Over the last little while I had to deal with an American cooker who was completely lacking in any understanding of science, let alone any dealing with Covid-191. Not long…
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You see, if somebody robs a store, it's a crime and the state is all set and ready to nab the criminal. But if somebody steals from the commons and from the future, it's seen as an entrepreneurial activity and the state cheers and gives them tax concessions rather than arresting them. We badly need an expanded concept of justice and fairness that takes mortgaging the future into account. [The Real World of Technology, CBC Enterprises, 1990. https://monoskop.org/images/5/58/Franklin_Ursula_The_Real_World_of_Technology_1990.pdf]
Thirty years ago, a different future was available. Gradual climate policies could have slowly steered our economy towards gently declining carbon pollution levels. The costs to most Americans would have been imperceptible. But that future was stolen from us. It was stolen by powerful, carbon-polluting interests who blocked policy reforms at every turn to preserve their short-term profits. They locked each of us into an economy where fossil fuel consumption continues to be a necessity, not a choice.
Dr Larry Marshall has been the CEO of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) since January 2015. He has a PhD in physics and began his career as…
I promise this will be the last examination of the idiocy of Gerard Rennick, at least for a while. The first effort in dealing with his idiocy was stuff that…
Within my own lifetime, the last 50 years, nearly 80% of the CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels, and close to 60 percent of all GHG emissions have been released. There's been a near 70% decline in populations of existing wildlife species; and across the 8 million animal and plant species on earth, the human-induced extinction rate is now estimated at tens to hundreds of times greater than natural rates. Biodiversity Day reminds us that the profound crises we confront are just different sides of the same coin, and that our future is truly in our hands. The planet doesn't need us: we are the ones who rely on it for all the air we breathe, the water we drink, the resources we need. That's why our choices matter more today than ever: the path to a better future lies through these crises.
Back at the end of October 2017, within the first year of starting this blog, I wrote a piece on how climate change deniers were trying to tell people that…
I missed a paper from a couple of years ago; but it is a bit disturbing nonetheless. It deals with the relationship between extinctions and the past heating of the…
We leave our mark everywhere we go, sticking flags on the moon, pouring concrete across the earth, scattering plastics in every crevice, and claiming ownership of land that doesn’t belong to humanity. Our species foolishly believed it could conquer its maker, and as reality hurriedly descends upon us, we’ll learn our place in the animal kingdom. [https://cjanemone.medium.com/our-meaningless-existence-killed-the-planet-but-were-already-dead-7db30bc6a534]
An active online cooker was aghast at a YouTube video (apparently his main source of information; he doesn’t trust the mainstream media). The video was from Michael West who runs…