Humans have come to rely on chemicals not only to increase the fruits of our agricultural labor but also to stop other species from partaking in the feast. And the toll exacted by these “pest”-killing chemicals is immense.

Rachel Carson conducts marine biology research in the Atlantic in 1952. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Over 60 years ago, in Silent Spring, Rachel Carson detailed the effects of DDT, the first widely used chemical pesticide, on ecosystems and human health.

Thanks to the environmental movement that stemmed largely from Carson’s book and courage, the U.S. government has since banned DDT. However, an ugly procession of thousands of herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, and rodenticides has followed.

In 2023, humans used 3.7 million metric tons of pesticides globally. That’s up almost 200 percent from 1990, when the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) started keeping track.

As pests build resistance, our pesticide use traps us in a vicious cycle—not dissimilar to the fertilizer-use cycle we’ve entered. And, as with fertilizers, the causes and effects of the pesticide cycle are not evenly distributed across the population. Pesticides are unique, however, in their devastating levels of inefficiency. Ninety-eight percent of sprayed insecticides miss their pest targets, affecting non-target organisms instead. The number for herbicides is 95 percent.

Let’s explore humanity’s history with pesticides, their impacts, and the reasons we cannot seriously curtail pesticide use while obsessed with growing the economy.

From the Glory Days to the Dirty Dozen

Historians believe Ancient Sumerians used sulfur compounds to kill insects in the 25^th century BC. By the 17^th century AD, the use of plants, such as tobacco and herbs, and chemical elements, such as arsenic, as pesticides was common. With mechanical innovations like sprayers, the industrial age, beginning in the late 18^th century, facilitated increases in pesticide use.

Of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) pesticide office directors since 1974, all seven who continued to work after leaving the EPA went on to make money from pesticide companies. (top: EPA, bottom: National Archives)

However, synthetic pesticides didn’t come on the scene until the 1930s. Historians attribute them with saving thousands of people from insect-borne diseases during World War II. The decades that followed were the pesticide glory days, with little awareness of their consequences or restraint in their application. But when Silent Spring hit the market in 1962, it launched a movement that resulted in landmark environmental laws.

The newly created U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned domestic use of the insecticide DDT in 1972. However, the new laws weren’t robust enough to effectively regulate the variety of pesticides flooding the market or the geographic extent of their use. The need for a global convention became evident, and the United Nations responded with the Stockholm Convention, which came into effect in 2004. Member states set an initial goal to eliminate twelve of the most dangerous “persistent organic pollutants,” nine of which were pesticides.

But governments can’t keep up. The United States permits the use of thousands of different pesticides with hundreds of different ingredients. And government collusion with pesticide companies—uncovered in Canada and the United States—calls into question the sincerity of their efforts to keep up.

Bringing a Bazooka to a Knife Fight

An engraving of a London rat-catcher from 1789; Europe has been controlling rodent populations far longer than the United States. (Welcome Collection, CC BY 4.0)

We’re in deep with pesticides, and our relationship with them is taking a sickening turn. Pests are becoming resistant. Scientists have known for some time that pests, many of which reproduce rapidly, develop resistance via natural selection. They have also known that chemical pesticides can negatively impact populations of pests’ natural predators. But these effects, together with climate change, which is working in favor of pest populations, have created levels of resistance so alarming that some are calling it a “pest revival.”

Bowie State University Biology Professor Steve Sheffield has studied pesticides for decades. In an interview for the Herald, Sheffield called the pest-resistance cycle an evolutionary arms race. “We escalate, and they escalate. And then we have to escalate, and they escalate, and back and forth.” Sheffield explained how we sometimes accelerate this arms race by “bringing a bazooka to a knife fight”:

“In places like London, where they’ve had settlements for thousands of years, they’ve also had rats for thousands of years. Their arms race has been escalating that entire time. And unfortunately, their second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides have made their way over to the United States, and we’ve started using them. It’s overkill, because our rodents are not as resistant as the ones in Europe. So, we end up with all sorts of ‘secondary poisoning.’ A mouse eats the stuff, then an owl eats the mouse, then the owl dies because it has ingested the rodenticide in the mouse.”

The Primary Outcome of Pesticide Use: Pollution

The vast majority of pesticide used doesn’t serve its intended purpose. Instead, it travels—often large distances—through the soil, water, and air. On 64 percent of global agricultural land, pesticide residues exceed “no-effect concentrations.” In high-biodiversity regions, pesticide residues exceed no-effect concentrations by at least three orders of magnitude on over four million km². That’s larger than the surface area of India.

One could say that pollution is the primary outcome of pesticide use, rather than increased food production.

When it comes to humans, farmers and other pesticide handlers are at highest risk of health impacts. However, the general public is also exposed via the food they eat, the water they drink, and the air they breathe. Pesticide exposure is linked to acute symptoms ranging from skin rashes to death, as well as chronic diseases. According to the World Health Organization, the most widely used pesticide ingredient, glyphosate, is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” In the United States, over 13,000 lawsuits have been filed over glyphosate’s links to non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The second most widely used ingredient, atrazine, is linked to tumors, breast and uterine cancer, and lymphoma. The third most widely used, metolachlor-S, is linked to anemia and diarrhea.

It’s worth noting that glyphosate, atrazine, and metolachlor-S are all herbicides. According to Sheffield, the most critical gap in public knowledge about pesticides is the tendency to think herbicides are safe because they target plants, not animals:

“Maybe they’re not killing mammals or birds outright, but they’re causing sub-lethal effects, which debilitate one or more body systems. People also thought that herbicides are not very persistent in the environment. Well, some of them are very persistent. You could apply them, and next year you could find huge levels of them in the soil and in other environmental media.”

This man’s mother was exposed to Agent Orange when he was in gestation. (Agent Orange Deformities, CC BY 2.0)

Sheffield pointed to the infamous Agent Orange, composed of TCDD and 2,4-D, as an example of the persistence and human health impacts herbicides can have. The United States used Agent Orange, alongside five other herbicide cocktails, to defoliate the Vietnam jungle in the ‘60s. The public associates Agent Orange with horrible human-health consequences. But this hasn’t fueled sufficient anti-herbicide sentiment for the overall reductions that we need. For example, farmers still use 2,4-D legally.

Non-human animals are not immune to herbicide impacts either, nor to the impacts of other types of pesticides. Controlling for other factors, there is a statistically significant relationship between pesticide use and the loss of imperiled species. And when we zoom in to the microscopic level, we find that pesticides negatively affect soil microbes and soil respiration, leading to soil fertility loss. In this way, the vicious pesticide cycle is bound to the vicious fertilizer cycle.

Pesticides and the Growth Economy

Pesticides use and GDP, indexed to 100 for comparability. (authors’ graph, data from FAOSTAT and the World Bank)

The theoretical underpinnings of our hypothesis that GDP growth causes growth in pesticide use (and vice versa) are much the same as the underpinnings of the hypothesis that GDP and fertilizer use are causally related. Pesticides are tightly linked to our dizzying levels of agricultural productivity. Productivity growth pushes labor from agriculture and other extractive sectors (the “trophic base” of the economy) to manufacturing and services. This facilitates growth of the overall economy.

As with fertilizers, experts hotly debate the extent to which we need pesticides to support the human population. In one study, researchers determined the United States would need to convert twelve million hectares of wildlife habitat to cropland to produce the same amount of corn with no pesticides. The UN tackled such assertions head-on in a 2017 report. They stated that “Reliance on hazardous pesticides is a short-term solution that undermines the rights to adequate food and health for present and future generations.”

However, it is undeniable that pesticides have played a role in us reaching a population of eight billion. And their role in individual consumption increases and shifts—to more resource-intensive goods—is even more undeniable.

In the United States, the quantity of herbicides and insecticides applied to feed crops (primarily corn and soy) for factory-farmed animals in 2018 was estimated at 235 million pounds. That’s nearly a quarter of the country’s total pesticide use that year. The production of livestock—99 percent of which comes from factory farms, in the United States—accounts for 40 percent of global agricultural GDP. More GDP, more pesticides.

Population size and consumption patterns are the indirect linkages between pesticides and the size of the economy. Let’s also consider pesticides’ direct contribution to GDP. The value of the global pesticide market in 2019 was $68.6 billion, with estimated growth to $87.5 billion by 2024.

Together, the European Union, China, and the United States control over 80 percent of the pesticides market. In many cases, pesticide corporations have their headquarters in countries that have banned domestic use of their products. Their primary buyers are low- and middle-income countries. The United States is an exception, allowing the use of 85 pesticides that are being phased out or have been banned in the European Union, China, or Brazil.

A Statistical Assessment

From 1990 to 2023, pesticide use and GDP had a positive relationship across the 168 countries in our regression analysis. We employed pesticide-use data from FAO and real-GDP data from the World Bank. We found that pesticide use increases by an average of 29 kilograms for every additional $1 million of GDP. The results are highly statistically significant (p < 0.001).

The results of a two-way fixed effects regression, with GDP as the independent variable and pesticides use as the dependent variable.

Importantly, FAO’s data reflects pesticides applied within national borders. When countries import food, they effectively outsource part of their pesticide footprint. Imports are subtracted in the GDP equation, but they affect the importing country’s GDP indirectly. Imports may be used as an intermediate input in higher-value activities, and food imports facilitate structural shifts toward non-agricultural sectors.

It is also worth noting that, though no global dataset is perfect, FAO’s pesticide-use data displays some particularly troubling imperfections. Multiple countries have long runs of identical annual values between 1990 and 2023. This suggests FAO replaced missing data with repeated values from previous years. Of the 168 countries in our analysis, 65 exhibited at least 5 consecutive years of identical values, with some cases extending over multiple decades.

To see whether this materially affected the results, we re-estimated the regression after excluding countries with long repeated-value runs. The estimated increase in pesticide use per additional $1 million in GDP increased to 32 kilograms. The results were still statistically significant.

Let’s reframe our regression results—from all 168 countries, for a conservative estimate—in terms that are easier to grasp. 29 kilograms per million dollars is equal to 2.9 kg, or over 6 pounds, per $100,000. Six pounds may not sound like a lot, but small amounts of these potent chemicals can wreak havoc on ecosystems. Just how much havoc depends on which pesticide.

Let’s consider glyphosate. According to the EPA, glyphosate is toxic to freshwater organisms at 11,900 micrograms per liter. So, 2.9 kg—2,900,000,000 micrograms—is enough to poison 243,698 liters of freshwater. These figures are likely much higher for glyphosate, in the United States, at least, where glyphosate use has been increasing more quickly than overall pesticide use.

And it’s about to increase even more quickly. President Trump is working to dismantle the country’s already-too-weak regulations, alienating his MAHA supporters in the process. The White House issued an executive order calling for more domestic production of glyphosate. Leveraging the Defense Production Act, the order frames production of the chemical as a defense issue. It reads, “With…U.S. needs far exceeding current output, the threat of reduced or ceased production gravely endangers national security and defense, which includes food-supply security.”

However, this pesticide promotion is undoubtedly linked to the administration’s obsession with GDP growth—an obsession shared with most governments. Pesticide alternatives exist, and organic farming holds abundant promise. However, we will not make a sufficient and permanent dent in pesticide use until we root out this growth obsession. Only then will we finally bring back a nice collection of spring-time song.

Alix Underwood is managing editor at CASSE.

Marwa Ebrahem is a quantitative analyst at CASSE.

The post Spring: Ever More Silent appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

The public’s ability to weigh in on vital matters impacting human health, safety, and our ecological footprint is under grave threat. As part of its aggressive campaign of deregulation, the Trump Administration has been eliminating the opportunity for public comment on rules made by federal agencies.

