By G. Rendell. I'll admit it.  I'm not anti-consumer, but I'm anti-consumerism.  That is, I would love to see American society get to a point where most everyone has everything (s)he needs, but I'm adamantly opposed to consumption for consumption's sake.  Or for the sole purpose of pumping up GDP on the backs of credit card holders.  Spending money you don't have on products you don't need, which have been manufactured from a declining stock of natural resources extracted inefficiently using highly polluting forms of energy and generating several tons of waste for every ton of usable material just seems . . . well . . . kind of stupid.  Of course, some may disagree. Read more...

By G. Rendell. Environmental impact (in recent experience, negative environmental impact) correlates with consumption.  It's less intuitively obvious, but economic and social sustainability challenges also correlate with consumption.  Yet our students are conditioned to adjudge their happiness on the basis of how much stuff they have which, in the default instance, equates to how much they consume. Read more...

By G. Rendell. NPR's Diane Rehm hosted an hour-long (+/-) discussion this morning focusing on the current drought in California, and its likely impact on US food prices.  Participants included a Farm Bureau economist, a Bloomberg News reporter and a UC-Davis agricultural/resource economist. Read more...

By Rachel Nuwer. A Princeton Review survey finds that incoming freshmen would weigh information about environmental issues into their college decisions, but average students say it’s not on their radar. More...