"Must-read" articles on sustainability?
January 19, 2023 2:49 AM Subscribe
What are some "must-read" articles from the past few years on sustainbility?
I am interviewing for a communications role with a large company related to the green transition. While I have good qualifications for the job, I haven't worked directly on sustainabilty topics before, so am hoping to familiarize myself with major topics and how they're captured in mainstream narrative and discourse.
For isntance, I know the David Wallace-Wells NYTimes article from last October was "big news," so I'll be reading that.
Can you suggest some other articles (1 hr to read or less)? I would prefer to steer away from technical articles, as I'm not trying to gain (or fake!) any expertise but merely get the pulse on mainstream sustainability writing and thinking.
Specific topics of interest: circular economy, urban sustainability, net zero and decarbonization, biodiversity -- but open to other topics, as well
I am interviewing for a communications role with a large company related to the green transition. While I have good qualifications for the job, I haven't worked directly on sustainabilty topics before, so am hoping to familiarize myself with major topics and how they're captured in mainstream narrative and discourse.
For isntance, I know the David Wallace-Wells NYTimes article from last October was "big news," so I'll be reading that.
Can you suggest some other articles (1 hr to read or less)? I would prefer to steer away from technical articles, as I'm not trying to gain (or fake!) any expertise but merely get the pulse on mainstream sustainability writing and thinking.
Specific topics of interest: circular economy, urban sustainability, net zero and decarbonization, biodiversity -- but open to other topics, as well
Working environmentalist here (restoration of mining surfaces, also industrial and farm sites).
I doubt many 'mainstream' solutions are solutions at all. Many 'solutions' are from the industries who caused/allowed/facilitated the crises - banking, engineering & 'consulting', and ime they view nature as fully known closed systems - and they promote very simple answers that lack function - often worsening the problem - but making 'profit'.
If you ask around you'll find many systems people consider almost all of our problems solveable through employing human culture & living systems - but it is very hard to monetise these. Most real solutions are perceived as a threat to our current economic system.
Re 'Mainstream' - imo there's no one practice that is (yet) global; certain ideas are dominant here and there. A lot of ideas are only being discussed in trade journals, science papers, and worked out in sites and regions - a lot of this is not very sexy/photogenic.
Urban drainage - there's an approach called Sustainble Drainage Solutions aka SuDS that is proven to work but meets high resistatnce from regulators and traditional contractors - amazingly SuDS has just been instituted in the UK, but I suspect that govt. has an ulterior motive. But a real start as stormwater is ~20%+ of a city budge, and our current systems pollute rivers and the sea
Landfill mining is finally starting to catch on (but it is still a scarce practice). Blue Planet comes as close to Kim Stanley Robinson's Dump Mines as technology currently allows.
'circular economy' aka Industrial Ecology or IE, IE is where this started; modelling manufacturing systems on rainforests where everything is held tightly. These are instantiated as "eco industrial parks or EIPs" [UN link], there are now two even in New Zealand (but almost completely unknown as not sexy enough - my major was on the aesthetics of EIPs and now I'm quietly hopeful). There was a large EIP in the works in New Jersey but I can't find info on it now.
There is far too much focus on carbon offsets when more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest provider are worthless [Zeit & Guardian article]. This academic, but very readable paper on biodiversity offsets is worthwhile - search it for fraud and management Fifteen operationally important decisions in the planning of biodiversity offsets
posted by unearthed at 11:43 AM on January 19, 2023
I doubt many 'mainstream' solutions are solutions at all. Many 'solutions' are from the industries who caused/allowed/facilitated the crises - banking, engineering & 'consulting', and ime they view nature as fully known closed systems - and they promote very simple answers that lack function - often worsening the problem - but making 'profit'.
If you ask around you'll find many systems people consider almost all of our problems solveable through employing human culture & living systems - but it is very hard to monetise these. Most real solutions are perceived as a threat to our current economic system.
Re 'Mainstream' - imo there's no one practice that is (yet) global; certain ideas are dominant here and there. A lot of ideas are only being discussed in trade journals, science papers, and worked out in sites and regions - a lot of this is not very sexy/photogenic.
Urban drainage - there's an approach called Sustainble Drainage Solutions aka SuDS that is proven to work but meets high resistatnce from regulators and traditional contractors - amazingly SuDS has just been instituted in the UK, but I suspect that govt. has an ulterior motive. But a real start as stormwater is ~20%+ of a city budge, and our current systems pollute rivers and the sea
Landfill mining is finally starting to catch on (but it is still a scarce practice). Blue Planet comes as close to Kim Stanley Robinson's Dump Mines as technology currently allows.
'circular economy' aka Industrial Ecology or IE, IE is where this started; modelling manufacturing systems on rainforests where everything is held tightly. These are instantiated as "eco industrial parks or EIPs" [UN link], there are now two even in New Zealand (but almost completely unknown as not sexy enough - my major was on the aesthetics of EIPs and now I'm quietly hopeful). There was a large EIP in the works in New Jersey but I can't find info on it now.
There is far too much focus on carbon offsets when more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest provider are worthless [Zeit & Guardian article]. This academic, but very readable paper on biodiversity offsets is worthwhile - search it for fraud and management Fifteen operationally important decisions in the planning of biodiversity offsets
posted by unearthed at 11:43 AM on January 19, 2023
This thread is closed to new comments.
They have articles about net-zero, urban sustainability etc and building techniques to move us towards such things. Some are moderately technical, but most written at the layperson's level. And some of the writers are pretty talented so the aren't all extremely dry. Bonus - most are fairly short, you can choose ones pertinent to your own climate, and they are free to download.
I don't have the time to find it right now, but there is one that discusses Net-Zero design considerations in the US vs Europe where it was mostly created, and the limitations of and advantages of the US climate.
Here is one approximating the energy needs per year in various US locations this line especially: "kinda explains some of the energy politics. It is easy to be an advocate when your climate is easy." The whole thing is worth a read, from a practical perspective. And since it's from 2014, so kind of fun to track what has changed and what hasn't.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:30 AM on January 19, 2023