If FEMA didn’t exist, could states handle the disaster response alone?
As the frequency of natural disasters continues to rise due to climate change, ask yourself: How prepared is your state for a disaster, and could it get by without federal aid?
Hand to mouth in northern Minnesota
Among all of the lessons of eating hand to mouth in the great outdoors, perhaps the greatest is to leave most of what I’ve found behind. I take only what I can eat and what the plant can easily part with. And I leave enough on the tree, in the ground, for the squirrels and blue jays and forest gods.
Eating oil
Increasing energy prices will also realign the balance between the urban and the rural to some degree and will most certainly pose a big challenge to megacities of thirty million people in areas without food production.
The Wild Chatbot
The only way to live in the world right now without touching AI is to rid yourself of all connection to the internet, and I don’t know how I would go about that, nor that I would want to. Given these conditions, it lifts my heart a little to see that there are those willing to try for a trickster move, a way to turn the machines against all of our expectations.
Root cellars vs. money
We are able to see why a root cellar is necessary. We are able to reimagine our path through life so that we are on the sustainable root cellar way, not the way of void following implosion.
How we make progress now: Parts 1 and 2
As all us fans of sports cliches know, the best defense is a good offense. Time to start setting the fossil fuel industry back on its heels a bit!
Water is the other US-Mexico border crisis, and the supply crunch is getting worse
Immigration and border security will be the likely focus of U.S.-Mexico relations under the new Trump administration. But there also is a growing water crisis along the U.S.–Mexico border that affects tens of millions of people on both sides, and it can only be managed if the two governments work together.
Escaping the Trap of ‘Realism’ and ‘Utopianism’: Towards Programmatic Synthesis
Organizing our communities horizontally and managing to draft collectively our own programmatic agendas helps us break the supposed juxtaposition between political visions of a better society and what is politically feasible in the meantime.
The Fix Our Forests Act: It’s Not What It Claims to Be
It comes in a box with a picture of a fire extinguisher on the front. Below it the words: Guaranteed to stop wildfires. But when you open it up there’s a chainsaw inside. Tucked beside it is a piece a piece of paper saying “Now without citizen overview!”
Why Musk’s access to U. S. Treasury payment systems risks a global financial meltdown
Giving Elon Musk and his callow team of computer coders access to the U.S. Treasury payments system is very, very dangerous.
Saguaro Struggles: A Desert Icon Feels the Heat
The Sonoran Desert is no stranger to heat, but as climate change makes heatwaves more frequent, intense, and long-lasting, the resilience of this desert’s most beloved plant is being tested.
Juice: Review
A major new entry to the Oz-pocalypse sub-genre was recently published, which may be one of the most profound works of cli-fi seen to date. This is the novel Juice (Tim Winton, Picador, 2024), which paints a vivid future history of a climate change-ravaged Australia, and wider world.
