economics

Exponential growth: From optimism to absurdity

In the last article, I made the claim that economic growth is necessarily finite, and that an economic system that requires continuous growth is, over the long term, impossible. This is obvious; unchecked growth with finite resources is impossible. It is instructive, nevertheless, to quantify this. What does, say, 2.5% annual growth mean in tangible terms? And, more importantly, how close are we to hitting- or overshooting- the limits?

The environmental case for multiple cars and insurance reform

There is a strong case to be made, from an environmental perspective, in favour of owning multiple cars.

Wait, what?

Conventional wisdom is that the environmentally friendly thing to do is to not have a car, or if you depend on cars, to have as few as possible. In many cases (indeed, in any case where you can get by without a car), the conventional wisdom is right.

It turns out, though, that if two conditions are true- (1) you depend on cars and have no public transit options, and (2) you need a large vehicle often enough that renting a van on occasion doesn't make sense- the environmentally preferable option may be to own more vehicles, not fewer. Sharing the largest of these vehicles (something that's very difficult under current insurance rules, but could be encouraged with insurance reforms) would make the benefits easier to achieve.

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