Marian L. Tupy

Marian L. Tupy is the co-author of Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet

Sunday

Marian L. Tupy

Abundance doesn’t end

From our UK edition

Speaking to his ministers at the Élysée Palace last Thursday, the très sérieux Emmanuel Macron called for unity and sacrifice as he announced the end of the age of abundance because of a parade of horrors, including global warming, war in Ukraine and the ongoing supply problems. ‘What we are currently living through is a kind of major tipping point or a great upheaval,’ said Macron. ‘We are living through the end of what could have seemed an era of abundance…the end of the abundance of products, of technologies that seemed always available…the end of the abundance of land and materials including water.’ What is abundance, though?

Thursday

Marian L. Tupy

Americans are unable to resist the siren call of Clinton and Trump

From our UK edition

Imagine, if you will, two epileptics trying to share a bowl of noodles and you will get a sense of how messy and unappetising the contest between Donald Trump, a Mussolini wannabe, and Hillary Clinton, a Nixon in a pantsuit, is going to be. (Actually, let me preemptively engage in America's favourite pastime and apologise to both epileptics and noodles. Doubtless, both would make more congenial dinner companions.) How on earth did we get here? To start with, Trump and Clinton are not the beginning, but the continuation of the deterioration of American politics. That is not an uncommon development in mature, dare I say 'sclerotic', democracies. The Roman Republic gave way to the Principate of Augustus.

Saturday

Marian L. Tupy

Mugabe is the Mobutu of our time

From our UK edition

‘Nice shoes,’ said a young Zimbabwean looking wistfully at my $40 Nike tennis shoes that I wore when I encountered him sitting on the floor of a completely barren Bata shoe store in the town of Victoria Falls. It was last November and I was in Zimbabwe having crossed the border from Botswana earlier that day. The once charming town that used to teem with travellers from around the globe was more derelict and much emptier than I remembered it from my visit in the early 1990s. About half of the shops were either empty or closed altogether. The main shopping centre looked more like a warehouse and offered a few strategically placed products in an attempt to mask the widespread shortages of consumer goods.