Negative stories:

• According to Water Resources Research, “we have entered an era in which multiple simultaneous stresses will drive water management“. California has instituted mandatory urban water use restrictions. The drought is also starting to bite in Oregon. Meanwhile, drought in the Colorado basin has been going on much longer and threatens a number of major U.S. cities like Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas, and San Diego.
• A group of well-known economists is concerned that the entire world has entered a period of persistently low economic growth, or “secular stagnation“.
• Germany and Russia are rattling sabers at each other once again. A U.S. politician has publicly advocated a nuclear first strike on Iran.
• Slate talks about El Nino, a “blob” of warmth in the Pacific ocean, and climate change.

Positive stories:

• Mr. Money Mustache brought us a nice post on home energy efficiency projects. This was a very popular post.
• Biotechnology may soon bring us the tools to seriously monkey with photosynthesis. (This is one of those stories where I struggle between the positive and negative columns, but clearly there is a potential upside when we will have so many mouths to feed.)
• Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, is retiring. That might sound bad, but his ground-breaking ideas are continuing on and actually seem to be going mainstream.
• Lee Kuan Yew, who took Singapore “from third world to first” in one generation, passed away (in March, but I wrote about it in April. Let me be clear – I am an admirer and it is his life I am putting in the positive column, not his death.)
• Donella Meadows explained how your bathtub is a dynamic system.
• Robert Gordon offers a clear policy prescription for the U.S. to support continued economic growth.
• I explain how a cap-and-trade program for stormwater and pollution producing pavement could work.
• Joel Mokyr talks about advances in information technology, materials science and biotechnology.
• Some U.S. cities are fairly serious about planting trees.
• Edmonton has set a target of zero solid waste.
• Saving water also saves energy. It’s highly logical, but if you are the skeptical type then here are some numbers. Also, urban agriculture reduces carbon emissions.
• Peter Thiel thinks we can live forever. (positive, but do see my earlier comment about mouths to feed…)
• A paper in Ecological Economics tries to unify the ecological footprint and planetary boundary concepts.
• Philadelphia finally has bike share.