We cannot lower carbon emissions if we keep producing steel with fossil fuels.
Cycling is the most sustainable form of transportation, but the bicycle is becoming increasingly damaging to the environment. The energy and material used for its production go up while its life expectancy decreases.
As a freelance journalist – or an office worker if you wish – I have always believed that I should regularly buy a new laptop. But older machines offer more quality for much less money.
As long as we keep accumulating raw materials, the closing of the material life cycle remains an illusion, even for materials that are, in principle, recyclable.
How to live a more sustainable life? By placing responsibility squarely on the individual, attention is deflected away from the many institutions involved in structuring possible courses of action.
Researchers have calculated minimum levels of energy use needed to live a decent life, but what about maximum levels?
To focus on energy efficiency is to make present ways of life non-negotiable.
Adjusting energy demand to supply would make switching to renewable energy much more realistic than it is today.
The information society promises to dematerialise society and make it more sustainable, but modern office and knowledge work has itself become a large and rapidly growing consumer of energy and other resources
Could we rethink and redesign office equipment, combining the best of mechanical and digital devices?
Automation is more energy-intensive than mechanisation.
LEDs introduce lighting in places and situations where there was no lighting before.