Category: Green

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Green AI Beyond Bullsh*t

tl;dr: Green AI can only matter if it moves beyond hype—toward truth, transparency, and regeneration within planetary limits.

Over the past months, hardly a day has passed without headlines about artificial intelligence: new models, astonishing breakthroughs, and dire warnings. At conferences, in boardrooms, and in policy debates, AI has become a kind of secular promise—of productivity, control, even salvation. And increasingly, it comes wrapped in a green label. That convergence between sustainability and digital technology is fascinating, but also deeply ambivalent.… Read more

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Underneath our skin: the new economy beyond growth

This is a very rough transcript of an interview done with Justin Ritchie and Seth Moser-Katz from the Extraenvironmentalist, a great “podcast, blog and video series that explores the mindset of an outsider looking in on Earth” – and a way of thinking as they proclaim. The original podcast from which this transcript has been produced (by myself, so all errors are exclusively my fault) can be found on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/extraenvironmentalist/episode-83-1-andr-reichel-are

 

André Reichel (AR): If we want to restrict global climate change to about 2C we need emissions reductions in the range of 8 to 10 % per year.… Read more

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Ecological Allowance – Accounting for the Triple Bottom Line

When John Elkington popularized the triple bottom line concept for accounting companies’ performance more holistically, the notion of people, planet and profit – or the ecological, economic and social dimensions of sustainability – immediately caught the attention of business people, consultants and researchers. The only problem was: there is no tripple bottom line. With a bottom line you draw the net value of a balance sheet of whatever kind. You add and subtract the ‘goods’ and ‘bads’ and arrive at a bottom line value that tells you if there is more ‘good’ than ‘bad’ in your balance.… Read more

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Green growth vs. Postgrowth – Where the twain can meet

In the discussions on the future of economic growth, business as usual is not an option. That alone can be regarded as good news. When the modern narrative of growth is evoked in policy debates, it is always green growth that is summoned. Green growth is sought to be resource-efficient, low-carbon and socially inclusive. Green growth is the key strategy to battle climate change, bring eco-friendly development to emerging countries, renew economic structures in industrialized nations and produce robust jobs for a changing world.… Read more

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Energy a-changing

The energy system we built over the last 100 years or so is in for a big change. In fact, the change looks close to a complete restart of the way we produce and distribute electricity for our everyday purposes. The obvious role model and primary example is Germany’s Energiewende, the transition of the entire German energy system away from coal and nuclear towards renewables. The nature of the Energiewende until now is that of a bottom-up, decentralized change strengthened by the German Renewable Energy Act set up in 2000.… Read more