Climate change is bringing life’s biggest disaster to us, and it’s coming within our lifetimes. I don’t just mean it will be humanity’s biggest disaster. I mean, with the possible exception of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and changed all life on this planet, it will be the biggest disaster since life began… Continue reading Strange Bedfellows
Gas prices are the highest they’ve been in a long time. I hear a lot of complaining about this. And then I think, “If you were an alcoholic complaining about the high price of alcohol, I would tell you that now is the time to quit.” We’ve known about the ruinous effects of fossil fuel… Continue reading Addiction and Withdrawal: Fossil Fuel Edition
Fear and anxiety are widespread human experiences in this modern age. In modern societies where many of the external pressures of subsistence are solved for us, our attention settles on less tangible problems to fret over. We have food and shelter and, for the lucky ones, health care, but now we worry about our careers… Continue reading Fear, Pain and Anxiety
There are billions upon billions of stars, each more spectacular than the last. There are rules to the universe, a predictable and mathematically comprehensible order. As far as we know, we are the only form of life. Human intelligence is the only mechanism we know for observing this universe, witnessing these stars, figuring out the… Continue reading Witnesses
The Overstory by Richard Powers is one of my favorite books. I’m borrowing a metaphor borrowed by the book. Say the planet is a body. The plants and trees and algae are the lungs, breathing for us all the time. The oceans and rivers and all the bodies of water are the circulatory system, keeping… Continue reading Humanity’s Big Fix
