environment
The coming cleanup era
It's nice to imagine building a big, shiny future. But there's some un-sexy work to do first.
Solarpunk humanism: How we dream bigger than despair
Solarpunk offers a potent narrative space for imagining secular worlds to come, and how to get there.
We’ve burned past +1°C. Did a 2008 climate prediction get it right?
Sixteen years ago, a documentary predicted how a warming Earth would look at each of six temperature benchmarks. Now we've passed the first.
Eco-friendly transportation? The good, the bad, and the pipe dreams
The saying about putting a fox in charge of the hen house grossly underestimates human ingenuity. We are not foxes, and so we have the ability to be much cleverer custodians of institutions we’re still destroying.
COP28’s climate cop-out, and what comes next
Reading Time: 11 minutes Ignore the media claims of a “landmark” climate deal. COP28 failed to produce outcomes in word or in action or in funding that would get the world back on track for meeting key climate targets. Now what?
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.
Too many people
Wealthy, well-developed nations are nearing ZPG (zero population growth), which makes life better for everyone.
Your plastic grocery sack is a villain
Reading Time: 4 minutes I’ll never forget what I saw in a dirt-poor, dusty Yemeni mountain village more than a decade ago. It was plastic bags—the kind city-dwellers have long toted groceries in—and they virtually covered the steeply sloping mountainsides that fell away from the roadway bisecting th
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?
Patagonia company owner gives it away to Planet Earth in perpetuity
Reading Time: 3 minutes The owner of outdoor clothing and equipment company Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, is giving the entire company away to support the environment and fight climate change devastation, something that many in the humanist community interested in helping our planet, will laud. Yvon Ch