In the early months of 2025, the Trump Administration issued a series of Executive Orders that declared economic growth a priority. These orders directed agencies to repeal regulations deemed to stand in the way of that growth. An Executive Order from February 2025, for example, “Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Deregulatory Initiative” directed agency heads to identify for elimination:

Trump has directed agencies to repeal regulations that protected human and ecological health. (The White House)

…regulations that harm the national interest by…impeding technological innovation, infrastructure development, disaster response, inflation reduction, research and development, economic development, energy production, land use, and foreign policy objectives.

A memo issued in the aftermath of these Executive Orders specified that these repeals should proceed without public notice or comment.

Clearly, the Administration understands the power of public comments to provide a check on regulated industries. This is particularly vital as the agencies that do the regulating are increasingly captured by those very industries.

The Power of Public Comments

Public comments on proposed policy have shaped the most monumental environmental and public interest victories in the United States. Strengthened public lands protections, toxic chemical regulations, labor laws, and air quality standards all emerged from robust processes for public input.

Agencies make rules that interpret and implement laws passed by Congress. Under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) of 1946, agencies must notify the public of proposed rules and rule changes. They also must solicit public comment, and consider and respond to all comments that are relevant and substantive. Although the APA does not specify a minimum length for comment periods, most are 30-60 days.

Public commenting is baked into agencies’ rulemaking processes under the Administrative Procedures Act. (Government Accountability Office)

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) provides another avenue for public comment on the environmental, social, and economic consequences of proposed federal projects. The 1969 statute directed federal agencies to adopt agency-specific regulations spelling out how they would implement it.

Most public commenting occurs through Regulations.gov, a portal linked to Federal Register announcements of new projects, rules, and changes. Agencies may also hold meetings, hearings, and town halls to allow the public to weigh in on proposed policy.

Examples and Limitations

Some of the most consequential environmental and public health proposals have attracted hundreds of thousands of public comments. The 2024 National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) update was significantly stronger than the previous standard for air pollution. The update was informed by nearly 700,000 public comments and advice from the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee—an influential committee that Trump has just reconstituted with industry representatives in place of academics. The tighter air pollution limit could prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths and 800,000 cases of asthma annually.

That is, if it is allowed to stand. Industry groups, concerned the new limit will constrain construction and manufacturing, have sued to revert to the old standard. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has moved to do just that.

In recognition of the vital role of public comments in shaping policy, agencies have until now made commenting relatively straightforward and accessible to all. (Government Accountability Office)

Even the masses of nearly-identical public comments that result from organizational campaigns have had an impact on key regulations. The 2015 EPA rulemaking that expanded Clean Water Act protections was shaped by such campaigns. So was the 2015 Federal Communications Commission ruling on net neutrality. Both of these rulings are now on Trump’s deregulatory chopping block.

Of course, many regulations end up largely unchanged from their proposed form despite substantial public involvement. And industry input is undoubtedly weighed more heavily than input from the public, scientists, or other experts. Industry and interest groups often have the opportunity to meet with agency officials and influence rulemaking before the public is even aware a rule change is under consideration. And administrations, especially the present one, rarely publicize opportunities for comment.

Rolling Back Public Input on the Road to Deregulation

The Trump Administration is taking the undermining of public input to a whole new level. Last summer, the administration removed a tool from Regulations.gov that made it easier for advocacy groups to collect and submit public comments. Citizens and groups are left to navigate a complicated and inconsistent system—when they can comment at all.

And in many cases, they cannot. In its first six months in office, the administration issued roughly 600 final rules among six science agencies. Most were rules to roll back or eliminate regulations protecting public health and safety. For almost a third of these, there was no public notice or comment.

To justify these flagrant violations of the APA, the Administration is exploiting a loophole known as the “good cause” exception. The APA specifies that an agency may forego public notice and comment when it for “good cause” finds that providing public comment opportunity is “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.” Historically, the exception has been used rarely; primarily for emergencies.

Trump’s Department of Transportation has eliminated the rule that allowed states to track greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. (Bureau of Transportation Statistics)

The argument that this exception applies to the repeal of regulations agencies deem “unlawful” will not likely hold up in court. But in the meantime, changes made with no public input are having real impacts on public health and the environment. Many of these impacts will be irreversible, regardless of how (or if) courts rule.

Examples abound. Three months into Trump’s second term, the Department of Transportation eliminated a 2023 rule with major implications for climate change. The rule required states to monitor vehicular greenhouse gas emissions on major roads, and was shaped by 40,000 comments. It was repealed under the good cause exception, with no public notice or opportunity for comment.

Gutting NEPA

Perhaps most alarmingly, early last year the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) issued an interim final rule to rescind agency regulations implementing NEPA.

The interim final rule is itself a mechanism that undermines the purpose of public comments to inform rulemaking. It allows comments on rules that have already been published, as opposed to proposed rules designed for significant public discourse. An interim final rule may or may not be altered in response to comments; the mere notation as “final” (interim or not) makes alteration less likely.

In the case of NEPA, the CEQ’s February 2025 rule generated more than 108,000 comments that have not been addressed. It triggered numerous agencies to rescind their own NEPA regulations, in interim final rules that themselves generated an additional 164,000 public comments. But the rules are now in effect, the comments unaddressed.

As a result, agencies are proceeding full-speed ahead on actions with serious environmental and public health implications. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), for example, implemented a rule last July that excludes public involvement from most national forest projects. This includes logging, mining, road building, grazing, and the killing of wildlife (coyotes, for example) by the cynically-named Wildlife Services program. It also includes USDA responses to disease outbreaks in factory farms.

The Department of Energy is proceeding to build nuclear reactors using new technologies, with no notification or comment opportunity for the communities that will be forced to host them.

The Department of the Interior has invoked President Trump’s “energy emergency” in its “alternative arrangements” for NEPA implementation. These prescribe that environmental assessments for public land energy projects be completed in 14 days, with no required public comment.

Public comments overwhelmingly favored the creation of a buffer zone around the sensitive ecosystem, wildlife, and cultural resources of Chaco Culture National Historical Park. (National Park Service)

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) within Interior recently announced plans to open lands surrounding Chaco Canyon to oil and gas drilling. The 1,100-year-old historical site in New Mexico is surrounded by a 330,000-acre buffer zone. This is the product of years of advocacy by tribes to whom the site is sacred. BLM allowed only seven days for public comment on the proposal, a time period that nonetheless yielded 70,000 comments.

While the administration has just finalized its rule rescinding NEPA regulations, the agency rollbacks already in place are being challenged in court.

This is good news, according to Darya Minovi, Fair Access Research Manager for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In an interview for the Herald, Minovi pointed out that Trump lost most cases related to the APA in his first term.

Public Comments’ Hidden Superpowers

Which leads us to another key value of public commenting: Comments can bolster legal challenges to agency rules. Although industry undoubtedly has the upper hand when it comes to shaping these rules, public comments play a role beyond their APA-mandated consideration in rulemaking. “Every time I submit a public comment,” said Minovi, “I think of how it could be used in a court case down the line.”

The 2015 EPA ruling on the definition of “Waters of the United States” was informed by thousands of public comments. It extended Clean Water Act protections to 60% of the nation’s waterways. (Tim Lumley, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Indeed, public comments are vital tools for educating the courts, legislators, agency staff, and the public at large. Public comments become part of the public record, and part of the reservoir of ideas available to shape a more livable future.

This is true even for ideas that are too far ahead of their time for most policymakers of today. And it is true for public comments at state, county, and local levels. For example, a county comprehensive plan is an opportunity for educating county leadership and the public about the merits and mechanisms of a steady state economy for environmental protection and economic sustainability.

The administration’s attack on public commenting represents no small threat to democracy, human rights and health, and environmental protection. It also underscores a hopeful reality: that the public prioritizes these values over the growth that imperils them. This reality should inspire us to use our right to public comment wherever we still can, and to fight back vociferously against its erosion.

Kirsten Stade is a staff writer at CASSE.

The post Eliminating Public Comments: Another Bow to GDP appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

Counties facing growth challenges can use a variety of tools in their land-use planning to prevent sprawl. One tool is a “greenbelt” composed of a ring of natural and agricultural land that is conserved to hem in urbanization.

Greenbelts have long been a popular planning method in Europe. Researchers at Concordia University compared 30 European cities with greenbelts to 30 without. They found decreases in urban sprawl in almost all of the greenbelt cities. Fewer examples exist in the United States, but the Charleston County Greenbelt Program serves as a leading domestic model.

Located along the Atlantic seaboard, Charleston County is South Carolina’s largest county by land area. It stretches over half of the state’s 187 miles of coastline. Two of the state’s three largest cities, Charleston and North Charleston, are located in the county, creating substantial growth pressures. North Charleston has expanded into neighboring Dorchester and Berkeley Counties.

The greenbelt program has kept this urban-expansion prediction from the mid-1990s from coming true. (Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments)

This urban expansion was first quantified and raised as an urgent concern in 1997 by the Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments. Remote-sensing imagery revealed that between 1973 and 1994, urbanization of land outpaced population growth by more than sixfold. This finding alarmed regional planners and elected officials as it indicated a further expansion of 250 percent in area by 2030 if left unchecked. In response, the county created a funding mechanism to address lagging infrastructure and loss of greenspace.

Today, the Charleston County Greenbelt Program stands as a premier example of how proactive land conservation can prevent worst-case growth. The program has secured over 28,000 acres, safeguarding natural systems while supporting rural livelihoods and public recreation. Yet, this innovative, voter-backed funding model faces an inherent tension. Its dependence on transportation dollars may lead to contradictory infrastructure, undermining conservation goals.

Envisioning a Green Network

By the early 2000s, growth had led to infrastructure deficiencies in Charleston County. In response, officials proposed a way to fund road repair and expansion: a sales tax of 0.5 cents on a dollar for 25 years. The funds would be devoted to transportation infrastructure (roads, bridges, and highways) and to the county’s mass transit system. Some of the revenues would go to maintenance, but some would be utilized for roads accommodating new development.

A vendor at the North Charleston Farmers Market. (North Charleston, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Citizens and conservation groups recognized that the development of roads and the disappearance of greenspace, both of which were accelerating, are intrinsically linked. They lobbied the county government to include greenspace protection in the expenditures. This message resonated well with voters and, in 2004, the tax was adopted by referendum.

The goal described in the referendum was to protect the most vulnerable properties to ensure at least 30 percent of the county’s total land area remained green. When the plan for achieving this goal was developed, 160,000 acres were already protected. Most of the protected area was in the Francis Marion National Forest or in coastal areas such as the 66,000-acre Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge. The county aimed to secure at least another 40,000 acres.

Officials decided to allocate 63 percent of the new tax revenue to transportation infrastructure, 20 percent to public transit, and 17 percent to greenspace protection. The expected revenue for the greenspace program over the 25-year duration of the tax was $221 million.

 The Greenbelt Plan Takes Shape

After the referendum passed, the Charleston County Council appointed a 14-member Greenbelt Advisory Board (GAB). The board conducted comprehensive public outreach, surveying county residents and then creating a Comprehensive Greenbelt Plan in 2006. The executive summary of the plan described Charleston County as standing at a “turning point” because of the growth trajectory and the need to preserve land. 

