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

Notes from AOM 2025

tl;dr: AOM 2025 brought planetary boundaries, postgrowth, and critique closer to the centre — but the structural tensions remain. Hopeful shifts, unfinished conversations.

2025 in Copenhagen marked my first in-person AOM since 2019 in Boston. I had joined the virtual meetings in 2020 and 2021, but skipped 2022 and 2023. Returning felt both familiar and strange — especially since this was the first AOM Annual Meeting ever held outside of North America. With around 13,000 participants, it was also the largest in the Academy’s history.… Read more

Sustainability: From Science to Politics to Ethics: Laudation for Jeffrey D. Sachs

tl;dr: Doing sustainability science requires transgressing science, politics and ethcis – and Jeffrey D. Sachs is a role model how to achieve that with integrity and professional excellence

Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbank, 9 November 2017

Dear honoured guests, dear ladies and gentlemen,
Dear Wilfried Stadler and the entire GLOBART team,
Dear Sonia and Jeffrey Sachs:

More than 6 years ago, in the springtime of 2011, the 17th International Sustainable Development Research Conference was held at Columbia University’s Earth Institute in New York.… Read more

17th Annual International Sustainable Development Research Conference

It is the final day of the 17th Annual International Sustainable Development Research Conference in New York City and I am trying to get the mixed soup in my head together. The first day was really a shock, as Nina Fedoroff was seriously advocating genetic modified organisms as the future hope for sustainable agriculture. In a similar, although more balanced vein, Klaus Lackner argued for clean energy. Now that might at first not look like a bad thing, and I would surely love to see heavy investment in it.… Read more

Ecological Economics, Degrowth and Business: The Beginning of a Field

I am just returning from the 11th conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics, held this time in Oldenburg and Bremen in Germany. As always after conferences, my mind is swirling with ideas, images and notions of what I heard and with whom I talked. This blog entry is just a very raw and weakly reflected summary.

In general, the science of ecological economics had its successes as many of its concepts and reasoning found their way into mainstream economics and politics – e.g.… Read more