Richard Heinberg

Daniel Aldrich is a leading expert on how social ties shape disaster recovery, his perspective shaped by his family’s flight from Katrina and his work at USAID. In this interview, he explains why social capital is vital to strengthening communities in the face of crises.

A recent study published in Nature Sustainability concluded that New Orleans residents should plan now to move away from the city. For the hundreds of thousands who live in New Orleans, and the millions of others who love the Crescent City, this is an incredibly sad conclusion. And it’s a conclusion that many other cities rich in culture and history around the world will face as sea levels rise.

Small modular reactors (SMRs) are being promoted as cheaper, safer, and faster to build than older nuclear plants, winning support from some environmentalists and a more pro‑nuclear public. Amid an energy crisis and soaring AI‑driven electricity demand, SMRs seem promising, but many critics, rightly, still see them as a dangerous dead end.

We must develop a realistic plan for energy descent, rather than clinging to naive fantasies of endless consumer abundance powered by alternatives to fossil fuels.

For the past couple of decades, we at Post Carbon Institute have been pointing out that a transition to alternative energy sources will necessarily be slow and incomplete. Given that oil is a depleting, polluting, non-renewable resource, industrial society is due for a reckoning. We are all in an extended Wile E. Coyote moment.

Why do people cling to falsehoods, even in the face of evidence? Both truth and lies serve social purposes, but holding onto reason becomes essential as we face climate change and rising Trumpism.