The Comprehensive Greenbelt Plan, as adopted in 2006, was ambitious. Reflecting the needs of county residents, it established six types of greenspaces for protection:

• Passive greenspace: parks with limited trails for recreation and education;
• Natural resources: upland forests, wetlands, and riparian areas;
• Heritage landscapes: historic and cultural sites;
• Productive landscapes: agricultural land;
• Natural infrastructure: land providing substantial ecosystem services, such as tidal marshes, which protect ecosystems and communities from hurricanes; and
• Active greenspace: more-developed parks and athletic fields.

The document also included plans for corridors to connect greenspaces.

The green bullseyes represent greenbelt land acquisitions where public access is permitted (private acquisitions aren’t shown). (Charleston County Greenbelt Program)

Since 2006, the GAB has considered the protection of these land types when evaluating applications for funding. Furthermore, the transportation-tax legislation mandated that 70 percent of the greenbelt funding be allocated to land in rural areas. The remaining 30 percent goes to land within the City of Charleston’s urban growth boundary (UGB).

The GAB serves as the sole advisory body to the county council for urban and rural funding. Eric Davis, the director of the greenbelt program, told the Steady State Herald that the county doesn’t use the program to purchase and own land. Rather, other groups, such as municipalities, conservation organizations, land trusts, landowners, and businesses, submit proposals for grants to protect land.

Moreover, according to Director Davis, the program’s impact is rooted in its ability to multiply public investment. “Matching funds are very important to our program. We want our funds to leverage additional funds, and the scoring by the GAB reflects that.” To date, the program has attracted more than $240 million in matching funds, including state, federal, and local government grants, landowner donations, and partner grants.

Progress and Controversies

Over the past two decades, the greenbelt program has protected over 28,000 new acres. About two-thirds of this land is protected by conservation easements—legally binding restrictions on development. The remaining acres have been purchased in fee simple, transferring full ownership to organizations like land trusts. By 2016, a progress analysis indicated the county was well on its way to protecting 30 percent of its land.

The Charleston County council determines how much funding flows to the greenbelt program. (Charleston County)

The county council resolved to expand the program by increasing the transportation tax to one cent on a dollar. There was another referendum in November 2016. It passed by 52 percent of votes cast, significantly less than the 59 to 41 percent margin of support in 2006.

Though the revenue stream increased, the council chose to reduce the share allocated to the greenbelt program from 17 to 10 percent. Even so, the program was expected to accrue an additional $211 million by 2042.

But another change fundamentally altered the program. The county changed the 70:30 rural-to-urban allocation to 50:50. Land acquired in urban areas tends to be public, while land acquired in rural areas tends to be private. Director Davis explains, “There has always been a bit of tension between land that allows public access, and private land protections. Some of our county council members don’t see as much value in a private conservation easement.”

These changes have caused concern, particularly from land-trust organizations. Preservationists see the time horizon for saving rural land shrinking. Public sentiment may align with these views, given the failure of a 2024 referendum for another half-cent tax increase. That funding was intended for a multi-billion-dollar expansion of Interstate 526 into the Charleston Peninsula. Critics argued this pro-growth project would fuel over-development and suburban sprawl. 

Modifying the Model

The next step in the Charleston County Greenbelt’s evolution may come this fall. The county council is considering yet another attempt at a tax increase, with the details currently in development.

Although efforts to protect undeveloped land have yielded success, much remains to prevent sprawl, protect wetlands, and maintain biodiversity in Charleston County. (Lowcountry Land Trust)

In anticipation of the coming tax, an impressive consortium of conservation groups produced a report on the land preservation necessary to protect the county’s ecological integrity. They determined that over $750 million in additional funds are needed to protect the ecological integrity of rural areas (outside the UGB). They noted that protecting land inside the UGB costs some 15 times more per acre than protecting land outside of it. They implied that the county should reconsider the 50:50 split in revenue allocation.

However, at a meeting two days ago, the council approved the 50:50 split. That said, three public hearings will provide opportunity to amend the ordinance and ballot language before the referendum.

Matt Williams, President and CEO of the Lowcountry Land Trust—the main author of the report—noted in a Steady State Herald interview that the time is ripe for greater commitment. Greenbelt initiatives can be more effective by leveraging new state funding, according to Williams. In early 2026, Republican Governor Henry McMaster has championed a “10 Million Acres” initiative. The goal is to triple the present 3.2 million acres with some status of protection to 10 million acres—half the area of the entire state.

Williams described a nexus of state and county funding that could multiply land protection dramatically: “It’s exciting what has been accomplished over the past years. We have support from the public for expanded greenbelt funding in Charleston County and neighboring counties. And, we have a shared bipartisan sentiment at the statehouse. This has led to more success for land protection, but there’s still so much left to do.”

If the Charleson County council doubled the current amount of transportation tax revenues allocated to the greenbelt program, from 10 to 20 percent, it would result in around $850 million. This could go a long way toward realizing the goal of the conservation groups. And public survey results indicate solid support for land protection to stave off development pressures.

At their April 28 meeting, the council took the middle road, approving 16.24%, or around $690M, for the greenbelt program. Again, three public hearings will provide opportunity to amend this decision before the referendum.

Future Challenges

The coming months will be crucial in determining the future of what has been a model for land protection. Since Charleston County established its greenbelt program, surrounding counties have followed suit. Berkeley and Dorchester Counties approved greenbelt programs through a similar taxation process in 2024.

The Francis Marion National Forest is an important northern obstacle to sprawl in Charleston County, South Carolina. (Melanie Olds/USFWS)

A greater share of the proceeds of the tax, if directed to rural and ecologically sensitive land, will render a better outcome for sustainability. And, transitioning taxes to limit transportation projects to maintenance of existing roads and public transit would be a superior strategy to preserve biocapacity. That approach may win public support, given the skepticism in the county about expanding superhighways.

Even then, it may not fully align with steady-state principles to fund the preservation of natural areas with taxes derived from the very economic activity that threatens natural areas to start with. To evolve to a steady state, we must resolve the “trophic conundrum” that reduces biocapacity in one area to preserve it in another. This is one of the arguments for conservation by regulation (in contrast to a market approach).

That said, the major up-front expenditures (fee title and easement procurement) for greenbelt designation are one-and-done, solving some of the trophic conundrum when greenspace acquisition is completed. Management of greenspace and enforcement of regulations entails ongoing expenditure, but political leadership and community support—such as volunteerism, honoring easement terms, and public adherence to greenspace regulations—can make greenspace maintenance sustainable.

Dave Rollo is a policy specialist and team leader of the Keep Our Counties Great campaign at CASSE.

The post Charleston County’s Greenbelt Success appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

Footprint accounting 101.

The science is clear: Our rate of economic activity is having disastrous impacts on the environment, starting with the climate so crucial to our survival. Economic activities require the use of natural resources and systematically entail pollution. Resources eventually get used up, as does the capacity of the planet to assimilate waste. We are reminded of Herman Daly’s long-running emphasis that the economy is a subsystem of the environment, not the other way around.

Expanding on this, steady-state economists and other post-growth advocates argue that economic growth cannot be decoupled from material throughput. This can be explained with the trophic theory of money, which follows from the trophic structure of the economy of nature. Agriculture and extraction comprise the trophic foundation of the economy, and all other sectors rely on that trophic base. Therefore, we cannot rely on “dematerialized” sectors to grow the economy while decreasing its disastrous impacts on the environment.

Therefore, consumption must be reduced, particularly in high-income countries that consume more natural resources and release more waste. But just how much do high-income countries need to reduce their economic activity to be sustainable? Two metrics help us understand sustainable limits by quantifying the relationship between the environment and the economy: ecological footprint and biocapacity.

The Conceptual Framing of Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity

The ecological footprint is a measure of the area needed to support the demands of economic activity. Biocapacity is a measure of the area available to supply natural resources and absorb waste at a sustainable rate. When the ecological footprint exceeds biocapacity, that indicates ecological overshoot. The Ecological Footprint Initiative has been measuring global ecological footprint and biocapacity since 1961. We have been in overshoot since 1971.

Global ecological footprint divided by global biocapacity, split by footprint components, from 1961 to 2024, with the red line emphasizing the overshoot threshold. (National Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The ecological footprint and biocapacity are made up of comparable components, including cropland, grazing land, forest land, fishing grounds, and built-up land. In addition, ecological footprint includes a carbon component.

Scientists measure ecological footprint and biocapacity with a unit called the global hectare. They convert the productivity of different ecosystems to global hectares based on the world average productivity of a hectare. This enables comparisons between different land types, places, and years.

Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity of the United States

The United States has a high ecological footprint that is larger than its biocapacity. In 2022, there were roughly one billion hectares across the United States. When categorized into the biocapacity components and compared to global average productivity, this equates to 1.25 billion global hectares (gha) of biocapacity.

Area, biocapacity, and ecological footprint of the United States in 2022. (National Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, CC BY-SA 4.0)

In other words, U.S. land, most notably cropland and forest land, was more productive than the global average. The average biocapacity of one hectare of U.S. cropland was 3.7 gha. One hectare of forest land provided an average of 1.6 gha of forest land biocapacity. However, this above-average biocapacity of cropland and forest land does not indicate sustainability. The country’s total ecological footprint is far higher than its total biocapacity.

In 2022, the U.S. ecological footprint of production was over 2.5 billion gha. This was similar to the ecological footprint of consumption, because the footprints of imports and exports were nearly equal. However, there were differences among the footprint components of imports and exports. The carbon component was more prominent in the ecological footprint of imports, whereas the cropland component was more prominent in exports. This means the United States imported more carbon-intensive goods and services than it exported, and exported more cropland-intensive harvests than it imported.

U.S. Trends: Better or Worse?

One good sign is that total U.S. biocapacity has been increasing over time. In 1961, total biocapacity was just over 1 billion gha, and by 2024, biocapacity had grown to 1.3 billion gha (2023 and 2024 data were forecasted).¹ This is because of increases in agricultural productivity. Biocapacity is a measure of what the environment can provide for human use, not of biodiversity or ecosystem health. In fact, it has a negative correlation with biodiversity indicators. Cropland illustrates this tension well, as using fertilizers and chemicals can increase agricultural productivity at the expense of ecosystem health.

Ecological footprint, biocapacity, and population of the United States from 1961 to 2024. (National Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The U.S. population has also been increasing over time, which has decreased biocapacity per person. In 1961 biocapacity was 5.7 gha/person, and in 2022 was 3.8 gha/person.

Meanwhile, the U.S. ecological footprint of consumption has been increasing. In 1961 it was 1.6 billion gha, and by 2024 it reached 2.5 billion gha. Counteracting that increase to some degree is the per-person ecological footprint of consumption, which has decreased in recent years. In 1961, it was 8.9 gha/person, and in 2022, it was 7.9 gha/person. Although this is not a huge reduction, it provides a glimmer of hope that the country can reduce its footprint per person to offset population growth. However, it would need a very sizeable reduction to retreat to the safe operating space of its biocapacity.

In summary, the best available ecological footprint and biocapacity science reveals that the United States is exceeding a sustainable level of resource use for the production and consumption of goods and services. In 2022, the ecological footprint of consumption was 7.9 gha/person, and biocapacity was 3.8 gha/person. Ecological footprint is more than double biocapacity, meaning that economic activity is (over) two times the amount the United States can sustain. And with its outsized carbon footprint, the American economy is impacting the biocapacity of ecosystems on Earth.

Diving Into the Footprint Details

The average American travels forty miles per day, taking a toll on the climate and mental health. (Raysonho, CC0 1.0)

The carbon component makes up 64 percent of the ecological footprint embodied in the consumption of goods and services in the United States. Almost all of this carbon component (95 percent) comes from fossil fuel emissions. The largest share of these emissions (37 percent) comes from transport, of which road transport constitutes the majority. The next-largest share of U.S. carbon emissions (34 percent) comes from public and private utility companies producing electricity and heat for sale to third parties.

