Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Once again, wild horses chase each other. Taurus cattle, stand-ins for aurochs, rip up the dirt with their horns. Soon, with luck, lynx will haunt the forests and flocks of vultures will circle. We can’t return to the past, but we can rewild.
Yes, you can grow a lot of tomatoes in a relatively small space inside these plastic hot-houses, but did any of the Icarus-minded engineers and plastic-film aficionados ever stop to ask some simple questions? What are the long-term prospects for this practice? And what will eventually happen to all that plastic?
Our ancient pine forests in Sherani, once crowned as green gold and blanketing rugged mountains, now crumble to ashes due to persistent wildfires.
The wider point here is that we’ve now reached a point where climate change has become a fact of life. One of the problems with this is that people in different silos are used to thinking of their climate change problems as being different from other people’s, rather than connected.
To undermine the Endangerment Finding is a breach of government responsibility, one that will not lead to an improved future for even special interests like energy producers and car companies.
Among a long list of lessons, Katrina taught us that climate migration is not a distant possibility, it’s already here. We were among the first in recent history to be displaced by a storm of its magnitude, but we absolutely will not be the last.
In this episode, Nate is joined by environmental and migration historian, Sunil Amrith, to explore the complex history of human movement – and what it reveals about the looming wave of climate-driven migration.
On this episode, Nate is joined by environmental journalist, Oliver Milman, to discuss the alarming decline in insect populations in the past few decades and the far-reaching consequences this has for ecosystem stability, human well-being, and the overall health of the biosphere.
Some of the littlest organisms in the ocean wield incredible influence, both on their ecosystems and on the planet. Like plants do on land, phytoplankton absorb sunlight and carbon dioxide and expel oxygen.
In this week’s Frankly, Nate unpacks some key blindspots of “the walrus movement”—a placeholder label that’s a gentle nod to those championing bold social and ecological ideals. While mostly well-intentioned, this “movement” can miss the stark limits of our planet’s unfolding biophysical reality.
Namibian conservation experts maintain that the key to wildlife survival is to cement their economic value in policies: if the people in the areas they roam can benefit from wildlife, they will stand a better chance in a more inhospitable future.
My thesis here is that democracy in America, the democracy practiced every day, is a major cause of the climate crisis and to address that crisis we need a transformation in American democracy. Democratic political action must be the spearhead of the attack on climate destruction and its biological impoverishment, and for that America needs a climate-capable democracy.
