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by Gary Gardner

Here’s some bad news for folks who see a circular economy as a way out of the polycrisis: Trends in global materials use, which recently bent modestly in the direction of circular flows, are flattening once again. The Circle Economy Foundation in Amsterdam reported in January that secondary materials amounted to only 7.2 percent of all materials in the global economy in 2023, down from 9.1 percent in 2018.

The post Two Cheers for Circularity appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

Hold up, hold up, hold up. I gotta spill the tea, bruh. I’m lowkey freaking out. I don’t wanna get all extra, but:

I got new Tupperware.

I know, man. I know. It’s bussin’.

No, no, no, no, no. Not from my mah’s. Hold up. Listen, yo. I’m not talking finish-your-ice-cream-leftover-homemade-gravy-in-a-Talenti-container-shit. Big facts. This stuff I got from the store is better than a used Talenti container, bruh. No cap. Even the good ones that hit different and haven’t been through the dishwasher yet. It’s straight fire. The GOAT, bruh. The GOAT.

So, the New York Times has a headline:

China Deflation Fears Raised By Falling Prices For Food and Cars

No. China’s growth is fine, and some products dropping in price is also fine. Car prices are dropping fast because China has a competitive market for car production: they have hundreds. That is driving tech improvements and price competition. This is a good thing, it is not based on “no one has enough money to spend so everyone has to drop prices” which is what caused the Great Depression (the deflationary episode that makes everyone quake.)

Yes, the Doomsday Clock keeps ticking — it’s now at 90 seconds to midnight, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — but the ultimate time bomb never gets the attention that it deserves. Even as the possibility of nuclear annihilation looms, this century’s many warning signs retain the status of Cassandras. Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump withdrew the United States from vital pacts between the U.S. and Russia, the two nuclear superpowers, shutting down the Anti-Ballistic Missile, Open Skies, and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaties. And despite promising otherwise, Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden did nothing to revive them. Under the buzzword “modernization,” the American government, a thermonuclear colossus, spent $51 billion last year alone updating and sustaining its nuclear arsenal, gaining profligate momentum in... Read more