Category: Money & Politics

Posted on: March 4, 2014 Posted by: Diego Ponce de León Baridó Comments: 0

The thermodynamics of mineral wealth, fossil fuels and drugs

A first lesson, taken strictly from ecological economics and its use of thermodynamic laws, is very telling about the history of resource exploitation in Latin America and the Caribbean. Energy quality and energy surpluses often determine the development of social and cultural patterns, and the unidirectional character of energy can dictate the economic and social arrangements through which wealth accumulation occurs in society.1,2 Consider the unidirectional flow of water (and…

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Posted on: December 24, 2013 Posted by: Juan Pablo Carvallo Comments: 0

Growth and Happiness

Sustained growth lies at the very heart of the current mainstream economic paradigm. Is that so that it seems almost evident that it will happen naturally because of technological innovation so it’s not questioned nor challenged. Technological advancement, in this context, is the result of the endless entrepreneurial pursuit of profit maximization to provide returns for an equally endless capital accumulation. This pursuit, in turn, is the only path to…

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Posted on: December 10, 2013 Posted by: Dan Kammen Comments: 0

UC’s investments in fossil fuels are hurting the planet

Today, UC Berkeley and most institutions are financially invested in destroying our future. This may sound a little bit surprising to some — even unfounded. Let me explain. When it comes to climate change, the scientific community has presented a clear, unambiguous message: Human burning of fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas — is putting our world at risk. And this, in fact, is a needless risk. By…

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Posted on: December 3, 2013 Posted by: John Romankiewicz Comments: 0

Divestment: I call it Fossil Fuel Graduation

“If it’s wrong to wreck the climate, then it’s wrong to profit from that wreckage,” Bill McKibben Though I had been living in Berkeley for two years prior working at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, when I enrolled in the ERG Master’s program this fall, I looked for additional ways to get involved in the Berkeley community as a student, not as a scientist. Fossil Free Cal was one club that immediately…

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Posted on: November 2, 2013 Posted by: Diego Ponce de León Baridó Comments: 0

Mexico, Wind and Culture

Despite the fact that Mexico is a country with great renewable energy resources, experts predict that it will face a severe energy crisis in the next decade [1]. Given the constant decrease in production of its major oil wells, and the inevitable growth of energy demand in the country, Mexico is expected to be a net importer of energy by 2020 [2]. In a recent analysis of the potential for…

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Posted on: October 15, 2013 Posted by: Zubair Dar Comments: 0

Azadi

Last week, I went down the timeline on Facebook to check my first post ever. The three words I wrote to describe my feelings read ‘waiting for azadi’. Freedom in Urdu, azadi has come to signify the sum total of aspirations of millions of people in my homeland, Kashmir, a valley perched up in the western Himalayas near India and Pakistan. In my second post, I spell out some of…

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