Society

Review: The Book of Rain by Thomas Wharton

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The story takes place in a near-future version of western Canada and centers on a fictional town called River Meadows, which once served as an epicenter for the extraction and production of a fossil fuel-like substance called ghost ore. This ore is vastly more energy-dense than any previously known energy source, and its environmental impacts are equally unprecedented. When emitted into the environment, it unleashes disruptive temporal anomalies known as “decoherences,” which severely warp people’s perception of reality.

Putting science in its place

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Think of science as a powerful tool, like maybe a power saw. It can really take things apart. But it’s not always the right tool. Maybe it seldom is, in fact. We also don’t want to put it in the hands of children, or use it without first thinking carefully about the consequences and if there might in fact be more productive paths.

A slow-motion Gaza or how to carbonize Planet Earth

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Amid the daily headlines about the nightmare in Gaza and the earlier ones about the war in Ukraine, that other war, the potentially ultimate one that humanity is waging on the planet itself (with the slow-motion equivalent of nuclear weapons — the burning of fossil fuels), is getting all too little attention. And yet it should be considered the equivalent, even if in slow-motion, of World War III.

ChatGPT says AI can help the planet. Experts disagree

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We are an environmental humanities researcher and an AI scholar. When we asked ChatGPT if AI systems can help address the environmental crisis, the response unsurprisingly was optimistic. We had reasons not to trust it. Chatbots are not designed for veracity, but for guessing what the answer to a prompt would be based on content that has been previously written by others (humans and machines). The answers tend to favor the most popular, not necessarily the most critical, content.

So We and Our Children May Live: Following Jesus in Confronting the Climate Crisis (excerpt)

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A Mennonite book on the coming crisis: “We are fighting to dismantle structures designed to remove Indigenous Peoples from their land so that our economic system can continue to extract and consume resources at an ever-increasing pace. This growth-based system, designed to generate wealth and profits for individuals, is threatening the survival of all life on this planet. Climate change, I have realized, is only one symptom of the real threat, which is ecological overshoot. “

Holding the Fire: Episode 8. Navigating Multiple Crises with Alson Kelen

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In this podcast we’ve heard several people speak of the grave crisis facing humanity today, but from the perspective of how Indigenous communities have been living in these crises for hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of years. Yet, despite facing the most challenging forces of colonialism, they are still here, still persisting with resilient cultures. Alson Kelen, a native of Bikini Atoll, is one of the world’s few masters in the ancient art of wave-piloting. 

Self-extinction: Male fertility, pesticides and the end of the human project

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It is a common meme these days that humans are busy bringing about their own extinction. This is usually imagined to take the form of mass death resulting from the effects of climate change including food shortages, and/or from the rapid decline in the availability of fossil fuels, and/or from a worldwide pandemic … But what if our path to extinction is really taking the form of damage to human fertility?

Put on a happy face – Unmasking the toxic positivity of climate gaslighting

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Just Stop Oil plays a vital role: giving voice to suppressed emotions that government, business, and mainstream media refuse to reckon with. Their tactics are disruptive not just because they make people late for work, but also because they shine light on the elephant in the room: collapsing ecosystems, confused political systems, and the collective trauma of living through the breakdown of the world as we know it.

Human Nature Odyssey: Episode 7. After ‘Ishmael’ by Daniel Quinn

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In this climactic culmination of the Ishmael series, we ask the question: How do we transform an entire society? We’ll meet the fantastical Prince who first concocted the criminal justice system, have a final reckoning with our Taker Mythology hat, and return to the abandoned land of Ashbourne.