For many people, these details highlight the importance of decarbonizing electricity and heat generation and shifting transportation to less emissions-intensive modalities, such as rail. However, the emissions reductions needed to bring the United States back within its biocapacity are so immense that “green” alternatives aren’t sufficient. Americans must also reduce consumption of electricity and heat, as well as the distance they travel, because “green growth” is not possible.

In 2022, cropland made up 18 percent of the U.S. ecological footprint of consumption. Of the cropland ecological footprint, 84 percent was used for crops consumed by people and pets, 15 percent was used to feed livestock, and less than 0.5 percent was used to feed fish. Almost 700 million metric tons of crops were harvested, and just over half was maize. The second most harvested crop was soybeans at 17 percent of total harvests.

Yet the proportion of ecological impact does not equal the proportion of total harvests. For instance, maize made up 52 percent of crop harvests (metric tons) and 43 percent of the cropland ecological footprint of production (gha) in 2022. On the other hand, soybeans accounted for 17 percent of harvests (metric tons) and 32 percent of cropland ecological footprint of production (gha). Therefore, soybeans had almost double the ecological impact per metric ton of harvest in the United States.

The United States in the Global Context

The United States consumes far more than its share of the Earth’s natural resources. The global average ecological footprint of consumption was 2.7 gha/person in 2022. The United States crushed that benchmark at 7.9 gha/person. The average U.S. citizen consumed resources at almost three times the rate of the average global citizen.

Here’s another way of thinking about this: The United States is responsible for twelve percent of the world’s ecological footprint of consumption. Yet the U.S. population only amounts to four percent of the world population. This represents a highly disproportionate environmental impact.

The U.S. ecological footprint per person is even higher than that of most other high-income countries. The average ecological footprint of consumption in high-income countries is 6.1 gha/person.

Average ecological footprint of consumption per person (2022) by World Bank income classification, with example countries. (National Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, CC BY-SA 4.0)

There are important debates about best practices for presenting ecological footprint and biocapacity data. Often, the ecological footprint of a territory is compared to the biocapacity of that territory. For example, U.S. ecological footprint is compared to U.S. biocapacity. This implies that a country achieves sustainability if its ecological footprint is lower than its biocapacity.

Many criticize this approach as an unfair representation of sustainability, because some countries are blessed with exceptionally high biocapacity. For instance, in 2022, the ecological footprint in Canada was 8.4 gha/person, and the biocapacity was 14.4 gha/person. Canada’s biocapacity was clearly higher than its ecological footprint. However, its ecological footprint per person was in the top ten highest in the world. Therefore, perhaps it is also important to compare a country’s ecological footprint to world average biocapacity (global ecological balance) in addition to the country’s biocapacity (local ecological balance).

In 2022, global biocapacity was 1.5 gha/person, significantly lower than the U.S. ecological footprint of 7.9 gha/person. In other words, U.S. citizens consume resources and emit carbon at five times the global average sustainable rate.

Ecological footprint and biocapacity data illustrate that we are using natural resources and releasing waste at unsustainable rates, in the United States and around the world. It shows that this has been happening for decades. The United States and other high-income countries are disproportionately responsible for this state of overshoot. They must pump the brakes on resource consumption and waste emissions if we are to exist within local and global sustainable limits. They must pump the brakes, in other words, on the economy.

¹ Except where otherwise linked, all data referenced in this article is sourced from the National Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, which are produced by researchers at the Ecological Footprint Initiative for the Footprint Data Foundation.

Peri Dworatzek is a senior research scientist at CASSE and a partnership coordinator at the International Ecological Footprint Learning Lab.

The post Measuring Ecological Limits: The United States and the World appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

The promise of tomorrow’s tech wonders: always keeping us spellbound. (HarshLight, CC BY 2.0)

Lovers of technology tend to love quantitative analysis. But when it comes to the accounting of Earth’s biocapacity and our ecological footprint, these same technophiles are often happy to ignore simple arithmetic. While increasingly rigorous and reliable, the “overshoot” accounting they dismiss does include some difficult-to-measure variables. It will always be imperfect.

But for many nearsighted techno-optimists, this is beside the point. They argue that modern scientists have engineered such technological marvels that we should only expect more, with increasingly miraculous potential. These evangelists of innovation contend that we need not fret. They say the overshoot solution is “just around the corner,” firmly in the hands of the world’s inventors and engineers.

The Alluring Promise of Technology

Technological breakthroughs have increased our resource-use efficiency. Over the last half-century, U.S. energy productivity—or economic output per unit of energy—has increased by about 50 percent. In the United States, despite rapidly increasing digital processing demands, innovations had—until the dawn of AI-cryptocurrency grid-busting mania—kept associated energy demand in check.

Despite markedly greater efficiency in energy use, most developed nations still use more energy with each passing year. (U.S. Energy Information Administration, Energy Institute, Our World in Data; CC BY 4.0)

Many societies have figured out ingenious ways to recycle, re-use, and reduce, shrinking the ecological footprint of key production processes. A majority of the world’s steel, for example, is now a product of recycling rather than mining new ore. Almost a third of the world’s tungsten demand is met with recycling. Much is manufactured today with less waste and less throughput than before.

Further “green” innovations appear close at hand. More streamlined nuclear energy production (not without safety concerns) or wider deployment of geothermal energy may lessen our fossil fuel dependence. Solar energy—still comparatively costly and unreliable as a base fuel for energy systems—has become much more practical at the residential level than once imagined. Prospective battery-storage improvements promise greater feasibility for all intermittent energy sources.

Tradeoffs and Limits

If history is any indicator, however, these breakthroughs come with significant tradeoffs. Nuclear energy will likely remain relatively costly and risky. Intermittent availability will always limit the broad usefulness of solar power. Energy returned on energy invested (EROI) is declining rapidly for fossil fuels, and no substitute, renewable or not, appears likely to revive the old, higher EROI.

The agricultural Green Revolution, full of technological marvels, helped us feed more citizens at a lower cost overall. It offered promises of abundant food supplies for a growing population. But productivity increases required a massive infusion of fertilizer and water, which poisoned the Earth and depleted critical freshwater supplies. Regrettably, Green Revolution innovations have even compromised inexpensive oceanic food sources, on which much of the world still depends.

A quote from Norman Borlaug’s 1970 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance address. (Lou Gold, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Norman Borlaug, whose critical work in high-yield agriculture sparked the Green Revolution, reminded us just prior to his death in 2009 that the revolution was a humanitarian emergency response. As such, it came with difficult-to-avoid compromises. Its returns were limited and would diminish rapidly if population pressure were left unaddressed. Indeed, by the time of Borlaug’s death, the revolution’s returns were already diminishing noticeably.

In a similar vein, metastasizing cryptocurrency and AI use have overwhelmed computer chip processing efficiencies.

Whether their gains are offset by population pressure, reinvestment of financial savings, Jevons Paradox, or the mindless GDP bulldozer, new technologies alone promise little relief from overshoot.

It’s no surprise, then, that our ecological footprint continues to overshoot Earth’s biocapacity, despite the cavalcade of technological wonders. Against a rising population and the inefficiency of our conventional trickle-down economics, the footprint-biocapacity reckoning remains untenable. Nor has our ballooning footprint resulted in substantial progress against global poverty outside of South and East Asia.

If technophiles can add and subtract, they must realize that without changed population and wealth-distribution dynamics, technological innovation can do little to deliver sustainable, broadly shared prosperity.

A Steady-State Riddle

Humanity faces an insurmountable predicament and an important riddle. In both cases, the potential of technology as a solution is overstated. Our predicament? The cheap hydrocarbon basis of modern prosperity is fading away. At our current economic scale, or anything close to it, fossil fuels cannot continue to function as the heart of a healthy economy. There may simply be no way to reconcile our need for cheap energy, our current population, and widespread well-being.

In 1926, Harvard physiologist Walter Bradford Cannon coined the term homeostasis, which described life processes that varied but remained relatively constant. (Welcome Collection, CC BY 4.0)

The vexing riddle stems from the inevitable reversal of economic growth. How can the world welcome the fertility transition—already in motion—and manage economic activities so that this transition generates prosperity rather than deprivation? Conventional efforts to redistribute wealth, built mostly on meager “safety nets,” are not up to the task. Without better sharing of the income and leisure from our immense productivity, hoarding and speculation will make this riddle impossible to solve.

There may be an optimal homeostasis on the horizon, but we will not reach it with technology alone or with unregulated market forces. We can reach it with better economic distribution and less population pressure.

The Delusion and Its Origins: Economic Theory and Practice

Few are willing to recognize our predicament or consider the factors that play into the end-of-growth riddle. Most ignore planetary boundaries and rising inequality, imagining that technological innovation will always provide an escape hatch. From what odd source does this willful delusion originate?

On one level, it is a logical extension of popular neoclassical equilibrium economics. This brand of economics consists of exotic and enticing mathematical expressions built on imaginary scaffolding. As defined in Entropy Economics, equilibrium theory states that we (in developed nations) live in the best possible world, and that we can keep it so long as we do little to disturb it. In this world, scientific breakthroughs and the free-market sorting of their relative merits combine to elicit, without fail, an optimum status quo, including a GDP growth rate typical of the late 20^th century.

Like all other fusion-reactor dream machines, this one—at the Lawrence Livermore Lab—was eventually abandoned. (Nuclear Fusion Reactor, CC BY 2.0)

Yet, time and again, economies based on this approach threaten sustainability and, more and more, prosperity. With little need to recognize the ecological foundation of the economy, equilibrium-theory followers also tend to be suckers for wasteful and unsettling investment bubbles. From Florida real estate in the 1920s to cold-fusion dreams and AI flackery today, these Ponzi schemes can keep reality at bay long enough to pump, profit, and dump. And then it’s on to the next speculative adventure.

As the Dutch proved with the 17^th-century “tulip mania” bubble, frenzied speculation is not limited to techno-dreams. The tech world, nevertheless, tends to generate speculation, with ease and with a large ecological footprint. If your paradigm is economic theory that ignores ecological reality, it is difficult to avoid this recurring brand of unreality, especially when the allure of short-term personal gain is so palpable. “Get the machine that goes ‘ping!’” our favorite Monty Python actors once reminded us.

The Delusion and Its Origins: Human Psychology

Basic human psychology also contributes to groundless techno-optimism. As Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman illustrated, we conduct our mental lives by the law of least effort. Efficiency gains from some technologies are easy to observe. Our ecological footprint is diffuse and not so easy to see or feel. We’re reluctant to deduce the particular from the general (my lifestyle contributes to ecological overshoot). But we’re quite willing to infer the general from the particular (this technology helps me, so it must be good for the world).

As Daniel Kahneman illustrated, common “heuristics,” our ingrained “rules of thumb,” often divorce us from reality. (Alfred Kiefer, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Kahneman also discovered a widespread prejudice when people sized up a new and bracing technology. They consistently rated it as offering exaggerated benefits and understated its perils. This prejudice makes it difficult to grasp what Robert Gordon illustrated in The Rise and Fall of American Growth: No technological innovation of the last century has advanced productivity and efficiency as much as the 1920s electric-power revolution. Diminishing returns to capital and to technological advance are baked into modernity, but most of us never recognize this.

Kahneman also illustrated a tendency with important implications for economic de-growth: Negotiations over a shrinking pie produce outsized psychological discomfort. Our perverted and unrealistic conception of optimal business-firm practices serves as an additional blind spot. Based on a purposeful mischaracterization of actual corporate behavior and case law, the prevailing business ethos supplants optimum profits with maximum profits. Compelling a chase for ever-rising profitability, “the firm” finds it difficult to countenance anything but perpetual growth. Seeking more becomes a principled practice, underwritten most effectively by techno-fantasies.

