Following on from my last post on “Sustainability in tech”, and spurred by a recent circular economy podcast I listened to, I've been thinking about new environmentally-conscious economic models of production and consumption, and the trade-offs that come with them.

Some reflections following a Freakonomics podcast episode^[1] I just listened to and a Read.Write.as blog post^[2] I just read. Something that puzzled and frustrated me in my five fantastic years in the US was the tendency of some (not all) Republicans to use Western European countries (particularly Nordic) as examples of Socialism. This was usually when talking about Democrats suggesting higher taxes and/or funding social policies to reign in perceived market failures and decrease inequalities – as an example Obamacare = socialised healthcare = Socialism.

I found a great podcast episode called “Building a thriving economy for people within our planetary boundaries” as part of The Ellen MacArthur Foundation's podcast series on “The Circular Economy”. The episode features an interview with Kate Raworth who explains her concept of Doughnut Economics and how it is now being applied at city-scale by Amsterdam. Kate is wonderfully erudite and compelling, and I urge you to listen to the episode if you have a spare 40 mins. You may not agree with everything in it, or feel that it is unrealistic but it is always refreshing and inspiring to hear people with passion speak eloquently about what motivates them.

I may add a search bar at some point but for now, you can also navigate posts according to hashtags, grouped below in a way that makes sense to me and evolving as I post more. Expect a mixed bag. Some of the posts will feature the tagged topic as the central focus of the post, others will merely touch on it. If you'd prefer to scroll through a timeline of posts, head to my Archive.