.Umair Haque
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Economists flatter us when they call us producers and consumers. In reality, we're just transforming the physical resources of the Earth - with profound ecological consequences. Well-established words can be misleading. In economics “production and consumption” are such common terms that it is easy to forget that they do not really mean what they literally say. Physically we do not produce anything; we just use energy to rearrange matter into a more useful form. Production really means transformation of what is already here.
Herman Daly - Not production, not consumption but transformation | the new economics foundation
Umair Haque - HarvardBusiness.org
Currencies imploding, markets fluctuating, politicians dithering, economies stagnating, societies fracturing, unrest spreading. Welcome to the winter of our discontent — again. Is America failing? And are the other advanced economies following in its staggering footsteps (UK, I'm looking at you)?
But this area in southern , best known as the home of Absolut vodka, has not generally substituted solar panels or for the traditional fuels it has forsaken. Instead, as befits a region that is an epicenter of farming and food processing, it generates energy from a motley assortment of ingredients like potato peels, manure, used cooking oil, stale cookies and pig intestines. A hulking 10-year-old plant on the outskirts of Kristianstad uses a biological process to transform the detritus into biogas, a form of methane. That gas is burned to create heat and electricity, or is refined as a fuel for cars. Once the city fathers got into the habit of harnessing power locally, they saw fuel everywhere: Kristianstad also burns gas emanating from an old landfill and sewage ponds, as well as wood waste from flooring factories and tree prunings.
Umair Haque / Bubblegeneration