Humans are primed to resist the discord they associate with resource limits. When we bump up against limits, smart scientists and engineers (and their cheerleaders) are positioned to act as “white knights,” riding to the rescue.

If tech experts promise some new form of the productivity miracles they have occasionally delivered, few question their ability to do so. Neither the probability of success nor the likelihood of diminishing returns is carefully considered. Dreams about “absolute decoupling” of economic growth from resource use are only the most fantastic manifestation of this compelling evasion.

As a result, we see little need to shrink our pie (and share it more generously). We ignore the implications of scarcity and expensive energy. And since our brains evolved to punish meanness more readily than reward generosity, this too encourages habitual blindness. We don’t recognize the problem, or consider changes to address it, until it reflects behavior mean enough to unsettle us. And we characterize generosity, a foundational principle of all major religions and a key component of sound economic policy, as a sign of weakness or naiveté.

Seeing Through a Glass Less Darkly

For these reasons, we should neither be surprised nor swayed by the blind faith and willful delusions of technophiles and their free-market economist friends. Technology will continue to mesmerize, and it will bring small and welcome efficiencies. But it will also remain subject—in the face of mounting resource scarcity–to diminishing returns.

The second law of thermodynamics sheds light on the limits to the resource-use efficiency we can achieve via technology. It is the law of entropy: In all living systems, resources dissipate. On a lightly populated planet with a biocapacity greater than the population’s ecological footprint, we could thrive despite entropy, as the sun continuously adds energy to the system. But on a crowded planet, entropy cannot be ignored. Rising scarcity and pollution outflank innovation at every turn.

The projected 2026 Earth Overshoot Day, on which we use up that year’s allocation of resource and waste-absorption biocapacity, is June 5. (Global Footprint Network)

Despite all the innovations and efficiencies introduced over the last half-century, our global ecological footprint has steadily outpaced our planet’s biocapacity. This overshoot manifested itself for the first time a little over fifty years ago and has grown steadily. The only exceptions have occurred during recessions (most recently in 2007-08) or because of shocks like the COVID pandemic.

But brutal deprivation cannot be our only spur to action. Without conscious planning and the explicit recognition of planetary boundaries, a prosperous homeostasis may stray increasingly out of reach. Placing continued faith in a magic technological rescue will keep it there. Rising numbers of AI propagandists are dragging us into this familiar corner. They are encouraging business-as-usual economic policy and blinding us to real solutions—not so much connected to technology. Their delusion will become more and more problematic.

We do have viable alternatives. We can transcend our ingrained selfishness and misplaced pro-natalist anxiety. We’re unlikely to overcome these obstacles, however, if we remain dazzled by the technological world. As Canadian rock band The Guess Who famously protested in a recording released only a couple of weeks before the first Earth Day, “Colored lights can hypnotize; sparkle someone else’s eyes.”

David Shreve is a Senior Economist at CASSE.

The post Blinded by the Light: Techno-Optimism in Overshoot appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

Montreal, December 13, 2022—During a press briefing on 12/12/2022, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, stated she didn’t “believe” there was a conflict between economic growth and biodiversity conservation. Her “belief” runs contrary to UN Secretary General António Guterres, who kicked off the conference by noting, “With our bottomless appetite for unchecked and unequal economic growth, humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction.”

Secretary Mrema is behind the times, still harboring a fallacious belief in “green growth.” Meanwhile, hundreds of delegates and conferees have signed the CASSE position on economic growth describing the “fundamental conflict between economic growth and biodiversity conservation.”

Despite the $88 trillion GDP extinguishing species, displacing habitats, polluting air and water, acidifying oceans, bleaching coral reefs, melting glaciers and ice caps, and pumping forever chemicals into our soils and aquifers, Mrema fuzzily thinks we can have our cake and eat it too: continue growing an already-devastating GDP while reversing the Sixth Mass Extinction.

Secretary Mrema—an outstanding leader in other ways—is WRONG about GDP vs. biodiversity. E.O. Wilson, Jane Goodall, David Suzuki and many other world-class conservation scientists have spoken out about the fundamental conflict between GDP growth and biodiversity. While some countries do need economic growth, as no one would deny, growth won’t magically occur without impacting biodiversity.

With all the calls for “30 by 30,” or even “Half-Earth” — whereby much of the planet must be protected from economic activity, it should be obvious that the proper economic policy would be not growth for most countries, but rather the steady state economy (and even degrowth in countries with rapacious ecological footprints). In other words, biodiversity conservation calls for “steady statesmanship” in international diplomacy. Unless Secretary Mrema can recognize and acknowledge this, she should be replaced by someone who can and will.

~ends~

For more information, contact CASSE at info@steadystate.org or Brian Czech at 703-901-7190.

The post At COP15 Mrema is Wrong — Guterres is Right appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

Trump’s deregulatory agenda has particularly favored the energy sector. (Gary Machen, CC BY-ND 2.0)

At the beginning of his second term, President Trump pledged a regime of aggressive deregulation to stimulate economic growth. Unfortunately he has followed through on that promise, claiming 646 deregulatory actions over the past year. These have aided industries ranging from slaughterhouses to automakers no longer bound by emissions standards under the Obama-era Endangerment Finding, which has now been reversed.

The energy sector has been among the foremost beneficiaries. Environmental rollbacks have already unleashed accelerated oil, gas, and mineral development, especially on treasured public lands.

Aside from its reckless imperilment of the natural world, Trump’s deregulation poses alarming risks to human health and safety. Among the most alarming are changes to regulations governing nuclear reactors and their waste.

Rollbacks Too Radioactive for Public Notice

In January, with no public notice or involvement, the administration overhauled nuclear safety regulations. The changes, though made in secret, were shared with the companies that stand to benefit from them.

Although its exact scope remains unknown, we know that the overhaul cut over 750 pages of Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear safety regulations. The changes nix requirements that groundwater, wildlife, and plants be protected from harm by radioactive materials. They replace these requirements with vague exhortations that “consideration must be given” to avoiding such harm. They double the allowable limit of accidental radiation exposure for workers before an investigation is triggered. And they cut entire chapters on how and with what physical barriers to secure nuclear material.

Trump issued the changes in a series of orders intended to expedite the construction of a new generation of reactors. Under the terms of a pilot project launched at a meeting with industry last May, at least three of these new so-called small modular reactors (SMRs) should be operational by July 4.

“Small” modular reactors are actually as large as a city block. They generate less than 300 megawatts (MW) of electricity, in contrast to the 1,000 MW generated by conventional large nuclear plants.

Concept design for a 300 MW modular reactor planned to repower the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan. (Department of Energy)

The program will be under the direct oversight of the DOE. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is more independent and has overseen the safety of commercial reactors since the 1970s. However, the NRC will only consult on the development of reactors built under the pilot. The program will also be exempt from the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to consider and solicit public comment on the environmental consequences of major projects.

The rollbacks, as far as we know, only apply to reactors built under the pilot. But their impacts could reach much further, according to Edwin Lyman, Nuclear Power Safety Director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “They’re pretending that these are test reactors that are not being built to generate commercial power,” said Lyman in an interview for the Herald. But the changes “could propagate across the entire fleet of commercial nuclear facilities, severely degrading nuclear safety throughout the United States.”

Nuclear Safety Regulations: A History of Hard Lessons

The rollbacks target regulations that emerged from decades of hard lessons and careful deliberation. After World War II, when the United States demonstrated the terrifying power of the atom in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, governments around the world quickly harnessed that power for commercial use. The U.S. government put a single agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, in charge of both the promotion and the regulation of nuclear power.

The conflict of interest inherent in this dual mandate was soon put to the test. In the 1960s, a Bandwagon Market for new reactors strained the ability of the agency’s small staff to ensure safety. Runaway costs and construction delays took their toll on public sentiment toward nuclear power. So did persistent concerns about radiation leakage from nuclear plants in the case of an accident or during routine operation.

The government established the NRC in 1974 to address public unease and provide independent regulation of the industry.

Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station. (Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, CC BY-SA 2.0)

But NRC oversight was not enough to prevent the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history just five years later. In 1979, a combination of mechanical failures, malfunctioning indicators, and poor employee training at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania caused about half the fuel to melt. Although minimal radiation was released, the accident triggered the evacuation of 144,000 people and widespread public alarm.

Other mishaps have plagued the industry. In 1975, a fire broke out at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Alabama when a worker used a lighted candle to check for proper sealing around cables. In the early 1990s, whistleblowers at the Millstone Power Station in Connecticut reported that they had faced intimidation or dismissal for calling attention to dangerous violations of NRC regulations. And in 2002, an inspection at the Davis-Besse nuclear power station in Ohio revealed significant corrosion of the pressure vessel’s head. The degradation was so severe as to indicate prolonged negligence in maintenance and inspection.

Each of these incidents had a chilling effect on public sentiment toward nuclear power. This effect was magnified by accidents at Chernobyl in 1986 and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in 2011. The NRC has since implemented significant safety reforms including improved operator training, emergency preparedness, and equipment requirements.

Data Centers’ Gluttonous Energy Demand

Given this history, one might think we’d need a pretty good reason to scrap nuclear safety regulations.

No such luck. The current push toward deregulation originates with one industry, and it is one of questionable relevance to human well-being. It is the proliferation of electricity-guzzling AI data centers that is driving the push to gut regulations and build reactors in a hurry.

Google Data Center, Council Bluffs, Iowa. (Chad Davis, CC BY 2.0)

Data centers, which are increasingly but not exclusively used to power artificial intelligence, accounted for more than four percent of U.S. electricity consumption in 2023-2024. This figure is likely to increase to 17 percent by 2030. Although natural gas will power most AI in the near future, investments by tech billionaires and firms may soon change that.

Meta, Nvidia, and Bill Gates, for example, have invested millions in nuclear startup Terrapower, which the NRC just approved to build a reactor in Wyoming. This was the first commercial reactor approved in the United States in more than a decade. The speed of its approval suggests the NRC may be taking safety shortcuts to grease the wheels of industry growth. Under increasing bipartisan pressure from Congress, the agency’s response has been to streamline permitting and, critics argue, compromise safety.

A Perilous Deregulation-Driven Renaissance

Plant Vogtle near Augusta, Georgia. (Department of Energy)

In addition to putting safety on the line, hasty permitting can actually increase costs. The story of two reactors recently completed in Georgia displays this unfortunate consequence. In 2009, Georgia Power received NRC approval to build two reactors. These reactors, the first to receive approval in three decades, would join two existing reactors at Plant Vogtle near Augusta. These had themselves come online in 1987, at a cost exceeding their budget twelve fold.

In 2023–24, Vogtle Reactors 3 and 4 were completed—seven years behind schedule and $23 billion over the initial budget of $14 billion.

Despite the industry’s 2003 promise of energy “too cheap to meter,” Georgia utility customers are now paying some of the highest rates in the nation.

Such delays and cost overruns are par for the course for the industry. But contrary to the claims of nuclear proponents, they can seldom be blamed on burdensome regulation. In the case of Vogtle, construction errors, corporate malfeasance, and regulatory laxity were at fault. A study noted that “inadequate Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulation and streamlining procedures meant to encourage investment in new nuclear projects contributed to excessive costs.”

And the dangers of lax regulation are large even for reactors that are small. SMRs contain less radioactive material and produce less heat. But rule changes that eliminate safety features could make them more dangerous, in the case of an accident, than a large reactor with stronger safeguards.

