans, 3–7, 25–28, 132, 216, 217, 231, 296 human genes shared by, 3 impending extinction of, 27–28, 313 solitary lives of, 4 tool use by, 5 orca whales, 135, 144 orchids, 206 Orff, Kate, 55 organic fertilizer, 64 Organovo, 238–39 Ornstein, Len, 54 Orthopets, 256 Oshkosh Airshow, 187 osteoarthritis, 248 otters, 124 Outer Island, 58 ovarian cancer, 281–82 Överkalix, Sweden, 279–80 oxen, 140 oxeye daisies, 132 oxygen, 41, 53 oysters, 54–55, 56, 57, 60, 61–63 Ozawa, Masakatsu, 23 P-52 (python), 128 pacemakers, 253 Panbanisha (bonobo), 201–2, 203 pancreas, 281 pansies, 90 Papua New Guinea, 72 Paradise Lost (Milton), 212–13 Paris, 95–96 Paris Habitat, 96 Parkinson’s disease, 253, 295 parks, 73–74, 78 parrots, 202 parsley, 89 Partula, 156–59 passenger pigeons, 151–52 Pasteur, Louis, 290 Patagonia National Park, 99 pathogens, 290 peacock feathers, 91 Pearce, Mick, 93–94 Pembrey, Marcus, 279, 281 penguins, 134–35 peonies, 125 People’s Daily, 146 peppers, 89 peregrine falcons, 132 periwinkles, 61–62 permafrost, 48 personality, 200, 214, 216–17, 222–23, 229, 253, 292, 297, 299, 303–4, 307 Peru, 77 pesticides, 153, 166 pets, 149–50 Pettit, Don, 16 Phelps, Michael, 258 phenotypic elasticity, 249–50 Philippines, 46 photonic clusters, 35 phytoplankton, 61 piezoelectricity, 317 pigeons, 140, 142, 144, 145–46 pigs, 71 in war, 146 Pistorius, Oscar, 258, 260 Plan Bee, 166 planes, 171, 191 planets, 220–21 Planets, The: A Cosmic Pastoral (Ackerman), 220 plankton, 134–35 PlantLab, 90 plants: in cities, 79–85 texting by, 205–7 plastic stents, 253 Pleistocene Park, 151 Pliocene, 29 PLOS ONE, 271 pneumonia, 183 Poland, 78, 132, 273 polar bears, 134 polar molecules, 35 polar T3, 90 pollution, 154 marine transport, 76 Polo, Marco, 272 polymer teeth, 253 Polynesia, 156, 157 Ponce, Brent, 260–61 ponies, 137–38 Pons, Lily, 264 poppies, 125 population growth, 10 Porter, Eliot, 25 poverty, 285, 286 Power Felt, 185 prairie dogs, 131 presence, 199 Price of Freedom: Americans at War exhibit, 145 probiotics, 300 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 129 produce, 89 Project Orcon, 145 Project Pigeon, 145 Project X-Ray, 145 proprioception, 175–76 prosthetics, 256–58 protein, 190 protozoans, 172, 289–90, 300 Przewalski’s horses, 132 Puerto Rico, 175 Puppe (orangutan), 26–27 purple finch, 137 pyrolysis technology, 76 pythons, 128–31, 133, 140, 315 Quai Branly Museum, 80–82, 84–85 quarries, 24 quasi-crystal, 34 rabbits, 126, 129, 133 rabies, 298 racoons, 129 rail trails, 77 rainforests, 79 rains, 41 Raison, Charles, 300–301 Rambuteau subway station, 95–96 Rand, Ayn, 59 rats, 282–83, 296 reading, 191–92 Reconciliation Ecology, 74 recycling, 52, 74, 78, 87, 88, 90 heat, 95–108 red clover, 166 Red Delicious, 137 red foxes, 153 red kites, 132 Red Sea Star Restaurant, 76 reef death, 36–37 refrigerators, 87 regenerative medicine, 244 Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, 254–55 reindeer, 132 Reiss, Diana, 202, 204 religion, 176 Relman, David, 300 Renaissance, 190 Renault, 83 renewable energy, 307 restaurant rooftop farms, 88 retinas, 253 Revolutionizing Prosthetics program, 258–59 Rezwan, Mohammed, 52–53 rhododendrons, 125 rice, 71 Rice Plant Conservation Science Center, 82 Rig Veda, 257 RinkWatch.org, 40, 314 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 78 Ripasso Energy, 100–101, 106 roadkill, 115–16 robomoths, 146–47 RobotCub Consortium, 218–19 robot fleas, 148 robotic evolution, 210, 213, 224–25 robots, 210–25 rocketships, 171 rock strata, 31, 35 roe deer, 124 Romania, 78, 124 Romans, 185 Rome, 267 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 145 rosemary, 90 Rosenzweig, Michael, 74 roses, 125 Rotterdam, Netherlands, 77 Royal Botanic Gardens, 118 Rwanda, 46 Ryu Chan Hyeon, 102 saber-tooth tigers, 162, 163 Sagan, Carl, 220 sage, 125 Sahara Desert, 54 Sahel, 46 St.

