Beyond the Limits-Executive Summary

Beyond the Limits-Executive Summary

Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, and Jorgen Randers Twenty years ago, after working with global data and with a computer model called World3, we came to the following conclusions in a book called The Limits to Growth: 1. If present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next hundred years. The most probable result will be a sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity. 2. It is possible...

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Setting the PACE: New ways to invest in clean energy home improvements for low and moderate income Americans

  Bill Ritter Jr The White House announcement today on Residential Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) is a welcome solution to a problem that has plagued states since 2010. It will go far toward helping all citizens, but especially those on a low and moderate income, to make efficiency improvements to their homes and lower their energy bills. A little history. In 2008, Colorado and California passed the first PACE legislation – allowing households to finance energy improvements on their homes through a simple assessment on their property tax bill. The revenue collected was bonded to finance the energy improvements...

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Colorado’s Home-Grown Voluntary Carbon Offset Program Now Gets  Home-Grown Management

Colorado’s Home-Grown Voluntary Carbon Offset Program Now Gets Home-Grown Management

Kelli Barrett Ecosystem Marketplace 29 June 2016 Colorado resident Sandra Laursen was looking for a way to reduce her own personal greenhouse gas emissions, and today her car sports a Project C license plate that reads “advancing clean energy.” “I wanted to put my money where my mouth is on the issue of climate change,” says Laursen, who taught climate-related topics for several years and currently works at Colorado University in Boulder, researching science and math education. The Project C license plate is an initiative within the Colorado Carbon Fund (CCF) and is one easy way Coloradans can contribute to...

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A Better Story

  L. Hunter Lovins June 2016 “You walk into the future by laying the runway out in front of people. You clear the impediment littering the ground, smooth the surface, and enable people to see the route. If you want to change a paradigm, you have to tell a better story” The Problems The global economy rests on a knife-edge, based on the unsustainable assumptions and business practices of Cheater Capitalism. The current paradigm, subsidizing incumbent technologies and corporate profits and bailing out too-big- to-fail banks and companies, while socializing losses and privatizing commons, is impoverishing citizens, communities, and countries, driving societies and ecosystems into...

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Roughly Right vs Really Wrong

Roughly Right vs Really Wrong

Huffington Post L. Hunter Lovins June 2016 Hunter Lovins explains that when it comes to valuing nature, it’s better to be roughly right than really wrong. This article has been submitted as part of the Natural Capital Coalition’s series of blogs on natural capital by Hunter Lovins, President, Natural Capitalism Solutions, Professor of Sustainable Management, Bard MBA and Time Magazine Millennium “Hero of the Planet”. “NATURAL CAPITAL!” the famous author snarled at me, “It’s NATURE! It’s PEOPLE! not capital. You can’t call them capital; they’re… they’re…spiritual,” he spat at me. “You can’t put a price tag on them. It’s immoral.”...

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