SMRs also do not address the persistent problem of waste. Data centers, industrial facilities, and communities with an SMR will likely have to house nuclear waste on site indefinitely. This prospect is particularly concerning in light of studies predicting greater volumes of waste and more reactive waste from SMRs than from traditional reactors.

Although SMRs have a smaller land footprint than conventional reactors, they produce energy less efficiently. This is in part due to economies of scale. It is also due to increased neutron leakage from their compact cores—leakage that damages the reactor and generates more waste.

Beyond safety and waste concerns, critics argue that SMRs’ potential to meet energy demand has been vastly overstated. Energy expert Vaclav Smil estimates that to contribute 10 percent of its electrical supply, the United States would have to build 1,300 SMRs generating 100 MW each. This does not account for the coming explosion in energy use from AI.

Limits to Nuclear-Powered Growth

The industry allies who populate the Trump Administration and tech billionaires like Peter Thiel are not the only partisans of today’s bandwagon nuclear market. Nuclear power is also being hailed as a solution to climate change.

But existing nuclear capacity only mitigates two to three percent of global GHG emissions. This figure is limited by the fact that nuclear power, for the most part, only provides electricity. Electricity accounts for only 20 percent of global energy demand. The industry touts its potential to fuel some industrial processes. However, generally, nuclear cannot produce the high temperatures required for processes like steel and cement production that account for significant greenhouse gas emissions.

Another limitation is uranium. Like fossil fuels themselves, nuclear fuels are a finite resource. The highest grade uranium used to power reactors has already been mined, so future mining will yield lower grade ore. This ore will require more fossil fuels expended to yield the same amount of energy. It is a story of diminishing energy return on energy invested common to most of Earth’s rapidly depleting resources.

Uranium mining generates hazards of its own, as at this historic mining area in Mesa County, Colorado. (Environmental Protection Agency)

In our resource-constrained world, it is also worth noting that nuclear power has an extraordinary demand for water.

As war with Iran imperils our access to cheap oil, nuclear will likely be embraced with increasing urgency. But every part of the nuclear fuel cycle, from mining uranium to building a reactor to keeping that reactor cool, requires fossil fuels.

And at the end of that cycle, nuclear waste must be contained for as long as it remains radioactive. For some materials, this may be thousands of years. This is a time scale that will include climate change and resultant floods, fires, tornadoes, tsunamis, and civil unrest. Keeping waste safely contained on such a time scale, and under such circumstances, is also complicated by the potential for supply chain disruptions that block trade of materials essential for containment.

Ultimately, nuclear power may partially answer the question of how to produce less carbon while generating electricity. But it does nothing to solve the much larger and more fundamental problem of ecological overshoot. That is a problem that cannot be solved by simply “transitioning” modern, growth-obsessed techno-industrial society to run on novel energy systems.

It is a problem for which the only real solution is to scale down our population and our economic enterprise, to a smaller steady state that is in balance with Earth’s capacity.

Kirsten Stade is a staff writer at CASSE.

The post Nuclear Safety Now Optional Under Trump appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

Albemarle County is in the heart of Virginia. (David Benbennick, Public Domain)

I’ve lived in Albemarle County, Virginia, for over forty years. Albemarle is a mostly rural county in the Piedmont region. It surrounds the city of Charlottesville.

For decades, the county valued its open spaces and created many policies to ensure their protection. Recently, leadership has taken a pro-development turn, jeopardizing citizens’ quality of life and many of our community’s natural features.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the Albemarle County government took a cautious approach to growth and development. During this period, conservative and progressive board members alike played key roles in establishing environmental programs and policies. County planners were generally supportive of integrating conservation proposals into planning policies. So was the county public.

In the 1990s, Albemarle County participated in the regional Thomas Jefferson Sustainability Council, created two open-space easement programs, and established a now 20-year-old program to monitor and protect its biodiversity. The county has a natural resources manager on staff who supports a range of conservation efforts.

During the 2000s, Albemarle County helped fund a series of studies by Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population on the optimum population size of the Albemarle-Charlottesville community. In recent years, the county committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2050, developed a climate action plan, and established a staffed climate program.

Changing Times

Beginning with the Great Recession of 2008 and the rise of the Tea Party, the local political environment shifted. In 2010, a bloc of conservative members of the board of supervisors launched a financial austerity campaign. Consequences included a significant reduction in planning staff, reduced interest in environmental protection, and expanded interest in economic development.

This bloc didn’t last. Today, all the Albemarle County supervisors are Democrats. However, like their Republican predecessors, Democratic supervisors in recent years have supported economic development, ignoring most of its associated costs. In January of this year, two new supervisors joined the board. Time will reveal their inclinations toward growth.

Albemarle County’s current board of supervisors. (Albemarle County Government)

The 2020–2023 COVID-19 pandemic heavily impacted Albemarle County political dynamics. Activist attendance at public meetings fell off and hasn’t recovered. County policy formation suffers from the reduction of this environmental activist community, which has historically shown up at public meetings and held decision makers accountable.

Residents still support environmental protection, including climate action, and many of the green programs of past decades remain in place. However, we have new leadership in the county that is zealously pursuing economic growth and has shown little interest in examining its environmental consequences.

A New (Not Improved) Comprehensive Plan

Albemarle County completed an update of its comprehensive plan in October 2025. The update began in late 2021. At the start of the update, nearly all the planners were recent additions to the county staff, with few intellectual ties to past county policies. They initially proposed a nearly complete scrapping of the old, widely admired plan. Changes included jettisoning the key rural areas chapter.

The public pushed back, leading eventually to the inclusion of a rural areas chapter in the new plan. The planners made a commitment to create an in-depth, standalone rural areas conservation plan, similar to the county’s biodiversity action plan.

Highway 29N, the main business corridor in Albemarle County, has been key to economic development.

For all its previous caution about promoting growth, Albemarle County never quite endorsed a stable population or a steady state economy, either. Its growth management policy has been and continues to be an orderly accommodation of growth, which leadership perceives as inevitable. According to the new comprehensive plan, the county’s population is projected to increase by 31,000 by 2044. Planners take this growth as a given and focus the plan on providing housing and other infrastructure to accommodate it.

Rivanna Futures is Hatched

In Virginia, economic development gets special treatment. With the rationale that proprietary information should not be publicly disclosed, the Code of Virginia allows local governments to close meetings at which economic development projects are discussed. Partnerships between local governments and businesses can be hatched and approved without sunshine, and without their environmental consequences adequately weighed.

In 2023, the Albemarle County supervisors announced that the county had already agreed to purchase 462 acres of land for $58 million. This land adjoins Rivanna Station, a U.S. Defense Department installation and a significant contributor to the local economy. According to officials, the county purchased the land to provide room to expand Rivanna Station and supporting industries. The supervisors deemed the purchase necessary to prevent Rivanna Station from relocating to another community.

The county’s plan for development of these acres is referred to as the Rivanna Futures project. The government expects the project to anchor development of a larger, regional, high-tech “Innovation Corridor.” A high-ranking county official suggested the Rivanna Futures project might “realize a level of potential similar to Silicon Valley at its onset.”

A concept map of the Innovation Acceleration Campus, part of the Rivanna Futures project, presented to the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. (Albemarle County Government)

According to an engineering analysis of Rivanna Futures, the project could create nearly 900 new jobs. As has been the case for other such projects, many of the new jobs undoubtedly would be filled by people who move to the county with their families.

The county is behind schedule in meeting its commitment to become carbon neutral by 2050. Its climate action plan emphasizes the preservation of its forested land, while leaders pursue growth projects that entail substantial deforestation. Wary of simultaneous climate and development promises, residents asked the county to conduct analyses of greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts of Rivanna Futures before considering a required rezoning.

Albemarle County applied to itself for permission to rezone the property that it purchased for tens of millions of dollars. The deputy county executive submitted the application, and the board of supervisors judged it. During the review, Planning Commissioners complained that supporting documents submitted by the county fell far below the standards usually required from applicants. Even the Free Enterprise Forum, a business-friendly interest group, critiqued the county for giving itself preferential treatment.

The county government defended its actions by claiming it needed a quick rezoning to apply for state economic development funds. Albemarle County approved its rezoning without the environmental analyses requested by activists. The county subsequently received a grant of $9.7 million from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership to prepare the Rivanna Futures site for building. This rezoning process illustrates conflicts of interest that arise when local governments play developer.

In October 2025, AstraZeneca announced it would build a $4.5 billion pharmaceutical plant on the Rivanna Futures property. The plant will provide 600 new jobs. This project may receive a special appropriation from the state of Virginia for $191.3 million.

The People Press Pause on a Data Center Proposal

Rivanna Futures isn’t the only development project favored by some leaders of the Albemarle County government. They recently considered a new data center ordinance. The proposed ordinance would have allowed data centers of up to 500,000 square feet to be built by right in designated overlay zones. An overlay is when an additional set of regulations is superimposed on an existing zoning district.

A massive, noisy data-center complex in another Virginia county, Loudoun. Northern Virginia is the world’s largest data-center market. (Getty Images, CC BY-NC 4.0)

Data centers consume vast amounts of water and energy, the latter now provided mostly by burning fossil fuels. Staff presented the proposed ordinance without an analysis of the greenhouse gas emissions of the new centers that would be permitted. Environmentalists objected.

The proposal did include maps of four possible data center overlay zones. Residents living near the proposed zones learned of the maps and became agitated. In October 2025, shortly before a scheduled public hearing to adopt the ordinance, the board of supervisors agreed to indefinitely pause consideration of the ordinance.

Despite this win, Albemarle County leaders generally appear committed to growth, even with pushback here and there from the public. It’s clear that for now, they’ll pursue growth regardless of conflicts with environmental commitments and, if necessary, via substandard processes.

Prospects for a Green Revival

Albemarle County could become a green leader again. This would require executing a multi-part plan. First, our planning processes must acknowledge the severity of the ecological crises we face. Second, we must create a strong, independent natural resources planning department. This department would address rural areas protection, natural resource conservation, and climate change. Third, we must convince county leaders to stop seeking unsustainable growth.

Many long-time Albemarle residents want to keep our county great.

Step three, convincing leaders to abandon the pursuit of growth, is the most difficult. Most current officials truly believe that, despite all evidence to the contrary, development projects will improve the county’s tax base and employment. Putting the brakes on overgrowth requires long-term vision and a willingness to reject empty promises of shared prosperity and political rewards from proponents of development. It also requires concerned citizens who can readily understand how the costs of growth outweigh its benefits.

Economist Milton Friedman suggested, “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change.” If we can cultivate a larger base of knowledgeable and vociferous local activists, we might be able to persuade decision-makers to abandon their infatuation with growth. Otherwise, we may have to wait for a crisis to alter our political landscape.

Tom Olivier is an environmental activist and long-time resident of Albemarle County with a Ph.D. in anthropology from Duke University.

The post Albemarle County, Virginia: Green Leader No More appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

President Trump wants to be the King of GDP, but he might not make it through the Strait of Hormuz. (Quoteinspector.com, CC BY-ND 4.0)

Given his long-running obsession with GDP growth, an obsession punctuated with mid-terms in mind, President Trump has made some peculiar moves. Just this week, his stripping of immigrant truckers’ licenses took effect, as part of a broader crackdown on immigrant labor, a key source of economic growth. His hyperactive imposing of tariffs has undermined comparative advantage, a condition relied upon for global GDP growth. And now, with the war in Iran, the American economy is in for a heavy hit.