This Will Make You Smarter: 150 New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking by John Brockman

23andMe, adjacent possible, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, banking crisis, Barry Marshall: ulcers, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, biofilm, Black Swan, Bletchley Park, butterfly effect, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, cognitive load, congestion charging, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data acquisition, David Brooks, delayed gratification, Emanuel Derman, epigenetics, Evgeny Morozov, Exxon Valdez, Flash crash, Flynn Effect, Garrett Hardin, Higgs boson, hive mind, impulse control, information retrieval, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Large Hadron Collider, lifelogging, machine translation, mandelbrot fractal, market design, Mars Rover, Marshall McLuhan, microbiome, Murray Gell-Mann, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, ocean acidification, open economy, Pierre-Simon Laplace, place-making, placebo effect, power law, pre–internet, QWERTY keyboard, random walk, randomized controlled trial, rent control, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Richard Thaler, Satyajit Das, Schrödinger's Cat, scientific management, security theater, selection bias, Silicon Valley, Stanford marshmallow experiment, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Stuart Kauffman, sugar pill, synthetic biology, the scientific method, Thorstein Veblen, Turing complete, Turing machine, twin studies, Vilfredo Pareto, Walter Mischel, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

Politicians usually love locking barn doors, as it gives the appearance of taking action cheaply. Emissions reduction only slows the rate at which things get worse, as the CO2 accumulation keeps growing. (People confuse annual emissions with the accumulation that causes the trouble.) On the other hand, cleaning up the CO2 actually cools things, reverses ocean acidification, and even reverses the thermal-expansion portion of rising sea level. Recently I heard a biologist complaining about models for insect social behavior: “All of the difficult stuff is not mentioned. Only the easy stuff is calculated.” Scientists first do what they already know how to do.

Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism by Harsha Walia

anti-communist, antiwork, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, California gold rush, clean water, climate change refugee, collective bargaining, colonial rule, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crack epidemic, dark matter, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, extractivism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Food sovereignty, G4S, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Global Witness, green new deal, guest worker program, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, land reform, late capitalism, lockdown, mandatory minimum, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, moral panic, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, pension reform, Rana Plaza, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Shoshana Zuboff, social distancing, special economic zone, Steve Bannon, strikebreaker, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce

In recognition of mounting climate displacement, an unprecedented (though not legally binding) ruling by the UN Human Rights Committee in 2019 determined that countries cannot deport people who have sought asylum for climate-related threats violating the right to life.67 Climate disasters displace an average of 25.3 million people annually—one person every one to two seconds—representing an astounding 86 percent of all internal displacement.68 In 2016, new displacements caused by climate disasters outnumbered new displacements as a result of persecution by a ratio of three to one.69 By 2050, an estimated 143 million people will be displaced in just three regions, with projections for global climate displacement ranging as high as one billion people.70 Acute weather disasters are compounded by longer-term dispossession caused by desertification, soil erosion, monocropping, ocean acidification, pollution, and strip mining. Indonesia is moving its capital city as Jakarta sinks, Canada is clear-cutting one million acres of boreal forest on Indigenous lands every year for toilet paper and tar sands production, 85 percent of Shanghai’s rivers are undrinkable because toxic waste is dumped into them by multinational corporations and manufacturing factories, and powerful states scramble over oil and gas resources under melting Arctic ice caps.71 Extreme drought and crop failures contributed to the Syrian civil war, which then led to one of the world’s largest refugee displacements.

Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy by Robert W. McChesney

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, access to a mobile phone, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, American Legislative Exchange Council, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, AOL-Time Warner, Automated Insights, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, business cycle, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, classic study, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collective bargaining, company town, creative destruction, crony capitalism, David Brooks, death of newspapers, declining real wages, digital capitalism, digital divide, disinformation, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Dr. Strangelove, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, fake news, Filter Bubble, fulfillment center, full employment, future of journalism, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, Google Earth, income inequality, informal economy, intangible asset, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Metcalfe’s law, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, national security letter, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, New Journalism, Nicholas Carr, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, patent troll, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post scarcity, Post-Keynesian economics, power law, price mechanism, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Nader, Richard Stallman, road to serfdom, Robert Metcalfe, Saturday Night Live, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, single-payer health, Skype, spectrum auction, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, technological determinism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, the long tail, the medium is the message, The Spirit Level, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transfer pricing, Upton Sinclair, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, yellow journalism, Yochai Benkler

Gilbert Cranberg, Randall Bezanson, and John Soloski, Taking Stock: Journalism and the Publicly Traded Company (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 2001). 58. It was a short step from 2001 to 2011–12, when newspaper and broadcast news media provided the Kardashian family forty times more coverage than it did striking developments in ocean acidification, one of the major impacts of fossil fuel–fired climate disruption. David Helvarg, “The Corporate Media Cares Way More About the Kardashians Than Climate Change,” The Progressive online, July 11, 2012, progressive.org/corporate_media_climate_change.html. 59. Tom Rosenstiel, Mark Jurkowitz, and Hong Ji, “How Newspapers Are Faring Trying to Build Digital Revenue,” Journalism.org, Mar. 5, 2012, journalism.org/analysis_report/search_new_business_model. 60.

The Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility by Robert Zubrin

Ada Lovelace, Albert Einstein, anthropic principle, Apollo 11, battle of ideas, Boeing 747, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, Colonization of Mars, complexity theory, cosmic microwave background, cosmological principle, Dennis Tito, discovery of DNA, double helix, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, flex fuel, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gravity well, if you build it, they will come, Internet Archive, invisible hand, ITER tokamak, James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kuiper Belt, low earth orbit, Mars Rover, Mars Society, Menlo Park, more computing power than Apollo, Naomi Klein, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, off grid, out of africa, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, place-making, Pluto: dwarf planet, private spaceflight, Recombinant DNA, rising living standards, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, SoftBank, SpaceX Starlink, Strategic Defense Initiative, Stuart Kauffman, telerobotics, Thomas Malthus, three-masted sailing ship, time dilation, transcontinental railway, uranium enrichment, Virgin Galactic, Wayback Machine

Furthermore, the happy picture presented in plate 15 only shows what is occurring on land. Most of the Earth is covered by oceans, and they show little evidence of enhanced biological productivity due to increased CO2. On the contrary, significant damage to coral reefs appears to be occurring due to CO2-driven ocean acidification (although conventional pollution and overfishing may also be to blame in some cases). So it would appear that massive anthropogenic CO2 emissions are fertilizing the land while harming the oceans. This is happening because while CO2 availability is a limiting factor for the growth of land plants, in most of the ocean the rate of growth of the phytoplankton that stand at the base of the food chain is controlled by the availability of trace elements, such as iron, phosphorus, and nitrates.

Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth by Mark Hertsgaard

addicted to oil, An Inconvenient Truth, Berlin Wall, business continuity plan, carbon footprint, clean water, climate change refugee, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, congestion pricing, corporate governance, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, defense in depth, disinformation, en.wikipedia.org, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fixed income, food miles, Great Leap Forward, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Kickstarter, megacity, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, ocean acidification, peak oil, Port of Oakland, precautionary principle, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart grid, South China Sea, the built environment, transatlantic slave trade, transit-oriented development, two and twenty, University of East Anglia, urban planning

The Harvard study, by Jennifer Logan, was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in June 2009; a useful summary is here: http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/engineering-technology/articles/scientists-expect-wildfires-increase-climate-warms-coming-decades. The fate of coral reefs was projected by Ken Caldeira and colleagues in "Coral Reefs Under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification" by O. Hoegh-Guldberg, P. J. Mumby, A. J. Hooten, R. S. Steneck, P. Greenfield, E. Gomez, C. D. Harvell, P. F. Sale, A. J. Edwards, K. Caldeira, N. Knowlton, C. M. Eakin, R. Iglesias-Prieto, N. Muthiga, R. H. Bradbury, A. Dubi, and M. E. Hatziolos, Science 318 (December 14, 2007): 1737–42. The U.S.

Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness by Frederic Laloux, Ken Wilber

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, augmented reality, blue-collar work, Boeing 747, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon footprint, conceptual framework, corporate social responsibility, crowdsourcing, different worldview, driverless car, Easter island, failed state, fulfillment center, future of work, hiring and firing, holacracy, index card, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, job satisfaction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kenneth Rogoff, meta-analysis, ocean acidification, pattern recognition, post-industrial society, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, radical decentralization, randomized controlled trial, selection bias, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, systems thinking, the market place, the scientific method, Tony Hsieh, warehouse automation, zero-sum game

Or are we bound for a shipwreck, a collapse in civilization? Never before in history have we faced such a perfect storm of predicaments that each on its own could cause widespread decline of human life: climate disruption; the accelerating extinction of animals, plants, and ecosystems essential for human survival; land degradation; ocean acidification; depletion of scarce resources (fossil fuels, minerals, and groundwater); chemical pollution; nuclear wars; global epidemics. These are all time bombs, many with fuses only two or three decades long. All the while, human population is forecast to increase by at least another two billion, adding more strain to these predicaments.

Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet by Varun Sivaram

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, addicted to oil, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, asset light, asset-backed security, autonomous vehicles, bitcoin, blockchain, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, collateralized debt obligation, Colonization of Mars, currency risk, decarbonisation, deep learning, demand response, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, gigafactory, global supply chain, global village, Google Earth, hive mind, hydrogen economy, index fund, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, low interest rates, M-Pesa, market clearing, market design, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, megacity, Michael Shellenberger, mobile money, Negawatt, ocean acidification, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shock, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, renewable energy transition, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart grid, smart meter, SoftBank, Solyndra, sovereign wealth fund, Ted Nordhaus, Tesla Model S, time value of money, undersea cable, vertical integration, wikimedia commons

Just fifteen years later, those countries had already pumped enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to guarantee at least such a temperature rise.4 Climate change has already taken a toll around the world. Rising sea levels have spurred waves of mass migration from the floodplains of Bangladesh. Ocean acidification has decimated fisheries from Norway to Nicaragua. Droughts across Africa and the Middle East have left hundreds of millions in a persistent state of famine and water scarcity; Egypt has just declared war on Ethiopia for choking off its supply from the parched Nile river.5 Far from interceding, the United States has turned inward from the crumbling world order to weather superstorms on the Atlantic seaboard and extinguish the wildfires perpetually raging in the west.

Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration―and Why It’s Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives by Danny Dorling, Kirsten McClure

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Anthropocene, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, carbon tax, clean water, creative destruction, credit crunch, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Extinction Rebellion, fake news, Flynn Effect, Ford Model T, full employment, future of work, gender pay gap, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Great Leap Forward, Greta Thunberg, Henri Poincaré, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, jimmy wales, John Harrison: Longitude, Kickstarter, low earth orbit, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, negative emissions, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, Overton Window, pattern recognition, Ponzi scheme, price stability, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, QWERTY keyboard, random walk, rent control, rising living standards, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, School Strike for Climate, Scramble for Africa, sexual politics, Skype, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, structural adjustment programs, Suez crisis 1956, the built environment, Tim Cook: Apple, time dilation, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, very high income, wealth creators, wikimedia commons, working poor

When it comes to mammals and other larger animals, during the first half of my life we killed off a majority of the rarest species on Earth. We did not plan to. We had no idea that so many were on the edge of extinction already, driven there by us, our cattle and our grain, our pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens, our land clearance, our wheat and rice, our ocean acidification, and everything else that we did to destroy habitats, poison the rivers, pollute the seas, and change the entire climate. Forgive us, we ask, because we knew not what we did. We were so optimistic at the start of the great acceleration. In 1914, Bradford town councilor Fred Liles made a banner for the East Bradford Socialist Sunday School that is one of the happiest and most uplifting, in its hope and simplicity, that you will ever see.26 There are two fruit trees in its center, representing knowledge and truth.

Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers by Simon Winchester

9 dash line, Albert Einstein, Boeing 747, BRICs, British Empire, California gold rush, classic study, colonial rule, company town, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Easter island, Frank Gehry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Kwajalein Atoll, land tenure, Larry Ellison, Loma Prieta earthquake, Maui Hawaii, Monroe Doctrine, ocean acidification, oil shock, polynesian navigation, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, The Day the Music Died, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, transcontinental railway, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, undersea cable, uranium enrichment

Frantic efforts are now being made to reverse the situation. Laboratories in Hawaii have enjoyed some success, most notably with bold experiments to breed new varieties of heat-resistant corals. Whether this is merely the postponement of disaster remains to be seen. Most scientists2 believe this assault on reefs is caused by ocean warming and ocean acidification, and though arguments still rage over humankind’s culpability in this, apprehension continues to grow that matters have now gone too far, that the dire situation is irreversible, and that corals may soon be fossils. Australia’s particular role is rather more complex. Local pollution is proving a major menace: the runoff from the many Queensland rivers, now heavy with fertilizing chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, and animal waste, is especially harmful to the reef.

Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them by Donovan Hohn

An Inconvenient Truth, carbon footprint, clean water, collective bargaining, dark matter, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Exxon Valdez, Filipino sailors, Garrett Hardin, Google Earth, hindcast, illegal immigration, indoor plumbing, intermodal, Isaac Newton, means of production, microbiome, Neil Armstrong, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, Panamax, Pearl River Delta, planned obsolescence, post-Panamax, profit motive, Skype, standardized shipping container, statistical model, the long tail, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, traveling salesman

And here Hardin leaves us with a profound dilemma, forcing us to choose between environmental health and economic growth. If Hardin is right, we cannot have both. No one—not Charles Moore, not Chris Pallister, not Greenpeace—will tell you that plastic pollution is the greatest environmental threat our oceans face. Depending on whom you ask, that honor goes to global warming, or ocean acidification, or overfishing, or agricultural runoff. In a way, plastic’s greatest threat may be symbolic, which is not to say that it is empty or cosmetic. Most pollutants are invisible. Saturated with CO2, our oceans have begun to acidify, our scientists tell us—you can’t discern pH levels with the human eye.

MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World by Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, airport security, Andrew Keen, augmented reality, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, bioinformatics, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, business climate, business process, buy and hold, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Lindbergh, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, clean water, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, cloud computing, collaborative editing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, demographic transition, digital capitalism, digital divide, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, do well by doing good, don't be evil, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Evgeny Morozov, Exxon Valdez, failed state, fault tolerance, financial innovation, Galaxy Zoo, game design, global village, Google Earth, Hans Rosling, hive mind, Home mortgage interest deduction, information asymmetry, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jaron Lanier, jimmy wales, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, medical bankruptcy, megacity, military-industrial complex, mortgage tax deduction, Netflix Prize, new economy, Nicholas Carr, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, oil shock, old-boy network, online collectivism, open borders, open economy, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer lending, personalized medicine, radical decentralization, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, scientific mainstream, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, smart meter, social graph, social web, software patent, Steve Jobs, synthetic biology, systems thinking, text mining, the long tail, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, transfer pricing, University of East Anglia, urban sprawl, value at risk, WikiLeaks, X Prize, Yochai Benkler, young professional, Zipcar

A KILLER APPLICATION FOR MASS COLLABORATION: SAVING THE PLANET The debate over climate change may not be over, but just as most average citizens believe that pollution has negative consequences, virtually all scientists now agree that the risks associated with a substantial warming of the planet are far too great for the world to do nothing about the soaring levels of CO2 emissions we pump into the atmosphere. Rising average surface temperatures combined with rapidly expanding deserts, melting Arctic sea ice, and ocean acidification already provide what many of the world’s top scientists believe to be unequivocal evidence that human activities are fundamentally altering the Earth’s climate.4 Although we cannot fully predict the repercussions, the risk is that if we fail to rein in greenhouse gas emissions there will be devastating social disruption caused by extreme weather events, water and food shortages, mass migrations, unpredictable disease patterns, and loss of biodiversity.5 Moreover, the effects of climate change will be felt unevenly, with the burden falling most heavily on those least able to cope with the consequences, resulting in untold human misery.

Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? by Alan Weisman

air freight, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Bretton Woods, British Empire, call centre, carbon footprint, clean water, colonial rule, David Attenborough, degrowth, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Edward Jenner, El Camino Real, epigenetics, Filipino sailors, Garrett Hardin, Great Leap Forward, Haber-Bosch Process, happiness index / gross national happiness, haute couture, housing crisis, ice-free Arctic, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, illegal immigration, immigration reform, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), land reform, liberation theology, load shedding, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Mahbub ul Haq, megacity, Menlo Park, Michael Shellenberger, microdosing, Money creation, new economy, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Satyajit Das, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Stewart Brand, unemployed young men, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

They acknowledged that, while based on the best science available, these were “rough, first estimates only, surrounded by large uncertainties and knowledge gaps” that will require major scientific advancements to fill. The nine boundaries were climate change, biodiversity loss, disruption of global nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, ozone depletion, ocean acidification, freshwater use, changes in land use, chemical pollution, and atmospheric particulates. Behind each of these was the same unspoken cause: cumulative human presence, for which they did not hazard a boundary. A decision to limit one’s own species is so emotionally loaded that the very idea is as troubling to scientists as it is to any human.

Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing by Kevin Davies

23andMe, Airbnb, Anne Wojcicki, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Asilomar, bioinformatics, California gold rush, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, discovery of DNA, disinformation, Doomsday Clock, double helix, Downton Abbey, Drosophila, Edward Jenner, Elon Musk, epigenetics, fake news, Gregor Mendel, Hacker News, high-speed rail, hype cycle, imposter syndrome, Isaac Newton, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, life extension, Mark Zuckerberg, microbiome, Mikhail Gorbachev, mouse model, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, phenotype, QWERTY keyboard, radical life extension, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, rolodex, scientific mainstream, Scientific racism, seminal paper, Shenzhen was a fishing village, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, social distancing, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, TED Talk, the long tail, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, traumatic brain injury, warehouse automation

Only in 2019 did the Kenyan government finally give limited approval to farmers to plant GMO cotton.43 In Uganda, despite extensive debate on a biosafety bill, negative opinions about GMOs on public health prevail. Some opponents argue (falsely) that GMOs result in obesity, as in America. Nnimmo Bassey, the Nigerian environmentalist, is deeply concerned about climate change, warning that ocean acidification and coastal erosion will breed conflict in his home country. But Bassey doesn’t distinguish between the polluters helping to incinerate the planet and industrial corporations seeking to impose genetically edited crops across the continent. Bassey accuses them of cynically taking advantage of poor, hungry Africans purely to gain market access.

The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier by Ian Urbina

9 dash line, Airbnb, British Empire, clean water, Costa Concordia, crowdsourcing, disinformation, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Filipino sailors, forensic accounting, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, global value chain, Global Witness, illegal immigration, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jessica Bruder, John Markoff, Jones Act, Julian Assange, Malacca Straits, Maui Hawaii, Neal Stephenson, New Journalism, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, Patri Friedman, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley, Skype, South China Sea, standardized shipping container, statistical arbitrage, Tragedy of the Commons, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, WikiLeaks, William Langewiesche

Though remote, Palau is still cursed by its location, bordered by some of the world’s largest fishing fleets and most insatiable fish markets—Japan, China, and Taiwan to its northwest, Indonesia to the southwest. And despite its stunning natural beauty, Palau is enmeshed in the larger dystopian seascape of the western Pacific Ocean. The region is teeming with super trawlers, state-subsidized poacher fleets, mile-long drift nets, and predator buoys and is being battered by mega cyclones, ocean acidification, rising sea levels, warming marine temperatures, and a Texas-sized gyre of floating trash. By any measure, the nation of Palau was dealt as tough a hand as anyone could imagine. Palau’s president, Tommy Remengesau Jr., is a sturdy man with an intense stare who clasps your shoulder while shaking your hand firmly.

Energy and Civilization: A History by Vaclav Smil

8-hour work day, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, animal electricity, Apollo 11, Boeing 747, business cycle, carbon-based life, centre right, Charles Babbage, decarbonisation, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, epigenetics, Exxon Valdez, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of gunpowder, James Watt: steam engine, Jevons paradox, John Harrison: Longitude, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Just-in-time delivery, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kibera, knowledge economy, land tenure, language acquisition, Lewis Mumford, lone genius, Louis Blériot, mass immigration, megacity, megaproject, Menlo Park, mutually assured destruction, North Sea oil, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, phenotype, precision agriculture, purchasing power parity, QWERTY keyboard, Richard Feynman, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Suez canal 1869, Toyota Production System, transcontinental railway, uranium enrichment, Yom Kippur War

Prominent worries have ranged from the loss of global biodiversity to plastic accumulation in the oceans, but one global environmental concern has been paramount since the late 1980s: anthropogenic emissions of greenhouses gases causing relatively rapid climate change, above all tropospheric warming and ocean acidification and sea-level rise. The behavior of greenhouse gases and their likely warming effect were fairly well understood by the end of the nineteenth century (Smil 1997). The leading anthropogenic contributor is CO2, the end-product of the efficient combustion of all fossil and biomass fuels, and the destruction of forests (above all in wet tropics) and grasslands has been the second most important source of CO2 emissions (IPCC 2015).

