Sitting at the English pub the Pig & Whistle on Geary Boulevard, beanie-clad and iron-jawed Chad Baron described the inner workings of conservationist economics to a table of college students. He did it because no one in the group really knew what he meant when he said “degrowth,” a semi-complicated

As fires raged in Napa and Sonoma counties, San Franciscans woke up to their cars covered with ash. The color of the sky morphed into an ominous shade of brownish orange.