Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Whatever else AI may do, its data centers will consume vast amounts of energy and keep driving fossil-fuel emissions for years to come, lending us humans a distinct helping hand in overheating this planet
The Trump administration’s “restructuring” plans for the Forest Service will torpedo federal capacity to manage national forests, close regional offices, and shutter more than half of its research labs.
Donald Trump’s America is undoubtedly going to give imperial decline new meaning, while just one major power seems to be on top (so to speak) of the situation in any way whatsoever. And that power is, of course, China.
To implement an export ban, the president would have to declare an emergency. It’s not hard to see how Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz would be seen as an emergency.
Slower growth — and ultimately zero growth — is good for people and the planet, but not for those in power, who for millennia relied on women’s reproductive labor to produce more workers, consumers, and taxpayers. Today’s Trump-era and even progressive pronatalist policies try to reverse the trend, but there’s a reason why they won’t work.
Elon Musk becoming the planet’s first trillionaire should alarm anyone worried about democracy. At that level of wealth, you’re no longer just buying another mansion or private jet; the dangerous power of concentrated wealth is to distort markets, politics, and society.
War has become a fever that world leaders cannot seem to break. As militarism spreads, its costs extend far beyond the battlefield, accelerating climate change while consuming the resources needed to confront it.
As concern over falling birth rates spreads across the political spectrum, pronatalist ideas are finding new audiences. But protecting reproductive freedom and respecting planetary limits require rejecting the politics of population growth.
While the U.S. celebrates its 250th anniversary, political attention is drifting away from climate change just as warming accelerates and Earth’s life-support systems approach collapse. From disappearing federal climate data to record-breaking heat, denial is giving way to something more dangerous: collective delusion.
As governments push costly pronatalist schemes to boost birthrates, the real solution, argues Nandita Bajaj, is to embrace declining fertility, expand women’s reproductive agency, and redesign economies for equity and ecological survival.
A buried report on the costliest wildfire season in history raises a larger question: why does political theatre command so much more attention than the escalating climate crisis reshaping our future?
Carrying about 20% of the world’s traded oil and gas, the Strait of Hormuz is a critical global chokepoint. Even if it remains open, restoring full energy and material flows will take time, with ongoing consequences to global supply systems.
