Why community matters when preparing for the Great Unraveling
If we want to fail more beautifully, to make our predicament less ugly, we need to learn what it means to face it together.
Overshoot
Climate communication is irrationally hopeful. We need to tell the truth about the Great Unraveling
Where’s the urgency in climate discussions? Scholars Theresa Leisgang and Gerriet Schwen examined why climate warnings fail to spur change and how they might better motivate us to act in the face of collapse.
Iran is running out of water. The problem goes far beyond policy failure
From collapsing rivers to groundwater depletion, Iran’s water crisis is often framed as a failure of governance or infrastructure. But it reflects a broader reality: water stress is emerging wherever human demand pushes beyond ecological limits.
The most appropriate response to falling birthrates? Embrace them
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.
Nandita Bajaj: Confronting patriarchy, pronatalism, and population denial
Nandita Bajaj, executive director of Population Balance, defies stereotypes. She chose not to have children and has dedicated her life to research and advocacy on how pronatalism, overpopulation, and human supremacy fuel social inequality and ecological overshoot, and to confronting tough questions about humanity’s outsized footprint on Earth.
The current state of ‘carbon dioxide removal’ around the world
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies will need to be deployed at rates even faster than those seen for solar power, if the world is to have a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C by 2100, says a new report.
Life without oil: The Strait of Hormuz crisis is a warning for global systems under strain
The Strait of Hormuz crisis is disrupting supply chains just as previously suppressed government reports warn that ecological breakdown and resource depletion are converging into systemic collapse. This may be a preview of what lies ahead if we don’t confront this reality.
In conversation: Dave Murphy and Tom Murphy – What if the energy transition is not enough?
In the concluding installment of this discussion series, Tom Murphy and Dave Murphy wrestle with whether a just energy transition can truly be sustainable, or whether modernity itself is a dead end on a finite planet.
In conversation: Dave Murphy and Tom Murphy – Can modernity become sustainable? Cont’d
In this installment of an ongoing series, Tom and Dave Murphy explore what “sustainable” truly means and whether any disruption to natural ecosystems or energy flows by humanity is inherently unsustainable.
In conversation: Dave Murphy and Tom Murphy – if modernity can’t last forever, what comes next?
If modernity cannot endure within planetary limits, what comes next? Dave Murphy and Tom Murphy debate the likelihood of collapse, the possibility of adaptation and what we owe each other in a time of ecological overshoot.
In conversation: Dave Murphy and Tom Murphy – can modernity survive planetary limits?
In a wide-ranging exchange, physicist Tom Murphy and energy scholar Dave Murphy explore the tension between optimism and planetary limits, debating whether modernity can endure or must give way to something entirely new.
Bill Rees: A childhood moment on a Canadian farm led to ecological footprint analysis
A childhood moment on a Canadian farm shaped Bill Rees’s understanding of ecological limits, leading to the development of ecological footprint analysis and decades of warnings about global overshoot.
