Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Why does so cold and metallic a word as technosphere define our present condition? What control do humans really have over this mega-construct of our own making? For each individual enmeshed, what can and should be our response?
The numbers are in, and it doesn’t look good.
The United States’ recent expanded claims to ocean seabeds signals that the easy stuff has run out or will soon.
Over the past decade, the global mining industry has become intensely focused on reducing risk to continue to qualify for financing and particularly to retain their social license to continue operation. Here, we will look a little more closely at another troubling aspect of how we expect to leave behind the fossil-fuel economy: total material requirements and waste.
Don’t let the robots (robot-minded humans) do this to us. For any proposal, ask: how does this dial back human overshoot, restore ecological health, make more room for the community of life, starve the beastly elements of our society, and set us on a path for actual long-term sustainability.
On 5th January, Chris Skidmore, a Conservative MP and former Secretary of Energy in the Tory government, announced his resignation from Parliament. Why? Because next week that government, led by Rishi Sunak, is going to try and open up the North Sea to a huge new wave of oil and gas drilling.
If it is unusual in the rest of the privileged world to even consider their power usage, maybe Vermonters should start training folks in how to live with an increasingly expensive and feeble grid. HINT: there is more clothing in the winter… probably a good deal of goofy hand-knits.
For families who can’t pay high upfront costs for solar energy, cooperatives offer a solution.
Strengthening the capacity to meet basic needs closer to home will become a preoccupation for many and require a significant investment of time, energy, and resources. Strengthening personal, community, and ecological resilience close to home will only grow in importance.
The continuing trade spat between China and the United States demonstrates the increasing vulnerability of the worldwide trading system to geopolitical disputes.
Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and cement have increased by 1.1% in 2023, hitting a new record high of 36.8bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to the 2023 Global Carbon Budget report by the Global Carbon Project.
As for ExxonMobil and other oil majors, every day they resist investing their obscene profits in truly innovative green energy technology is a day they come closer to future financial ruin. In the meantime, they are, of course, wreaking historically unprecedented harm on the planet, as was all too apparent with the serial climate disasters of 2023, now believed to be the hottest of the last 125,000 years.
