By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
The dense worldwide transportation network constructed by humans is now powering so-called variants (mutations) of COVID-19 across the world from their countries of origin. The British variant (called B.1.1.7), the Brazilian variant (called P.1) and the South African variant (called B.1.351) are all racing across the globe.
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
We pandemic-weary humans are ready to be done with COVID-19. But apparently, it is not done with us
By Richard Heinberg, Resilience.org
Adaptation will require leadership and social cohesion. Instead, America may be lurching toward further political division and violence.
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
Unfortunately for the minks and the mink industry, the Danish government has now pledged to kill every mink in Denmark is order to eradicate a mutant strain of COVID-19 carried by mink that is transmissible to humans.
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
Underneath all the disorder we see in our pandemic-plagued economic, social and political lives is the crumbling of key assumptions about what we call modernity, a period of "enlightenment" that has supposedly freed us from the past.
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
Many big-city dwellers appear to be seeking refuge in less crowded towns and rural landscapes. The wealthy, at least, are seeking "bugout" homes away from major cities as places to ride out the pandemic, the economic downturn and the civil unrest that are gripping the world.
By Stan Cox, Resilience.org
The severe heat is driving almost all social gatherings and group activities into enclosed, air-conditioned spaces. Getting together these days in the cool indoor world can dramatically raise the risk of coronavirus infection.
By Bart Anderson, Resilence.org
Coronavirus has prompted millions of people to get back on their bicycles. We need to get out and exercise, have fun with our families, avoid the risks of mass transit. It's the biggest boom in bicycles since the 1970s. Sales are skyrocketing, cities are painting bicycle lanes, car traffic is down. Will it last? (First in a series)
By Richard Heinberg, Resilience.org
Back in March, I wrote that the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic would likely shape its economic, political, and geopolitical fortunes for years or decades to come. Four months later, it’s time for a check-in. How’s that pandemic response going? ... Keep an eye on that snow-covered mountainside.
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
As long as we think of COVID-19 as simply an implacable foe that must be vanquished, it is unlikely that we will learn to live with it or to deal effectively with the next pandemic.
By David Bollier, David Bollier blog
It has been an awful and amazing two weeks – a time of reckoning that is long overdue, a time of coming together that, despite the tragic circumstances, has been enlivening. What is so remarkable is that the Black Lives Matter protests have been nested within a larger, unprecedented trauma, the pandemic.
By Alice Friedemann, energyskeptic.com
With global demand having fallen by about 29 million barrels per day from a year ago, it seems like this pandemic might delay peak oil production while the pandemic and consequent depression lasts, since so much less oil is being consumed.