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

3D printing, Abraham Maslow, access to a mobile phone, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Alignment Problem, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Arthur Eddington, artificial general intelligence, availability heuristic, Ayatollah Khomeini, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brexit referendum, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charlie Hebdo massacre, classic study, clean water, clockwork universe, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, distributed generation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, double helix, Eddington experiment, Edward Jenner, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, endogenous growth, energy transition, European colonialism, experimental subject, Exxon Valdez, facts on the ground, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Flynn Effect, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, frictionless, frictionless market, Garrett Hardin, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, Hacker Conference 1984, Hans Rosling, hedonic treadmill, helicopter parent, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Hobbesian trap, humanitarian revolution, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Snow's cholera map, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, l'esprit de l'escalier, Laplace demon, launch on warning, life extension, long peace, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Mahbub ul Haq, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, Nathan Meyer Rothschild: antibiotics, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, nuclear taboo, nuclear winter, obamacare, ocean acidification, Oklahoma City bombing, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paperclip maximiser, Paris climate accords, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, post-truth, power law, precautionary principle, precision agriculture, prediction markets, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, radical life extension, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Rodney Brooks, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Saturday Night Live, science of happiness, Scientific racism, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, Social Justice Warrior, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, supervolcano, synthetic biology, tech billionaire, technological determinism, technological singularity, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, women in the workforce, working poor, World Values Survey, Y2K