Only 20 days in, the war has already caused the biggest oil supply shock in history. We know what happened when that other iconic oil shock occurred, the OPEC oil embargo of 1973-1974. It turned a period of stubborn stagnation into the “Great Inflation,” the longest bout of inflation in U.S. history.

The Great Inflation was extended by the Iranian revolution in 1979, when again, oil supplies were sharply constrained. That ensured years of “stagflation” (inflation combined with recession) that no politician could fix.

Unless you’re an arms dealer or a war contractor, it’s hard for Americans to find a silver lining in Trump’s war. Young voters seem especially flummoxed. Even before he invaded Iran, they were “abandoning him in droves.” While it’s too early to tell for sure, war in Iran will probably exacerbate the abandonment and extend it to other age groups.

 Strait of Hormuz: Achilles Heel of an Obese Economy

The global economy is roughly 82 percent fossil-fueled. The Big Three fuels are oil, natural gas, and coal. If agriculture feeds the economy (as it literally does), fossil fuels are the steroids that make it bigger and faster.

Strait of Hormuz: macroeconomic bottleneck. (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

That makes the Strait of Hormuz the Achilles heel. Oil shipped through the Strait accounts for over 20 percent of global oil consumption. The oil comes primarily from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait, Iran, and Qatar. Nearly 20 percent of liquified natural gas (LNG) comes through the Strait as well, mostly from Qatar.

The King of GDP and his War Department are making a huge blunder by laying waste to Iran. Even with a bombed-out Tehran, Iran retains almost total control of passage in the Strait. Rather than the “unconditional surrender” Trump naively trolled them with, Iranian leaders have opted to choke off the Strait.

The Strait of Hormuz is now the torn Achilles tendon of global GDP. Perhaps the only silver lining is the environmental benefit of a smaller, slower economy (an entirely unintended consequence ). Unfortunately, not all else will be equal, as the oil shock will prompt Trump to “drill baby drill” even harder, domestically. And, exacerbating the war will itself take a heavy environmental toll.

Boots on the Ground and Boats in the Water?

Yes, the United States could invade Iran with boots on the ground and boats on the water, and eventually defeat the forces that control the Strait. However, those forces consist primarily of the Strait-smart Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). American success is hardly surefire.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy uses small, swift attack boats to converge upon commercial tankers. (Fars News Agency, CC BY 4.0)

Trump’s claim on Tuesday that the United States has decimated Iran’s military is misleading. No doubt Iran’s conventional navy has taken a beating, but the IRGC navy is another matter. They use small, dispersed attack boats to quickly converge on helpless tankers. They operate coastal batteries firing Qader missiles with a range of 120 miles. They possess huge stockpiles of naval mines. They have midget submarines and unmanned surface vessels, or “floating bombs.”

And suddenly, the IRGC has thousands of drones. They’ve learned to briskly manufacture inexpensive models, and for all we know, they may be receiving hundreds of drones per week from the 5,400 produced per month in Russia. These are the dreaded Shahed drones that have made life hell for Ukrainian troops and civilians. As a former U.S. Air Force pilot described, “It’s like having a sniper always following [you]. But unlike snipers, drones pursue you through open doorways and around corners. They chase you around obstacles and wait for you to emerge from a hiding place.”

The IRGC has an estimated 150,000 troops, 20,000 sailors, and can evidently mobilize a paramilitary force—the Basij—of 600,000 volunteers. It has allied, armed groups to call upon from Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, among others. The Guards are accustomed to operating in a decentralized condition, in order to “overcome any vacuum in the absence of the supreme leader, the ultimate decision maker.”

Securing the Strait of Hormuz, then, won’t be the “little excursion” Trump has deluded himself with. It requires a bloody, uncertain, drawn-out war within a war that kills scores of U.S. troops while Trump’s popularity plummets in tandem with the rate of GDP growth. Trump will have only himself to blame, and not only for invading Iran. With GDP-obsessed leaders like him, U.S. citizens still don’t recognize the need for degrowth toward a steady state economy. They’re still not prepared to trade GDP growth for much of anything, much less an imbroglio in Iran.

The Other Barrel of the Economic Shotgun

Care to guess what else flows through the Strait of Hormuz, comprising nearly a third of another global supply? Hint: We’re not talking about saffron, dates, or Persian rugs.

It’s fertilizer, including urea, diammonium phosphate (DAP), and anhydrous ammonia.

Cargo up in flames at the Shahid Rajaee Port in Bandar Abbas, Iran (April 26, 2025). One common fertilizer, ammonium nitrate, is highly explosive. (Abbas Zakeri, CC BY 4.0)

Urea is the most widely-used synthetic fertilizer in the world, applied to grain crops, root crops, and even leafy vegetables. These crops typically need a boost of nitrogen, and urea provides it. When phosphorus is limiting, DAP fills the bill. In alkaline soils, anhydrous ammonia is injected into the soil to help with nutrient uptake and to lower pH.

Fertilizer is a key ingredient in another revolution relevant to Iran, the United States, and global GDP: the Green Revolution. But as a result of Trump’s war, fertilizer prices are already spiking, according to Michael Werz, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “In the Middle East,” he writes, “the price for urea rose by 19 percent within a week, creating new fiscal challenges for agriculture sectors across the globe.”

So far, American farmers have been partially buffered, because in many parts of the country, fertilizer supplies for spring planting were laid in before the war started. This is not the case, though, in northern growing areas, and the current choking of fertilizer flow may impact supplies for summer and fall applications as well. Again,  this may not be a bad thing for the environment, but it portends human suffering in the form of hunger.

Backside of a Page in Putin’s Playbook

Putin wants Ukraine grain, and benefits from shortages elsewhere. (Valdemar Fishmen, CC BY 2.0)

One of Putin’s lesser-known motives for invading Ukraine was the rich black soils, or “chernozem,” that make Ukraine the bread basket of Europe. Russia already has a substantial chernozem belt of its own, bordering Ukraine. Commandeering the eastern half of Ukraine would connect these areas, providing Russia with perhaps the world’s greatest agricultural advantage.

An agricultural advantage in tandem with the vast natural gas reserves of western Siberia would provide Putin with a double-barreled shotgun of economic power to threaten foes and attract anti-West friends, far into the future.

In the case of Iran, similar logic is involved, but in reverse. Iran can punish the United States and much of the world by withholding petroleum and fertilizers—essentially energy and food— from the global markets. It is no coincidence that Russia and Iran have gravitated toward a strategic alliance.

For the United States, led by a football fan, it’s a bit like facing an offense (Putin) and a defense (Tehran), with special teams performed by the likes of North Korea and Belarus. On the twisted scoreboard would be U.S. and Russian GDP, or rather the rate of GDP growth. And with Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz, the momentum has shifted toward the anti-West team.

Shortage at The Trophic Base: Essence of Inflation

Long-time Herald readers know that money originates—annually as well as evolutionarily—via the agricultural surplus that frees the hands for the division of labor and makes money a meaningful concept. That’s the trophic theory of money.

Pursuant to the trophic theory, a vast amount of agricultural surplus warrants a vast money supply to meet the vast demand stemming from a vast division of labor. Anything that lowers the amount of agricultural surplus likewise lowers the “warranted money supply,” the amount of money that mirrors real economic production. The pre-existing or “nominal” money supply is thereby inflated, with too much money chasing too few goods.

A corollary of the trophic theory is that, the closer a good is to the trophic base of the economy, the more influential it will be in determining rates of inflation. Agricultural production is at the very base. Close to the base, too, are extracted or harvested resources such as minerals, sawtimber, and fisheries.

Commodity shortages at the trophic base of the economy—most notably shortages of grain crops and fossil fuels—are the most conducive to inflation.

Fossil fuels have a unique trophic niche. Similar to minerals, they are extracted directly from the earth (at the trophic base, in that sense) and, after refining, used just as directly in the production or operation of a vast swathe of economic sectors. A fossil-fuel shortage, then, is roughly as inflationary as an agricultural shortage, and in reality the two are tightly linked in the modern era of fossil-fueled farming.

Consider Putin’s war on Ukraine, for example. Especially in 2022 and 2023, it had a significant impact on Ukrainian grain production in the field. Grain exports were blocked, too, and large quantities of grain were destroyed in port. Ukrainian grain output is important enough that the war decreased the warranted money supply. Putin’s war, the covid pandemic, and aggressive fiscal stimulus coalesced into a perfect storm for inflation.

Putin’s war is still an inflationary strain on the global economy, and now it is accompanied by Trump’s war in Iran. Putin’s war hit grain harvests hard and indirectly impacted oil supplies, too, as European nations had little choice but to boycott Russian oil. Trump’s war hits oil supplies hard and indirectly impacts agriculture, as the shipping blockade in the Strait of Hormuz prevents the free flow of fertilizer.

What Can a President Do?

Citizens across the globe are being hurt by Putin and Trump. The bellicose ways of these autocratic politicians are causing inflation, unprecedented in scope. It’s a global cost-push inflation from the trophic base up; the type of inflation our monetary authorities have little recourse against.

The 2026 scenario of Trump’s war in Iran, Putin’s war in Ukraine, and other resource wars brewing across the globe corroborates what steady staters have long concluded: Peace is a steady state economy. And so is a stable dollar (and ruble and pound and yuan), as limits to growth are reached.

A clear-thinking, conscientious president would call for conservation at this point in history, connecting with hearts and minds in the process. (National Archives & Records Administration)

In response to 2026, a wise president would do what Jimmy Carter did on July 15, 1979. He would exhort Americans to conserve. Lowering the thermostat, shutting the lights off, and generally reducing consumption would go a long way toward mitigating the inflationary, recessionary effects of supply constraints.

And frankly such conservation would be good for the American soul. You couldn’t listen to Carter’s address without hearing that message between the lines. “All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values.”

But Carter was ahead of his time, and the “malaise speech” (as penned by detractors and shoddily adopted by the press) was eventually deemed a political gaffe. I’m not so sure it would be today. It depends a lot on the president’s personality, empathy, and sincerity. Treated like adults, concerned citizens can be woken up to limits to growth. Even AI gets it about limits to growth.

In some ways, Americans are now predisposed to support a steady state economy. They find exorbitant salaries and conspicuous consumption distasteful at best and increasingly unsustainable and unethical. They can connect the dots from greed to exceedingly risky wars.

Unfortunately, if there was ever an anti-Carter, it’s Trump. Carter was clear-minded and conscientious; Trump is confused and conniving. It’s a bad time for confusion because, approaching his 80^th year on Earth, Trump faces a plethora of tough decisions. Many of these heavy choices—like what to do about the Strait of Hormuz—stem from his aggressive meddling in too many affairs.

Trump wants to be crowned King of GDP, but he badly wants a Nobel Peace Prize, too. Given that peace is a steady state economy, he’s not going to get both. It’s looking more and more like he won’t get either.

And the Strait of Hormuz? It may be more than an Achilles heel for the global economy. It may go down as the political Waterloo for Donald Trump.

Brian Czech is CASSE’s Executive Director.

The post The Strait of Hormuz: Trump’s Waterloo? appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

The size of our economy, measured by gross domestic product (GDP), is intimately linked to our use of artificial fertilizer. So is the ecological havoc we are wreaking on the planet and its inhabitants.

Fertilizer production has increased by 520 percent since 1961. (Our World in Data, CC BY 4.0)

Between 2002 and 2018, while the population increased by 22 percent, the per-hectare use of synthetic nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilizers—the three most common types—increased by about 23, 13, and 56 percent, respectively. However, the responsibility for—and benefits of—fertilizer use aren’t evenly distributed. Though estimates vary widely, some claim that industrial agriculture feeds only 30 percent of the population.

