Beyond Carbon: A Paradigm Shift for Climate Action
We must enforce, fund, and model policies that recognize the forest not merely as a carbon repository, but as the planet’s irreplaceable air conditioning and freshwater generation system.
Antonio Donato Nobre
Two Ways of Knowing: How Merging Science & Indigenous Wisdom Fuels New Discoveries
In this episode, Nate is joined by Rosa Vásquez Espinoza, a Peruvian chemical biologist with Andean-Amazonian indigenous roots, to discuss how she is actively merging modern science and indigenous knowledge through innovative research in the Amazon Rainforest.
The U.S. Isn’t Leading at COP30 — But It Is Un-damming Its Way to Climate Resilience
Dam removals aren’t a climate cure-all, but the magnitude of the crisis we face will require all the tools we can muster — and master. Several decades of dam removals across the U.S. has proved they work to restore rivers better and faster than anything else. Now let’s put them to use for climate action, too.
Space Case
It’s not news that many in our culture are violently allergic to the notion of limits (and then we all die of limitations). Maybe fear of death is another key driver for space fantasy, but let’s not get into that just now.
Crazy Town: Episode 114. Worried about the Future? Join the Club
There’s the book club, the Rotary Club, the Mickey Mouse Club, and the club sandwich. Whatever your preference, you might want to think about joining a club. Social clubs, fraternal orders, and the like have had a storied and critical role in public life.
11 Discoveries That Changed My Worldview
This episode combines Nate’s own evolution of understanding with the overarching narrative of The Great Simplification, speaking to what it means to be human in a dichotomous era of abundance and depletion, of numbness and awakening.
How New York and Seattle mayoral victories point the way to systemic change
The tasks facing us are monumental, but we can begin with steps we take in our own communities. We must build the future in place.
Can a Family Resurrect the American Chestnut Tree in Appalachia?
Virginia tree farmers reintroduce an iconic tree that was decimated by blight.
Two Birds, One Scone: Collaboration in Rights of Nature and Ecocide Jurisprudence
If we truly seek to create relations of accountability and peace with our larger environment(s), jurisprudence needs to evolve beyond our current anthropocentric lens, and we can make it so by encouraging environmental movements to collaborate in developing ecocentric governance approaches.
Rethinking Supply Chains
Working at smaller scales means that the benefits of additional crop rotations, processing mills and artisan-micro-maker labs could be spread throughout the country, bringing greater resilience and livelihoods to rural areas. Energy demands would be lower and distributed as processing would be localised and require limited transport.
What social movements can learn from the ‘innovator’s dilemma’
If legacy organizations are structurally constrained, then we need to nurture the new actors — ones willing to fail, to iterate and to take risks that can help spark major transformations. For this reason, I believe it is worth looking in more detail at lessons we might apply from the innovator’s dilemma.
Running on Empty: The World’s Adaptation Failure is Fueling Climate Chaos
Without urgent and equitable action to fund adaptation, the next decade will not only test our infrastructure; it will test our humanity. Adaptation is not charity; it is climate justice. And justice delayed will only deepen the loss.
