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Posts Tagged ‘climate change’

Long-term civilizational prognosis: a hypothesis

Posted in SpiritMatter, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 14, 2019 | 3 Comments »

Here’s a hypothesis: If the human community exists in some more or less unified form in 880 years (in the year 3000 by our calendar), that feat will have been accomplished, at least in part, in and through the emergence of an ecological religion. What does this mean, and how could we test it? Religion, […]

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Climate Action Week: What to watch for

Posted in EcoCulture, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 16, 2019 | 3 Comments »

As people around the world prepare for Global Climate Strike Week (Sept. 20-27) and for the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City on Sept. 23, here are some thoughts and sources to help us think about what’s at stake, what’s possible, and what we can do. This blog may be updated as needed, […]

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So, here we are…

Posted in AnthropoScene, SpiritMatter, tagged , , , , , , on September 8, 2019 | Leave a Comment »

Wow, what a reaction the article described here has gotten… This version includes a follow-up comment below. Jonathan Franzen’s “What If We Stopped Pretending?” articulates an important point about hope and hopelessness in the face of climate change. Franzen suggests that an “all-out war on climate change” no longer makes sense because the scenario for […]

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Vermonters & climate change

Posted in Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 30, 2018 | 3 Comments »

I was interviewed yesterday by the local CBS-affiliated WCAX news show on the topic of how to motivate Vermonters to take action on climate change (while Bernie Sanders and Cornel West were speaking just up the road). What was used of our interview was fairly minimal, so I thought I would share the notes I […]

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Denial, incompetence, & depravity

Posted in Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 28, 2018 | 3 Comments »

For many, President Trump’s babbling and incoherent responses to last week’s National Climate Assessment (“I’m too smart to believe it, just look at our air and water and what those other countries are doing…”), following on from his even less coherent responses to California’s wildfire tragedies (“They should rake more, like the Finns”), merely reconfirm that […]

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Heads in the sands

Posted in Politics, tagged , , , , , on November 25, 2018 | 1 Comment »

It’s not surprising that the Trump administration would wish to bury the nearly 1700-page Fourth National Climate Asessment, Volume 2: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States, a report written by over 300 scientists representing 13 federal agencies, by having it released on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when most Americans are too […]

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Latour’s terrestrial project

Posted in GeoPhilosophy, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 28, 2018 | 2 Comments »

Review of Bruno Latour, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2018. Down to Earth is in significant part a restatement of Bruno Latour’s theorizing over the last few decades, made more incisive in the light of Trumpism (and other illiberal populisms) and brought to bear specifically on the moment of […]

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Skipping an Earthbeat

Posted in AnthropoScene, GeoPhilosophy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 15, 2018 | 4 Comments »

Reading Bill McGuire‘s 2012 book Waking the Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Volcanoes, I came across this description of the annual “pulse” called an “Earthbeat,” which is supposedly responsible for Earth’s preference for volcanic eruptions between November and April (also known as “volcano season”): rather like a beating heart, the Earth changes […]

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Rant for the day

Posted in AnthropoScene, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2017 | 6 Comments »

Let’s face facts: Life in such cold climates as the one I live in (it was 8°F/-14°C here this morning) would hardly be possible, for us in such numbers as we are, without fossil fuels. The harnessing of fossil fuel energy has enabled tremendous innovation — innovation that, if managed well, could help us get […]

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This IS nature, guys…

Posted in EcoCulture, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 16, 2017 | 21 Comments »

There is an irony in The Nature Conservancy’s headline heralding a “new study” that “finds nature is vital to beating climate change.” The sub-title adds that “Nature could cost-effectively deliver over a third of greenhouse gas emissions reductions required to prevent dangerous levels of global warming.” For one thing, what is the “nature” that would […]

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Trump vs. the world

Posted in Politics, tagged , , , , on June 2, 2017 | 2 Comments »

Trump’s speech on his decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord included so many questionable statements, it’s hard to know where to start. Fortunately, others have. Among the better fact-checks are the Washington Post’s (this one and this one), FactCheck.org’s, NPR’s, PolitiFact’s, and the Huffington Post’s. Foreign Policy’s summary (which comes from a partisan source, but […]

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Mapping climate change solutions

Posted in EcoCulture, tagged , , , on May 12, 2017 | 3 Comments »

In the parallel universe where good news remains possible… A team or 70 researchers from 22 countries and led by Paul Hawken has produced a very interesting analysis of potential climate change solutions. The analysis, released last month as a book called Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, “maps, measures, models, and describes the […]

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