See sex differences; women mental health and illness cognitive behavioral therapy, 175, 282 depression, 280–83, 284, 476n74 disease mongering/concept creep, 281–2 drugs for, 281, 282 and freedom, 285 paradox of, 282 as percentage of global burden of disease, 282 rates of depression and anxiety, 282–3, 476n74 See also anxiety; suicide mental models, 22–3 Mercier, Hugo, 380 Merton, Robert, xvii–xviii methane (natural gas), 136, 143, 147, 183 methodological naturalism, 421–2 Mexican-American War (1946–48), 163 Mexico agriculture in, 76 homicide rates in, 169, 170, 172 literacy in, 236 Mexican Revolution, 199 social spending in, 109 Trump and immigration from, 336 women’s rights in, 222 Meyer, Bruce, 116 microwave ovens, 252 Midas, King, 299 Middle Ages accidental death rates in, 180–81 belief in external forces, 9–10 cost of artificial light in, 253, 253 homicide in, 43, 168 poverty and, 79–80 private militias as ubiquitous in, 197 racism and slavery of, 397 middle class globalization and effects on, 112, 113, 118–19, 339, 340 worldwide increase of, 86, 459–60n18 Middle East and North Africa carbon emissions of, 144 communist governments in, 200 education in, 236–7, 237 emancipative values in, 227–8, 227, 439 imperialist interventions in, 439 literacy and, 236 refugees from, and European populism, 338 See also Arab countries; Muslim countries; individual countries Milanović, Branko, 104–5, 111, 112, 113 military governments, 200 military spending, 162, 467n18 Millennials, 225 depression and, 476n74 digital technology and, 244 happiness and, 273 as increasingly liberal, 217 low voter turnout in Trump’s election, 343 secularization and, 437 suicide and, 280 well-being of, 283 Miller, George, 314 Mill, John Stuart, 373, 417 Milošević, Slobodan, 447 mind-body dualism, 3, 22, 422, 427 mining safety and working conditions, 185, 230 minority rights, populist disregard for, 333, 340 misanthropy of cultural criticism, 34, 247, 446 of traditional environmentalism, 122, 134, 154 Mishima, Yukio, 446 Missouri, capital punishment in, 211 mobile phones/smartphones, 94–5, 257, 331 Mokyr, Joel, 82–3, 332 Molière, 411 Monbiot, George, 264 Mongolia, 85, 86 Monitoring the Future (youth survey), 185 monotonicity, 44 Montefiore, Hugh, 465n76 Montesquieu, 8, 10, 12, 13, 223 Monty Python’s Flying Circus, 392 Mooney, Chris, 387 Moore, Patrick, 465n76 Moore’s Law, 46, 298, 330 morality as balancing desires conflicting with others’, 414 basis of, 412–15, 419 capital punishment abolition and, 211–12, 213 deontological, 416–18 evolution as selecting for, 415 humanism and, 395, 410 impartiality and, 412–13, 415 progress in, as cumulative, 327 relativists vs. realists, 429–30 and safety regulations, 190 social contracts against harm, 27–8 sympathy and, 415 utilitarian, 415–19 and violence, vulnerability to, 414–15 See also theism and theistic morality moral sense abstract reasoning and honing of, 243 deficits in, 26, 140 root-causism and, 169–70 sacrifice and, 140–41 Morgenthau, Hans, 309 Morrison, Philip, 308 Morton, Oliver, 154 Moss, Jonathan, 402 Mothers Against Drunk Driving, 178 motor vehicles accident deaths, 42, 176–8, 177 deaths in, vs. terrorist deaths, 192, 193 decline in demand for, 135 drunk driving, 178 robotic cars, 180 safety, development of, 177–8, 190 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 200 Mozambique, escape from poverty of, 85, 86 Mozgovoi, Aleksandr, 479n93 Mueller, John, 205–6, 263, 305, 310–311, 313 Mugabe, Robert, 91 Mukherjee, Bharati, 284 Muller, Richard, 313 multiethnic communities, 405, 448, 450 multiverse theory, 424–5 Munroe, Randall, 127, 128, 430, 489n52 music, 260, 407 Musk, Elon, 296 Muslim countries atheists in, 435 cohorts, 442, 491n106 cruel punishments in, 439, 440 emancipative values weakest in, 223, 227–8, 227, 240, 439, 442 female genital mutilation in, 439 fertility decreasing in, 126, 436 homosexuality as crime in, 223, 439, 440 “honor killings” of women in, 439 and humanism, lack of progress in, 439–42 humanistic revolution in, 442–3, 491n106 human rights violations and, 439 separation of mosque and state, 441 theocracies and, 201 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 418–19 women’s rights in, 222, 439, 442, 491n106 See also Arab countries; Islam; Islamist extremists; Muslims Muslims conspiracy theories and, 67, 336 hate crimes targeting, 219–20, 220 literal readings of Quran, 440, 490n96 percentage of world population, 436 sharia law and, 440, 490n96 as strongly religious, 440 Trump and immigration of, 336 Mussolini, Benito, 445, 446, 447, 491n118 Mutar, Faisal Saeed Al-, 442 Myanmar (Burma), 203, 419 Myhrvold, Nathan, 477n20 Naam, Ramez, 298, 477n20 Nabokov, Vladimir, 261 Nader, Ralph, 177 Nagel, Thomas, 351–2, 412, 413, 427, 429, 482n4, 488n43 Nalin, David, 64 Namazie, Maryam, 443 Namibia, 203 NASA, 295, 300 Nasr, Amir Ahmad, 443 Nasrin, Taslima, 443 nationalism as counter-Enlightenment value, 30–31, 448 political ideologies and, 31 romantic nationalism, 165–6, 447, 448, 449–51 Russian, 159 vs. social contract, 31 See also populism National Science Foundation, 356–7, 387 nation-states cyber-sabotage accomplished by, 304 as putative units of group selection, 31, 448, 450 romantic nationalism, 165, 447, 448, 449–51 tribalism and, 450 natural disaster deaths, 187–9, 188 destruction of civilizations, 295–6 extinction of human species, 294–5 natural gas (methane), 136, 143, 147, 183 naturalism, 392, 421–2, 486n17 Natural Resources Defense Council, 465n76 natural selection, 18–19 homeostasis discovered by, 22 human intelligence and, 297 humanism and, 413–14 reality as selection pressure, 355 See also evolution nature competition and arms races in, 19, 24–5 environmentalism, traditional view of, 122 purpose in, science as refuting, 8, 24, 394–5, 434–5 as robust, 133 Romanticism and, 30, 121 See also natural selection Nawaz, Maajid, 443 Nazi Germany Christianity of, 430 counter-Enlightenment ideology of, 397 eugenics and, 399 Holocaust, 161, 397, 399, 430 intellectual fans of, 447 Nietzsche as influence on, 445 public health invoked by, 399 “scientific racism” of, 397–8 See also Germany; Hitler, Adolf Negativity bias, 47–8, 293 Negroponte, John, 310 Nemirow, Jason, 140 neo-fascism, 419, 448, 451 neo-reaction, 419, 451 Nepal, 203 Netherlands commerce, embrace of, 84–5 emancipative values in, 225–7, 226, 227 happiness ranking of, 475n30 homicide rates in, 169, 170 life expectancy in, 95 literacy in, 236 populism repudiated in, 338–9 secularization and, 436 social spending in, 108 New Deal, 107–8 New England, homicide rates in, 169, 170 New Peace, 43 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, 317, 318 Newton, Sir Isaac, 24 New York City, 172, 286–7, 380 New York Times, 44, 50, 74, 97, 151, 280, 292, 373, 409, 420 New Zealand economic freedom in, 365, 483n39 education in, 237 and escape from poverty, 85 happiness and, 451, 475n30 IQ gains in, 241, 241 secularization and, 437, 438–9 social spending in, 365, 483n39 well-being and, 438–9, 451 women’s rights in, 222 Nicaragua, 158 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 311 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 443–7 cultural pessimism, advocate of, 39–40, 406 intellectuals and artists as fans, 445, 446–7, 452 quotations from, 444–5 See also romantic heroism Niger, 203 Nigeria democratization of, 203 famine in, 73 killings by Boko Haram in, 162 polio in, 65 secularization and, 436 terrorist deaths in, 193 Nisbet, Robert, 40 Nixon, Richard, 119 Nobel Peace Prize, 203, 232, 240, 316 Nomani, Asra, 443 Non-Proliferation Treaty (1970), 316–17 No Nukes concert and film (1979), 147 nonviolent resistance, success rate of, 405 non-Western Enlightenments, 29–30, 419, 439, 442–3, 456n2 Norberg, Johan, 54–5, 68, 79, 125, 203–4 Nordhaus, Ted, 122, 141–2, 147, 253–4 Nordhaus, William, 138, 253 Nordic countries egalitarian income distribution in, 98 emancipative values in, 225–7, 226, 227 environment of, 130 and escape from poverty, 85 forced sterilization laws of, 399 human rights in, 208, 208 Norma Rae (film), 113 Norris, Pippa, 224, 340 North, Douglass, 83 North Korea Arduous March, 78 as autocratic, 201–2 conflict with South Korea, 158 democratization and, 206 famine in, 78 human rights in, 208, 208 nuclear weapons and, 317, 320 poverty in, 90 Norvig, Peter, 477n20 Norway emancipative values in, 225–7, 226, 227 happiness ranking of, 475n30 human rights in, 208, 208 income per capita in, 271 populism and, 341 nostalgia, 48, 113, 256 Nozick, Robert, 99 nuclear power, 144–5, 146–50, 330, 465n76 nuclear war, 307–321 balance of terror, 315 ban on (Global Zero), 315–17, 320–21 close calls, 310, 312–13, 318, 479nn93,95 deterrence and, 312, 314–15, 317 fear, failure to mobilize public, 308–311, 479n80 Graduated Reciprocation in Tension-Reduction (GRIT), 318, 320 historical pessimism and, 308 and international relations, 312, 315 launch on warning (hair trigger), 315, 319–20 Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), 315 nations with capacity, 313, 317–18, 318 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), 317, 318 no-first-use pledge, 320 Non-Proliferation Treaty (1970), 316–17 nuclear winter, 308, 310 probability of nuclear war, 312–13 proliferation limited, 313 reduction of arsenal, 317–19, 318, 480nn113,117,121 second-strike capacity, 315, 319 security dilemma (Hobbesian trap) of, 315 Trump and, 336–7 nuclear weapons arms race during Cold War, 291, 308, 311 complacency about, 286 Hiroshima bombing, 305 Manhattan Project and development of, 314 terrorism as threat, 310–311, 313–14 treaty banning atmospheric testing, 133–4 uranium extracted for power plants, 149, 317 Nunn, Sam, 316, 319 Nussbaum, Martha, 248, 264, 413 Nye, Bill, 434 Nyerere, Julius, 447 Obama, Barack approval rating on departure, 338 bullying as issue for, 49 conspiracy theories about, 336, 358 farewell speech and Enlightenment, 338, 481n30 as first African American U.S. president, 214 health care and, 109 on income inequality, 97 on “now” as best time to be born, 37 and nuclear weapons, 316, 319, 320–21, 336–7 racism and, 217 Republican obstructionism and, 432 theoconservatives and, 449 Obamacare, 109 Obama, Michelle, 214 obesity epidemic, 69 objective measurement actuarial formulas outperforming experts, 403–4 as goal of scientific literacy, 403–5 as morally enlightened, 43 Naomi Klein’s dismissal of, 139 resisters of scientific thinking objecting to, 403 See also data occupational safety and accident deaths, 185–7, 187 Occupy Wall Street, 97 Oceania, postcolonial governments of, 201 oceans acidification of, 137, 138, 153 and carbon dioxide (CO2) capture, 136, 150 deep-sea vents as biological energy source, 19 desalination of water, 129, 149 fisheries, 325 geoengineering and, 150, 152–3 marine conservation areas, 132–3, 133 sea level rise, 137, 138 species extinctions and, 463n32 Oklahoma City bombing (1995), 194 Olds, Jacqueline, 274 O’Neill, Eugene, 446 O’Neill, William, 286 Ono, Yoko, 166 On the Waterfront (film), 113 opioid overdoses, 184–5 Oppenheimer, J.

