Can We Eat Meat and Achieve Sustainability?

There is no surer way to liven up a dinner party than to declare that eating meat destroys the planet.1)Ideally you would wait to drop this bomb until the main course, presumably featuring one animal or another, was just being brought out. Food is both something fundamentally practical (we must consume it constantly) and deeply … Read more…

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Word! Anthropocene on the rise

Anthropocene has made the leap out of the Ivory Tower and continues to rapidly gain popularity both in the public and academia. The term ‘Anthropocene’ is credited to Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer who proposed that it was necessary to distinguish a new geological epoch of human domination of the planet (PDF).1)Crutzen, P. J., and … Read more…

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Bush Era Law is Helping to Achieve Sustainability in Lighting

Nope, that was not a typo. In 2007 President Bush signed a law, passed by the new Democratic congress, called the Energy Independence and Security Act. This act included a whole host of efficiency measures, one of the most famous being the creation of efficiency standards for household bulbs. This so called “ban on incandescents” … Read more…

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What is Sustainability Science?

Sustainability Science is a new academic field that many–even some who work in it–question whether it should be a field at all. When I started here I took a stab at defining Sustainability, but Sustainability Science as an academic discipline while related needs its own defining. At the top of my reading list is former … Read more…

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SustainabLINKS April 30, 2015

There is a lot of really interesting news that accumulates over two weeks but don’t despair, I promise these are worth your time :).

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When will we be LED to Sustainable Lighting?

There are plenty of worrisome trends when it comes to Achieving Sustainability but when it comes to lighting the trend is stunningly good–electricity use is falling precipitously. As we explored previously, this trend has been driven entirely by improved technology and not changed household behavior. But what is really exciting is that further technological advances … Read more…

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Oreskes and Conway Leave No Doubt

In their 2010 book, Merchants of Doubt, historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway expose in seemingly endless detail the sordid roots of today’s climate change denial. They trace its birth from early (and recently revived) attempts to discredit Rachael Carson and the dangers of DDT to wildlife, even if that first battle was … Read more…

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Water: why it’s no good for introducing Sustainability

When I tell people that I am working in Sustainability well over half the time they immediately bring up water (the probability increases if they know of my ties to Arizona). Yet I have come to believe that water is perhaps the worst topic with which to have an introductory discussion about Achieving Sustainability. The … Read more…

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Word! Foundational Sustainability Works

As I have mentioned before Google has created two neat tools Ngram and Trends for analyzing the popularity of words in books and web searches respectively. Searching for different Sustainability related words produces some interesting results. I won’t be so bold as to call them insights but I intend to share some of the most … Read more…

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