What’s So Green About Burning Trees? The False Promise of Biomass Energy
Burning wood pellets (burning trees) for heat and electricity harms people, biodiversity, and ecosystems.
5 Reasons for Environmentalists to Stop Blaming “Doom & Gloom” Narratives
The world is not black or white. It is an infinite tapestry of overlapping hues, and we need dissenting voices that don’t just sing the white-washed way.
7 Meta Questions About Our Global Metabolism
Based on this week’s podcast episode with Geoffrey West, which covered how biological scaling applies to human economies, this week’s Frankly is a reflection on what this might mean for the future of our societies.
“Wider” Education and Communiversities
A form of education that makes community the substance and goal of education, the communiversity entails a shift in mindset, ethos, and purpose.
How to Escape From the Iron Age?
We may not be able to escape the Iron Age, but we have an option to escape the catch-22 that inextricably links steel production with fossil fuels
How the Energy Transition is Like Farting under the Covers
During one week (Monday to Friday) the news ranged from the growing e-waste crisis, to oil companies’ long-term plans to drill, to green bonds for nuclear power. None of it makes sense, except in a culture that puts consumerism and growth ahead of everything else.
On the Radical Possibilities of Carbon Sequestration
This closed-loop approach to carbon sequestration would yield a world with both a safe climate and “communal low-tech luxury,” as Max Ajl calls it in his excellent book, A People’s Green New Deal. It is not just a vision for climate stability and justice but also beauty and comfort.
How to Build a Climate Bomb
What’s really needed to reduce climate risk is a coordinated effort to greatly shrink humanity’s overall energy usage and material consumption, along with massive investments in nature-based carbon removal.
Geoffrey West: “Metabolism and the Hidden Laws of Biology”
On this episode, physicist Geoffrey West joins Nate to discuss his decades of work on metabolic scaling laws found in nature and how they apply to humans and our economies.
The art of craft in a digital world
As we continue to wrestle with what it is to be human as manifest in what we produce, one can hope a middle path will emerge, not only in fine art and craft but also in the everyday of a digitized world.
The short-circuiting of societal feedback mechanisms
Virtually all human and natural systems require feedback to operate properly. Modern global society has been manipulated to prevent effective feedback that could allow us to address the critical environmental problems we face.
Republican Politics of the Absurd and the Climate Debate
I know I’m hardly alone in thinking that the wheels of American democracy feel like they’re coming off the cart. How will we ever solve pressing problems when the debates are so disingenuous?
