recent debate in twitter's climate community illuminated a schism between those arguing that mitigating climate change is impossible and those exhorting others to continue to "fight" climate change. While the debate yielded no definitive answers, it brought up important questions for those who've focused their life on addressing this issue. What does it mean to “fight” … [Read more...]
Free Labor
Why a jobless economy makes the most sense
In a recent essay, I argued that instead of a jobs guarantee, a more progressive solution to the country’s economic woe is to decouple survival from wages. That is, we should build an economy in which people can live comfortably outside the labor market if they so choose. The piece emphasized two policies for achieving this: a guaranteed income and national venture … [Read more...]
A Jobless Economy
If we want liberty, we need to divorce wages from survival
any Americans are toiling in precarious, meaningless, degrading labor, and wealth distribution is vastly unequal and unfair. These two problems could be addressed by one simple policy, and it’s not a jobs guarantee. Several prominent Democrats have unveiled policies guaranteeing federal jobs to unemployed Americans, sparking a debate on the merits of government intervention … [Read more...]
The World’s Most Important Policy
How energy transition can help everything
here is one action that can make major strides in many of the world’s greatest challenges. It is generally overlooked, undersold, and ignored. It’s this: transitioning the economy to a distributed, non-carbon energy system. Building an infrastructure of interconnected micro-grids powered by solar, wind, and onsite storage powering electric transport is the single most … [Read more...]
Extinction vs. Collapse
Does it Matter?
Climate twitter – the most fun twitter – has recently been relitigating the debate between human extinction and mere civilizational collapse, between doom and gloom, despair and (kind of) hope. It was sparked by an interview in The Guardian with acclaimed scientist Mayer Hillman. He argues that we’re probably doomed, and confronting the likelihood that we’re rushing … [Read more...]