If so, we can add fertilizer to the list of ways high-income populations are disproportionately contributing to planetary breakdown. Artificial fertilizer is ecologically problematic out of the gate, as its production depends intimately on fossil fuels.

And as for fertilizer application, it is one of the world’s largest sources of water pollution. What’s more, in the long term, fertilizer degrades the very soil to which it is applied. This traps farmers in a vicious cycle, needing ever more external inputs to maintain high yields.

Agriculture and Fertilizer: Relationship Turned Toxic

Historians have found evidence of organic-fertilizer use from 8,000 years ago. Early farmers likely noticed that crops grew better where animals congregated, ingested, and defecated.

In the 18th century, it became common to use ground-up bones, such as these bison skulls, for fertilizer. (Soerfm, CC BY-SA 3.0)

However, it wasn’t until the 19th century that scientists made the leap from organic to inorganic, or synthetic, fertilizers (hereby referred to simply as fertilizers). Critical to this leap was the development of the Haber-Bosch process in the early 20^th century. This process results in ammonia, the foundation of nitrogen fertilizers and a key ingredient in the most common phosphate fertilizers.

Fertilizer use accelerated in the 1940s. Ammonia, it so happens, is also a key ingredient in explosives. At the outset of World War II, the U.S. government constructed ten plants capable of producing 1.6 million tons of ammonia per year. After the war, priorities shifted from manufacturing munitions to restoring food supplies, and funding flowed to the agricultural sciences.

This funding was a catalyst for the Green Revolution, a 1960s movement that launched a productivity explosion in some parts of the world. High-yielding crop varieties are the poster children of the Green Revolution. However, the revolution would not have been possible without an accompanying boom in fertilizer use.

In recent decades, the ecological price of the agricultural model that spread with the Green Revolution has become painfully evident. Even the social benefits of this model, and their distribution, are hotly contested.

Making Fertilizer: Fossil-Fuel Feedstocks

The trappings of ammonia production. (Tseno Tanev, CC BY-SA 3.0)

When most people think of the ecological impacts of fertilizer, they think of pollution from agricultural runoff. However, fertilizer’s assault on the environment starts at the factory. Like any manufacturing process, fertilizer production requires energy, overwhelmingly provided by fossil fuels. The production of ammonia accounts for about two percent of global energy consumption.

But ammonia production also relies on methane—aka, natural gas—as a feedstock for its chemical processes. The most common production method involves the following: Methane (CH₄) is “reformed” with steam (H₂0), resulting in carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H₂). H₂ is the desirable output, reacting with nitrogen (N₂) to produce ammonia (NH₃).

But what happens with that “co-produced” CO? Water vapor is used to oxidize it, producing carbon dioxide (CO₂). Because of this, greenhouse gas emissions are inherent to the ammonia production process, not just a byproduct of the energy used to power it, replaceable by renewables. In fact, over half the 450 million metric tonnes of CO₂ emissions from ammonia production come from this chemical conversion of methane to hydrogen.

CO₂ emissions aren’t the only ecological issue with fertilizer production. Phosphorus- and potassium-based fertilizers require inputs from mines, which are linked to ecological devastation. But now, let us turn to the arguably more frightening issues associated with fertilizer application.

Using Fertilizer: Polluted Waters and Lands

The agricultural sector is the leading cause of water pollution worldwide, releasing phosphate and nitrogen compounds that wreak havoc on the hydrosphere. In 2014, livestock produced upwards of 5.5 billion tons of manure—37 times more than the sewage that humans produced. Much of that is not actually (or effectively) used as fertilizer, but some of it was counted in the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s estimate that the world consumed 183 million tons of fertilizer in 2020.

Much of the nitrogen in fertilizer doesn’t end up in crops. Instead, it leaks into our waterways, at devastating human and ecological costs. When the nitrate form of nitrogen accumulates in aquifers used for drinking, it can react with food in the body to make cancer-forming compounds.

Nitrogen and phosphate are key fertilizer ingredients because they stimulate plant growth. The wrong kind or too many plants can devastate ecosystems. When fertilizer runoff overloads water bodies—freshwater and marine—with nitrogen and phosphate, it catalyzes a process called eutrophication.

Fish kills are a common consequence of algal blooms caused by eutrophication. (Terry Ross, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Eutrophication can lead to algal blooms that are toxic to people and other organisms. It can also lead to hypoxia, otherwise known as dead zones, as the bacteria that decompose plant matter consume oxygen. Globally, dead zones increased tenfold from the 1950s to the 2000s.

In addition to its near-immediate polluting effects on water, in the long term, fertilizer also degrades the soil to which it is applied. It can deplete organic matter and harden and acidify the soil. Fertilizers can also contaminate soil with metals, endocrine disrupters, antibiotics, trace elements, and pathogens.

As if water and soil degradation weren’t enough, fertilizer application also leads to air pollution. Heavily fertilized fields release ammonia, which combines with other precursors to create particulate matter, the most dangerous form of air pollution. Additionally, soil microbes tend to misbehave when overloaded with nitrogen fertilizer, producing more of the potent greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide. They also consume more carbon and release more CO₂, negating the soil’s vital carbon-sequestration abilities.

Fertilizer and the Growth Economy

Agriculture plays a special role in structuring (and growing) the economy. Fertilizer is a key component of the agricultural sector’s productivity increases. A 1 percent increase in fertilizer use is causally associated with a 4.5 percent increase in agricultural value per worker.

The less labor is needed to extract natural resources, including food, the more is available to turn them into higher-value economic products.

Productivity increases have enabled—or forced—countless people to migrate to other economic sectors. The result has been increases in economic output, aka growth, overall. We can represent this flow of labor, as well as energy and materials, from agricultural and extractive sectors, to heavy manufacturing, to light manufacturing, with a multi-level trophic pyramid.

And as labor moves up the pyramid, human diets require more inputs, including fertilizer, than ever before. In the United States, a third of the nitrogen and half of the phosphorus applied via fertilizer is used for corn and soybeans that feed animals, not humans. Alongside manure and other factors, fertilizer has given animal agriculture a reputation as the number one driver of global water pollution. All told, it is responsible for 43 percent of eutrophication.

It’s no coincidence that livestock production also contributes more than most other agricultural activities to economic growth. It accounts for 40 percent of agricultural GDP.

Subsidies Up the Growth Stakes

Fertilizer subsidies constitute one-tenth of subsidy spending in high-income countries and a whopping one-fourth in low-income countries. And yet the conventional government model for agricultural support—with fertilizer subsidies at its core—is relatively cost-ineffective. Public support for agriculture returns just 35 cents to farmers per dollar of support. This measure may not capture all the food-security benefits of this support, but clearly, governments could do better.

So, why do they stick to the fertilizer-subsidy status quo? According to the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Ruth Hill and Danielle Resnick, it’s because these subsidies have a unique combination of four qualities. They have immediate benefits, boosting short-term yields; they are readily visible, garnering support from voters; they can be selectively distributed according to political priorities; and they are simple to implement.

But the long-term costs of excessive fertilizer subsidies may extend beyond ecological degradation and inefficient use of public resources. Most governments finance their spending—including on fertilizer subsidies—partly via interest-bearing bonds or loans. Governments must pay off this interest with future public revenues. Particularly in low-income countries, this can pressure governments to divert much-needed income gains away from public well-being and toward debt servicing.

In Malawi, where almost half of public agrifood spending goes to input subsidies and public debt exceeds 90 percent of GDP, farmer Grace Malaitcha finds hope in conservation-agriculture practices. (CIMMYT, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

However, the relationship between fertilizer subsidies and international debt is complicated. In an interview for the Herald, Resnick, who specializes in the political economy of agricultural policy in Africa, said, “Prior to the 1980s, you had governments heavily subsidizing inputs [such as fertilizer] for farmers, who were usually very poor. Then, with the structural adjustments of the 1980s, these subsidies were seen as unnecessary expenditure. Many governments had to get rid of them as a condition of IMF or World Bank loans. And then, around the late ‘90s, early 2000s, they started to come back in vogue.”

According to Resnick, fertilizer subsidies generally benefit the poor more than other types of subsidies, such as fuel subsidies, in low-income countries. That said, they also benefit better-off farmers much of the time. However, it’s undeniable that many of the world’s most vulnerable people depend on yields that their land could not provide without fertilizer. Resnick said, “I don’t think we could get rid of fertilizer entirely, given the challenges with soil fertility that naturally exist in parts of the world.”

Suffice it to say, any attempt to reduce fertilizer use should simultaneously mitigate negative consequences for the poor. Resnick pointed to some promising developments, including “debt for climate swaps.” These entail debt forgiveness in exchange for the implementation of climate-friendly policies, which might include cutting back on fertilizer subsidies.

GDP and Fertilizer Use

Clearly, modern economies rely heavily on fertilizer. The question is: Does economic growth systematically drive fertilizer use and/or vice versa? To explore this relationship, we examined data from 173 countries between 1990 and 2023. We combined fertilizer-use data from the USDA Economic Research Service with real-GDP data from the World Bank.

Fertilizer use is from the USDA Economic Research Service, and GDP is from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators.

We find that fertilizer use tends to rise as national economies expand. On average, within a given country, an additional one million dollars of GDP is associated with roughly one extra metric ton of fertilizer use. While the estimate is not statistically precise enough to eliminate uncertainty entirely, the relationship between fertilizer use and GDP remained positive when we ran alternative forms of the analysis model.

In plain terms, economic growth and fertilizer use move together. As the population grows and incomes rise, food demand increases and diets shift toward more fertilizer-intensive foods, particularly animal products.

Importantly, our measure reflects fertilizer applied within national borders. Some countries import much of their food, effectively outsourcing part of their fertilizer footprint. Although the value of imports is subtracted from GDP, the importing country may use that food as an intermediate input in higher-value activities, such as processing and food services. Food imports may also affect GDP indirectly insofar as they facilitate structural shifts toward non-agricultural, higher-value sectors (and more intensive diets).

Even so, the overall pattern suggests that under the current agricultural system, economic expansion remains tied to fertilizer-dependent production. If fertilizer degrades soil, pollutes water, and contributes to climate change, then growth in GDP implies more ecological pressure.

If we don’t reduce our fertilizer use proactively, it may be forced upon us to the detriment of food security. We are seeing a glimpse of this as the U.S.-Israel-Iran war chokes off the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20–30 percent of global fertilizer exports pass.

When asked whether this shock might catalyze a transition away from fertilizer dependence, Resnick said, “I don’t think so. If you look at all the shocks we’ve had recently, whether it’s the Russia-Ukraine war, COVID, or the food-price crisis in 2008, the reaction has often been to maintain or increase subsidies. Even international financial institutions will give low-income countries some breathing space on their debt to enable them to subsidize their farmers through the shock.”

This is a better outcome, of course, than widespread famine, but it begs the question: What will it take to catalyze the transition? If our response to shocks is to double down on fertilizer use, perhaps the key is to seize times of relative stability to implement change.

Organic alternatives to fertilizer are the surface-level solution, but their widespread adoption will only be possible if we intentionally degrow the industrial agriculture behemoth. Reducing fertilizer subsidies is a key first step, as is drastically cutting meat production. Both of these steps will shrink the profits of the fertilizer oligopoly, but, pursued carefully, they have the potential to improve human well-being, especially in the long term.

Alix Underwood is managing editor at CASSE.

Marwa Ebrahem is a master’s student in Applied Economics at The George Washington University and a Research & Insights Intern at CASSE.

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