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty by Benjamin H. Bratton

1960s counterculture, 3D printing, 4chan, Ada Lovelace, Adam Curtis, additive manufacturing, airport security, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, Anthropocene, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, Biosphere 2, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, call centre, capitalist realism, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Cass Sunstein, Celebration, Florida, Charles Babbage, charter city, clean water, cloud computing, company town, congestion pricing, connected car, Conway's law, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, David Graeber, deglobalization, dematerialisation, digital capitalism, digital divide, disintermediation, distributed generation, don't be evil, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Eratosthenes, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Evgeny Morozov, facts on the ground, Flash crash, Frank Gehry, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, functional programming, future of work, Georg Cantor, gig economy, global supply chain, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Guggenheim Bilbao, High speed trading, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, industrial robot, information retrieval, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jacob Appelbaum, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Khan Academy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kiva Systems, Laura Poitras, liberal capitalism, lifelogging, linked data, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, McMansion, means of production, megacity, megaproject, megastructure, Menlo Park, Minecraft, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, Oklahoma City bombing, OSI model, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, peak oil, peer-to-peer, performance metric, personalized medicine, Peter Eisenman, Peter Thiel, phenotype, Philip Mirowski, Pierre-Simon Laplace, place-making, planetary scale, pneumatic tube, post-Fordism, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, reserve currency, rewilding, RFID, Robert Bork, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, semantic web, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, skeuomorphism, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snow Crash, social graph, software studies, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spectrum auction, Startup school, statistical arbitrage, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, Superbowl ad, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, TED Talk, the built environment, The Chicago School, the long tail, the scientific method, Torches of Freedom, transaction costs, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, undersea cable, universal basic income, urban planning, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, web application, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, working poor, Y Combinator, yottabyte

The Anthropocene should represent a shift in our worldview, one fatal to many of the humanities’ internal monologues, but it is also the broadest cliché, one favored by business journalists and know-nothing primitivists alike. In just the century of industrialization, or centuries since wide-scale agriculture, we've managed such a radical transformation in life on the planet's crust—climate change, population growth, deforestation, ocean acidification, asphaltization, massive extinction, mega-urbanization—that we've finally smothered it whole and brought a new geologic era named after the pervasive and permanent impact of the human genome on the geophysical profile of the Earth's crust and atmosphere. The bad news is evidenced by the longer odds we hang over our own heads, filling markets with promissory notes to extract and rationalize more natural resources than may actually exist.