Thursday, December 4, 2025

Losing the Climate Info Wars?

Good stuff here: Losing the Climate Info Wars?

"The strategy is not subtle, a recent study found. Climate skeptics present their position as “projecting rationality, authority, and masculine self-control” while those who acknowledge global warming “are depicted through emotionally charged, feminized, and irrational imagery,” and labeled “alarmists” who propose radical solutions.

Political campaigns deploy the same playbook. Republicans frequently claimed the Biden administration was trying to “emasculate” American drivers by forcing them into electric vehicles. Lee Zeldin, Mr. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator, has labeled climate change a “religion” instead of what it is: a matter of physics.

Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said that Mr. Trump was pursuing “energy addition, not energy transition.”

“The President has set a strong example for the rest of the world by reversing course on the Green Energy Scam and unleashing our natural resources, like beautiful, clean coal and natural gas, to strengthen our grid stability and lower energy costs,” she said, citing arguments that many economists dispute."

Elizabeth Kolbert & John Stewart

Always worth a watch & read!

Wednesday, December 3, 2025

Glaciers in the Andes

Here are two excellent videos about glacier recession & disappearance in the Andes:


Tuesday, December 2, 2025

No More GDP!

Great article in Nature by Constanza et al.: Beyond growth — why we need to agree on an alternative to GDP now

Here's the summary: GDP was never designed as a metric for human well-being. It kind of worked as a proxy for that for a couple of decades after WWII, but no more. Using GDP assumes substitutability between labor, technology, and natural resources in the context of production. But this obviously ignores ecological limits or planetary boundaries, or, in other words: it decouples economic activity from natural resource use.

We need instead to adopt a universal goal: sustainabilty & inclusive well-being. Not sure why inclusive well-being is separated from sustainabilty here, but ok. The question then is how do we a) measure that and b) how do we aggreate our metrics into some kind of index or proxy? Here are some of the metrics: Well-being components: these 19 core factors are common to most beyond-GDP indicators.

Human
  • Life satisfaction
  • Health
  • Life expectancy at birth
  • Education

Social
  • Crime
  • Civic engagement
  • Governance
  • Income equality
  • Gender equality

Built
  • Housing
  • Infrastructure
  • Financial security
  • Employment
  • Per capita consumption
  • Business health

Natural
  • Natural capital
  • Water quality
  • Air quality
  • Greenhouse-gas emissions
Sounds a lot like donut economics to me!

The Cost Of Living

Excellent data set & web map from the Economic Policy Institute: The Family Budget Map. This map shows (by county) the cost-of-living for a 'normal' two-parent, two-child family broken down into housing, food, child care, transportation, health care, taxes, and other necessities.

Even better: the data are accessible as MS Excel!

Friday, November 28, 2025

Our Demographic Future

In the 20 century: the demographic transition theory.
Here, countries transitioned from high fertility/mortality to low fertility/mortality due to modernization and development such as female empowerment, access to health care, and more.

Today: most countries are past this transition and in many countries fertility has fallen below replacement levels (which is about two children / woman). This applies to about 5.8 billion people and include countries such as Brazil, India, China, and more - these countries are already experiencing population decline. Fertility is still very high in sub-Saharan Africa & this will drive global population growth for many more decades.

Now, the main factors in population dynamics are a) migration and b) longevity. This means that in high-income countries immigration is and will be the main driver of population growth & that is ultimately what is behind the rise of MAGA & other types of nationalism / populism that we see.

Plus the so-called second demographic transition that is playing out in wealthy countries: fewer children = lower fertility due to rising individualism, new models of partnerships, and gender equality.