Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Why did once flourishing societies collapse and disappear? Jared Diamond, a Pulitzer Prize-winning geographer at UCLA, has spent much of his career wrestling with this profound question.
Increases in food production, per hectare of land, have not kept pace with increases in population, and the planet is running out … of arable land. As a result, per-capita cropland has fallen by more than half since 1960, and per-capita production of grains, the basic food, has been falling worldwide for 20 years.
The lesson of “Collapse” is that societies, as often as not, aren’t murdered. They commit suicide: they slit their wrists and then, in the course of many decades, stand by passively and watch themselves bleed to death. (Review of Jared Diamond’s new book.)
Watching Barry Bonds connect for a homer is a thrill. We are in awe of the distance he can propel a baseball, but we know the ball will land. Why? Gravity, of course. Barry Bonds lives on Earth, not outer space. If he were in space his homers would travel practically forever. What goes up doesn’t necessarily come down, in space.
A Peak Oil Nightmare
This country and the world are in for profound change as the petroleum boom winds down. I find
that even specialists in the fields that will be most affected have not seriously considered what that
transition will be like or how they will handle it. This study is an effort to describe the transition and to
explore what lies beyond it.
With the judicious employment of the technologies we have learned – and with a bit of luck – we may be able to create a more harmonious balance with the rest of the biosphere, but only at substantially lower population levels and less consumptive habits.
Paul Ehrlich talks about his new book – One With Nineveh. He reminds us that agriculture began in a fertile land, around Nineveh, in what is now the Middle East, which is now desert.
As part of Planet Under Pressure, a BBC News series looking at some of the biggest environmental problems facing humanity, Alex Kirby explores the challenge of feeding the world without destroying the planet
The Olduvai ‘cliff’ event has been moved closer to the present by four years: namely from 2012 previously to 2008 in the update.
Lateline interview with David Goodstein, professor of physics and author of Out of Gas – the End of the Age of Oil.
Even those Americans who don’t care to — and still don’t have to — peer over the wall already essentially know what’s on the other side. That’s the nature of denial. After all, you can’t deny what you don’t, at heart, know to be so.
