Imagining the Final Generation
What would you do if you knew that humanity was soon going to cease to exist? Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel On the Beach, twice adapted into…
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The “I Am NOT an Animal!” Symposium
It's the big question – perhaps the only one that truly matters right now: "Why is it that, despite the continuing work of animal protection, conservation and ecological groups,…
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Is the Stock Market a Global Ponzi Scheme?
Well, everything seems to be back to normal on Wall Street after a rocky start to the week. So what happened? Are we OK? We’re certainly back to “normal” if your…
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The End of Capitalism?
On December 25th, 1991, the hammer and sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin, and the Soviet Union came to an end. The communist system that had controlled much of the world…
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Half the World’s Wildlife Destroyed in the Last 40 Years
In a sane world, it would be headline news. Everything else would immediately come to a screeching halt to make way for a massive, worldwide attempt to turn things around. (Of…
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Collapse of Antarctic Ice Sheet Irreversible
One of the six major glaciers being eroded from below by warm water What does it mean when two major studies this week tell us that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is…
Mass Extinction and the Confederate Flag
An Emerging Consciousness
Authentic Spirituality in the Coming Storm
Global Warming As Sung by a Violin
New Bird Flu Virus: H7N7
Scientists studying the H7N9 bird flu virus say they’ve discovered a new strain of bird flu lurking in the chickens at the poultry markets of China.…
Advanced-Stage Humanitis
What a month! And August is not even over. On top of the dozens of raging forest fires, flooded cities and other daily disasters, here’s some…
Global Warming As Sung by a Violin
A climate change “violin sonata” Last week, I posted the video of Daniel Crawford’s “cello sonata” on climate change – one note per year from 1880…
How History Is Like a Roll of Toilet Paper
If the history of our planet were on a roll of toilet paper – unrolled across the floor or down a hill – where would we…
Did Hitchcock Have It Right about Birds?
Are the birds out to get us? When movie director Alfred Hitchcock decided to scare us all to death with seagulls and crows in his movie…
Terrarism and the Terrarists
Terrarism, terrarists and terracide: words coined on the TomDispatch blog to refer to the the men who run what may be the most profitable corporations on…
Beginner’s Guide to the Sixth Mass Extinction
Not sure what we mean by the Sixth Mass Extinction? What were the other five? Is there really a sixth one going on? Will we all…
Greenhouse Gases Just Gone Through the Roof
Last week, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere went through the roof. Another roof. The previous roof was 350 parts per million (ppm) –…
How Humans Can Survive. (Should We?)
Newsweek leads off this week with an article about the future of humankind. It opens with how the bees are dying off and the enormous toll…
U.K. Astronomer Royal: Is This Our Final Century?
Britain’s Astronomer Royal is setting up an organization to study the risks posed to ourselves and our planet by modern technology.
“Nature has value in its own right,” he says. “So it’s imperative to do what we can to preserve the natural world, and this has to go beyond any human self-interest.”
Is This the Real ‘Contagion’?
Children playing along a river bank spot hundreds of bloated pig carcasses bobbing downstream. Hundreds of miles away, people are grossed out by the rising stench…
Why Nothing Can Change
Last week, we noted that most Americans now consider climate change to be a high priority. Does that mean that significant action will be taken? No.…
Will Humans Become Hobbits?
A hobbit in the movie, and what real-life hobbits (homo floresiensis) looked like when they flourished on the island of Flores in Indonesia for about 80,000…
After the Sixth Extinction
This smiling fellow, known as Thalattoarchon saurophagis, was cruising the oceans about 244 million years ago in what are now the mountains of central Nevada, snapping up smaller fish for dinner. And that, we’re told, is good news. Here’s why.
On the End of the World
A few months ago, a friend of mine, Janet, asked me if I thought the world would really end on December 21st. I asked her why she would be more concerned with a supposed “Mayan apocalypse” than with the much more down-to-earth reality that we’ve entered a time of growing ecological disaster.
“It’s easier to imagine the Mayan apocalypse,” Janet said. “After all, you know it’s imaginary, like zombie apocalypses and all that good stuff, so it takes your mind off the real thing.”
U.N. Says We’re in Big Climate Trouble
Forget the “fiscal cliff.” Unless dramatic, sacrificial action is taken right now, we’ll have taken the whole planet over the environmental cliff within eight years –…
The End of the World: 2028, Says Bill McKibben
Echoing Bill Clinton’s famous “It’s arithmetic” speech during the election campaign, environmental activist Bill McKibben is saying: “Just do the math.” On a lecture tour around…
If the End Comes . . .
With just over a month until the much ballyhooed end of the Mayan calendar, are you prepared for planetary disaster? As a promo for the second season of its reality show “Doomsday Preppers”, National Geographic TV says that nine out of ten people recently surveyed expect a world disaster within the next 25 years. But most of us say we’re not prepared for it.
Mother Nature’s Extra Vote
Last week, Mother Nature cast an early vote, with Hurricane Sandy reminding us all that there’s just one overarching priority for the next administration and the next Congress. This week another storm is brewing.
Last night, when President Obama spoke to his supporters and to the nation, he laid out his priorities for the next four years: