Gov. Jerry Brown [...] laid out a revised game plan for dealing with California’s persistent drought, making some conservation rules permanent while also moving to give communities more of a say in deciding how much water they must save.

Brown issued an executive order enshrining a conservation ethic in state regulations — banning permanently some wasteful water practices and ordering regulators to develop new water-efficiency standards designed to drive down long-term urban use. — latimes.com

We might think that most of the carbon emission come from the industrial sector and livestock, but a new study suggests that the real environmental problem is represented by the things we buy. [...]

“We all like to put the blame on someone else, the government, or businesses ... But between 60–80 per cent of the impacts on the planet come from household consumption. If we change our consumption habits, this would have a drastic effect on our environmental footprint as well”. — nextnature.net

A handful of scientists and policy makers are...grappling with the long-term environmental effect of an economy that runs increasingly on gotta-have-it-now gratification [...]

The environmental cost can include the additional cardboard — 35.4 million tons of containerboard were produced in 2014 in the United States, with e-commerce companies among the fastest-growing users — and the emissions from increasingly personalized freight services. — NY Times

The appetite of western consumers for home furnishings has reached its peak – according to Ikea, the world’s largest furniture retailer.

The Swedish company’s head of sustainability told a Guardian conference that consumption of many familiar goods was at its limit.

“If we look on a global basis, in the west we have probably hit peak stuff. We talk about peak oil. I’d say we’ve hit peak red meat, peak sugar, peak stuff … peak home furnishings,” Steve Howard said [...] — the Guardian

The commercialisation of the urban landscape has resulted in the privatisation of public space. As city centres have become tributes to consumption, private interests have permeated these spaces. They have become awash with pseudo-public consumer spaces which belong to corporations rather than the citizenry. Although these places hold the semblance of being “public”, they are owned by corporate interests and are therefore under private control and not accountable to the public. — New Left Project