Towards 9 Billion: Infinite economy on a finite planet – Part 1
“We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.” R....
View ArticleTowards 9 Billion: Infinite economy on a finite planet – Part 2
“Pessimism never won any battle.” Dwight D. Eisenhower Towards 9 Billion – capable citizens, thriving ecosystems – delivering the vision Towards 9 Billion is Terrafiniti’s vision for a sustainable and...
View ArticleA desirable property…how might we value our home planet?
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers. Plato This post presents a gentle meander around some of the issues and ideas generated by our modest proposal to explore an Initial Public...
View ArticleValuing abundance – breaking the tyranny of scarcity
We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done. Alan Turing Scarcity is So now… Every day we hear more and more about scarcity. We hear that the expected...
View ArticleA sustainable world before the end of our world?
“Life will not perish! It will begin anew with love; it will start out naked and tiny; it will take root in the wilderness, and to it all that we did and built will mean nothing — our towns and …...
View ArticleHow much is your Mother (Earth) worth?
All human things of dearest value hang on slender strings. Edmund Waller Like pricing the Earth, getting the right price for your Mother might be harder than you think So you want to sell your Mother....
View ArticleWhich straw broke the camel’s back; how useful are planetary boundaries?
The promise and problems of planetary boundaries `Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. David Hume Which straw did break the camel’s...
View ArticleSensational! Against the tide of shallow value (Part 1)
What does the world weigh? Its scales are crooked. It weighs life and labor in the balance against silver and gold. That will never balance, it spills a lot of life that way. Walter M. Miller Jnr “A...
View ArticleSensational! Against the tide of shallow value (Part 2)
This post is the 2nd of 2, click here for Part 1 (which gets hot under the collar about an obsession with shallow value). I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them...
View ArticleThe Rights of Future Trade
But our people could not be got to see how artificial our prosperity was….that the course of trade once turned away from us…might never return. George Tomkyns Chesney Should we protect the rights of...
View ArticleTerra sapiens – are we fit to be a planetary species?
Humans were being overwhelmed….because the intelligence required to build a certain level of technology was less than needed to survive it. Stephen Baxter Is humanity in office but not power? As a...
View ArticleMore life now! A manifesto for rejuvenative technology
Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part; Do thou but thine. John Milton At a time when authoritative studies highlight our lack of progress on existing environmental goals and the scale of the...
View ArticleThe limits to existence – aligning economics and thermodynamics
“Just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean they are not after you!” Joseph Heller, Catch 22 Joseph Heller’s joke has a lot to tell us about sustainability and the illusion of human choice in matters...
View Article9 Billion reasons for hope…or fear
“There is no need to worry about mere size.” Bertrand Russell Should big numbers scare us? Global population trends and their possible implications have caused debate through the ages. Recently this...
View ArticleSuicide by planet
Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal. Arthur C. Clark Suicide by cop You don’t have to actually kill yourself to commit suicide. It is possible to commit...
View ArticleEntropic Utility – measuring the circular economy
History is a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells In order to avoid conclusion with the economic definition of “utility” we have renamed our proposed measure for a circular economy as...
View ArticleEntropic Overhead – measuring the circular economy
Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all. Charles Babbage The broken hourglass Do you break the timer when your boiled egg is cooked? Our economy does, it is like a...
View ArticleTowards 9 Billion in Bubbles
“Truth suffers from too much analysis.” Frank Herbert We decided to see how all our posts over the last 18 months looked through a data visualisation. The visual below, like an interactive word cloud,...
View ArticleValuing Natural Capital and Selling your Mother – the remix
An ecosystem might be likened to a great biological machine, perhaps. If this analogy is pursued, humanity must be seen as part of the machine. No doubt an important part – an engine, a key circuit –...
View ArticleVitality! How life makes the best of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
“There is no wealth but life.” John Ruskin The magic of life There is much we do not know about how life works to transform the basics of matter and energy into complex materials and massively diverse...
View Article
