Mike Joy, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
Access to fossil fuels allowed humanity to overshoot Earth’s biophysical limits. The crises we now face are all symptoms of this overshoot, and the only fix is to cut our demands on the biosphere.
Shall I order the chicken, or the salmon? What does the science say about reducing pressure on the environment? When you take a big-picture view, the results can be surprising.
To be clear, I’m not advocating compulsory population control, here or anywhere. But we do need to consider a future with billions more people, many of them aspiring to live as Australians do now.
Ecological economics focuses on sustainability and development rather than efficiency and growth. Cities, as home to 70-80% of economic activity, are at the heart of the challenge of being sustainable.
Our work represents the first assessment of what social and economic factors are connected to environmental degradation across the entire African continent.
Peter Newton, Swinburne University of Technology; Christina Ting, Swinburne University of Technology, and Wendy Stone, Swinburne University of Technology
Australian cities are world-leading – in the worst sense – for resource use and greenhouse emissions. China-born residents have embraced these consumption patterns, which is bad news for the planet.
You could take the bus to work, or eat less meat. But how do you know if your efforts are making a difference? A new approach aims to break global environmental budgets down into digestible chunks.
You may have seen reports that humans use more resources than the Earth can produce – but, logically, how is that possible? A bathtub can help explain.
To be good global citizens, we must stop churning through energy-hungry devices. Earth cannot cope with the burdens, including mountains of e-waste, that electronic consumerism creates.
We now know that we cannot spend our way to happiness nor pursue it as an individual goal. It turns out that happiness is built on the foundations of good relationships and broad well-being.
How can we live within the means of our planet? Almost all environmental literature grossly underestimates what is needed for our civilisation to become sustainable.
“But who do you think’s right, Prof? The optimists or the pessimists?” At the end of my sustainability economics course in 2007, students were challenging me to end 20 years of professional fence-sitting…
What does genuine economic progress look like? The orthodox answer is that a bigger economy is always better, but this idea is increasingly strained by the knowledge that, on a finite planet, the economy…
As we ponder who will lead our next government we need to ask who will best deal with Australia’s overblown ecological footprint. It’s about seven global hectares per person, which is about the size of…
My old house has never been connected to the electricity supply. It runs on a couple of photo voltaic (solar) panels and is warmed by firewood. All water used is rainwater. I have a vegie garden, fruit…
Amidst all the heat and noise of the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development, the release of WWF’s Ecological Footprint analysis for Australia in May went largely unheralded in the general media…
Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University