climate crisis
Do we have the technology to ease our melting ice sheets?
Reading Time: 11 minutes This past year, news outlets have been reporting that initial predictions for polar ice melt were overly optimistic: ice sheets are melting much faster than models for the 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report suggested. Irrespective o
How do we make protests work for climate change reform?
Reading Time: 10 minutes One frightfully “woke” day in April 1970, some 20 million US citizens across 2,000 colleges and 10,000 grade schools participated in a “teach-in” about environmental crisis and stewardship. Some took part in active demonstrations, cleaning up facets of their communities or m
Is real carbon sequestration possible under capitalism?
Reading Time: 11 minutes Given the incentives in capitalism, the “stick” approach to climate change isn’t working. Could a new currency provide a carrot to reframe our priorities?
Broken heat records—and the promise of more
Reading Time: 4 minutes Another set of broken heat records has devastating implications—not only for human thriving in the coming years, but also the inability of consequences from past failings to stir global action to some better end.
As clean transportation tech moves forward, is the human side ready?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Over the next five years, US public agencies will spend billions to clean up the transportation sector. A large share of that money is earmarked for training blue-collar workers in disadvantaged communities on the specific tasks of sustaining a zero-emission economy. While th
The longtermism that works—and the kind that doesn’t
Reading Time: 10 minutes In 2004, a tsunami and earthquake killed almost 230,000 people in 14 Indian Ocean countries. Many forms of relief then mouldered on the beaches—used clothes, high heel shoes, expired medicines—because “in-kind” donations are well known not to be effective forms of aid on a g
Solar geoengineering: Can we buy time to heal climate change?
Reading Time: 5 minutes We can cool our warming planet by blocking sunlight in the atmosphere. Is this hubris or a way of mitigating the damage we’ve already done?
COP27 Climate Conference: The change we need vs. the change we’ll get
Reading Time: 4 minutes Last November, government ministers at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) agreed to The Glasgow Climate Pact. It was both ambitious, in setting key targets for emissions reductions by 2030, and also heavily criticized, including by the Sc
The Scientist Rebellion: What will it take to get the world’s attention?
Reading Time: 8 minutes The Scientist Rebellion calls for more people “on the inside” to take up the struggle against government inaction. But where does the movement fit into broader climate change activism, and is its degrowth message enough?