*No country has met welfare goals in past 30 years "without putting planet at risk."*

* Looking at a sample of 148 nations, research by the University of Leeds found wealthy countries were putting the future of the planet at risk to make minimal gains in human welfare, while poor countries were living within ecological boundaries but underachieving in areas such as life expectancy and access to energy.*

This does not imply that it is impossible to provide everyone with a good life while operating sustainably, only that the path countries have taken does not lead there. Reducing luxuries for the rich, and meat production (though meat is not limited to the rich), would help. A smaller population would help a lot.

Australia's planet roasters plan to reduce emissions using the nonexistent technology of burning biomass and capturing the CO2.

It might not be a bad thing to do, provided it uses waste plant material which requires no cultivation, but should civilization bet its survival on an untried extension of a technology that so far has failed?

FSF Giving Guide

About Portugal's law forbidding employers to contact employees outside work hours.

This is tremendously important for those for whom work is just a job, for whom there is something else more important. And that's most people, I think. But this rule can be devastating for people like me, we who do work that is the center of our life, we for whom "family time" usually means forced-to-wait time, and perhaps alone-and-bored time too.

We need a way we can get out of this rule.

It can't be easy and arbitrary. If it's sufficient for a worker (or contractor) to say, "Please let my employer contact me 24/7," employers will effectively coerce workers into saying that against their preferences.

Perhaps everyone will have to have a free software volunteer project to occupy perself with while cut off from the work project.

A country which has a law requiring small companies to respond somehow within 24 hours — as some real or proposed internet censorship laws do — had better not require them to hire several people for this, just to have someone available at every hour of every day.

About the Congressional panel that investigated the insurrection of 1860.