Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Eric Holthaus The declining health of trees globally is starting to have profound effects on Earth’s carbon cycle. The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide has been picking up speed over the past few years, even though human CO2 emissions have flattened. The net effect: Climate change is starting to accelerate.
Everywhere on Earth there are problems with the buildup of pollution, runoff of topsoils, bleaching of coral reefs, and thinning out of forests. What I propose in this article is that we use the well-known fact that universities have been located in cities as a “platform solution” for creating bioregional-scale learning ecosystems.
I actually grow and produce food. I like to lead by example, and I have found that while there are more conversations about food and food systems, those conversations often lack the voices of real farmers who are typically more comfortable working in the field than attending food conferences and posting on social media.
Anyway, this is all vaguely relevant to my present theme, which is some thoughts on Vaclav Smil’s Energy and Civilization: A History (MIT Press, 2017). It’s hard to keep up with Smil’s output, since he seems to produce about three books every year, but I find him an interesting writer.
Richard Heinberg talks about local options for getting off fossil fuels on this episode of the Simpler Living Podcast.
In recognition of the unique challenges and opportunities women-identified activists face in training for and leading movements for social change, along with research that suggests that the inclusion of women in nonviolent movements is critical for building more peaceful societies, we launched the Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative Summer Institute to elevate and amplify the work that women activists are doing to catalyze social change.
In the end, Italians seem to have reasoned that their political system is so deeply corrupt to be unrecoverable, at least in terms of the traditional political forces (e.g. the left). So, they rewarded a force claiming to be composed of honest citizens – in a way amateurs rather than professional politicians.
Over the last decade, it’s become safer to drive and more dangerous to walk. That’s the conclusion of a new report on pedestrian safety released earlier this week, which documents that from 2007 to 2016, “The number of pedestrian fatalities increased 27 percent … while at the same time, all other traffic deaths decreased by 14 percent.”
As energy transition proceeds we’ll need to move well beyond decarbonizing electricity generation and into transportation and space heating powered by renewables.
“Black people need to return to being growers, builders, and producers, so when we’re consuming, we’re also feeding one another, and we’re feeding our liberation,”
Because Positive Money are so selective in both their characterisation of the springs of capitalist accumulation and in their analysis of the impact of economic activity on the ecosystem, they end up proposing a scheme that at best will have little positive impact and could actually make matters worse.
While I’m not prepared to make a prediction about Trump’s fate (there are just too many variables and unknowns), I have come to an unpleasant conclusion: While Trump will certainly be gone at some point — whether next month or years from now — we’re never going to return to the pre-Trump status quo.
