Frontier Group

The world is experiencing urbanization on a scale never before seen in human history. Since 1950, the share of the global population living in cities has more than doubled, and the United Nations predicts that by 2050, at least two thirds of all humans on the planet will be based in urban areas.

Many pet owners have spent more time than they would like to admit standing in pet store aisles, scrolling through online reviews trying to figure out whether they are feeding their pets the right food. Every bag seems to be deliberately designed to make us question our choices. Indoor formula, sensitive stomach formula, healthy skin formula, wild salmon that seems to have lived a perfect life… the list of options is endless.

I love shopping. I grew up going to the mall to hang out with friends and spent a lot of my free time scrolling through shopping sites. That began to change when I became an environmentalist. Protecting nature became a big part of my identity, and it was important to me to live according to my values. So I started to change some of my shopping habits. I bought reusable produce bags, reusable cotton pads and reusable cotton dryer balls. I even put a fast-fashion ban on my shopping habits.

A landfill containing products that were once purchased, then thrown away. Are we Americans “born to shop”? Or is the rapid flow of consumer goods from the big box store to our homes to the dump not actually making us happy … and trashing the planet in the process? Frontier Group writers and researchers have explored overconsumption and its impacts on both the environment and our society, while highlighting steps we can take to live fulfilling lives with less stuff.

I recently had the opportunity to study in Madrid, and noticed that while walking around Puerta del Sol or Plaza Mayor in the center of Madrid, I heard the voices of people coming out of bars, shouts of children in schoolyards, and the sound of shutters being opened and closed. One thing I didn’t hear as much of as I do in other cities: Loud, fossil fuel-powered cars.

An Amazon fulfillment center in Maryland. Beginning with an essay in the Atlantic magazine and later in a best-selling book, authors Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein argued that combining the power of unrestrained technological development with an activist government could unleash a new era of overwhelming material prosperity. Since then, a so-called “Abundance movement” has worked to dismantle rules and regulations believed to be standing in the way of that vision.

“Where are America’s formal or de facto energy policies leading us? Where might we choose to go instead?” So began one of the most radical and influential energy policy papers in recent history: Amory Lovins’s “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?,” published in Foreign Affairs magazine in October 1976 – 50 years ago this fall.

Our digital lives have real-world impacts. Amidst the AI data center boom and concerns about its environmental impact, another digital industry with massive environmental costs has started to slip under the radar: cryptocurrency mining. Crypto mines can share many of the same characteristics as data centers – a large industrial facility with servers and cooling equipment. The big difference is what type of computing goes on at a crypto mine.

Approximately 110,000 acres in the Umpqua National Forest (pictured here) are currently protected from road construction and timber harvesting by the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. More than 58 million acres of national forests in 38 states and Puerto Rico are protected as roadless areas – landscapes free from road-building and commercial logging. The prohibition on roads also protects these areas from oil drilling and other forms of development.

For most people, state parks are places to hike, camp, fish, or otherwise unwind in the great outdoors. Millions of us every year visit them to do just that. But these much-loved places aren’t just about recreation. By protecting vast areas of natural land from human-caused damage, state parks are delivering environmental benefits that extend far beyond their boundaries.