In The Face of Climate Collapse, We Need The Wisdom Of Elders

I am steadily on the lookout for leveraging forces that can lift us out of heavy stuck loops, onto new ground. Often these are less obvious elements. One that has been underestimated is the presence of “elders,” whose presence calls us back to a bedrock sense of self and right relationship to the Earth. We […]

The UN revises down its population forecasts

THE UNITED NATIONS is the world’s most important watcher of human tides. Its demographers have a good record of predicting global population change, although they have made mistakes about individual countries. So it is worth paying attention when the UN revises its figures, as it does every few years. The latest bulletin is especially surprising. […]

The Dangers of Overpopulation

In the 20th century alone, the human population soared from 2.5 billion to 6.1 billion, an increase spurned by advances during the industrial revolution. In that time, we have developed an immense need for resources, including food, water, raw materials, and energy. Now, we are closing in on a global population of eight billion people. […]

Farewell to the Fishes

“Ninety percent of the world’s marine fish stocks are now fully exploited, overexploited or depleted.“ Jianping Fish Market, photo by author And scales full of the sunset Twitch on the rocks, no more to wander at will The wild Pacific pasture nor wanton and spawning Race up into fresh water. — Robinson Jeffers, Salmon Fishing […]

Michael Bloomberg gives $500M to campaign to kill coal

Former New York City mayor and climate change crusader Michael Bloomberg announced Friday he is giving $500 million to a campaign to finish killing coal and start killing oil and gas. “The largest coordinated campaign to tackle climate change” ever to occur in the U.S., Bloomberg says, aims to close all of the nation’s coal […]

The Accelerating Ecological Genocide

In May 2019, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released its latest assessment of the accelerating extinction rates of our global biodiversity. The report was compiled by 145 expert authors from 50 countries over the past three years. It has inputs from another 310 contributing authors and is based […]

Overpopulation – The Deadly Myth behind the Other Modern Myths

Who says the world is overpopulated? And what does that mean anyway? Hunger?  Crowding? Environmental harm?  For over 200 years we’ve been told that the world is overpopulated. But is it? Check this out. In 1798, Thomas Malthus thought the world was overpopulated when world population was under one billion. In his book, An Essay […]

Global sea levels could rise far more than predicted

Global sea levels could rise by two metres and displace tens of millions of people by the end of the century if greenhouse emissions remain unchecked, according to a new study. The authors of the report, released on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, said this outcome is the worst-case […]

Nature On The Eve Of Destruction — The UN Extinction Report

One million species are close to extinction, thanks to Homo sapiens. Thus warns a landmark new report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), presented at the 7th session of the IPBES Plenary meeting earlier this month in Paris. Sir Robert Watson, Chair of the IPBES, said, “The health […]

Secret Exxon Research from 1982 Reveals Some Startlingly Accurate Predictions for Today

A document entitled CO2 “Greenhouse” Effect, A Technical Review, Prepared by the Coordination and Planning Division, Exxon Research and Engineering Company, April 1, 1982, which is accompanied by a covering letter authored by Marvin B. Glaser, Manager of Environmental Affairs Programs, and dated November 12, 1982, begins stating: “The material has been given wide circulation to […]

There’s a 49 Percent Chance the World As We Know It Will End by 2050

Jared Diamond’s new book, Upheaval, addresses itself to a world very obviously in crisis, and tries to lift some lessons for what do about it from the distant past. In that way, it’s not so different from all the other books that have made the UCLA geographer a sort of don of “big think” history […]

Human Extinction: An Idea Whose Time had to Come.

A few years ago, a political movement that took the name of “extinction rebellion” would have been wholly unthinkable. On the other hand, after more than forty years of warnings on climate change and ecosystem collapse from the world’s best scientists, the message had to start going through, somehow. One consequence is the appearance on […]

Climate Change and the New Age of Extinction

The first documented extinction of 2019 occurred on New Year’s Day, with the death of a Hawaiian tree snail named George. George, who was about an inch long, had a grayish body, grayish tentacles, and a conical shell striped in beige and brown. He was born in captivity, in Honolulu, and had spent his unassuming […]

1 Millions Species Are At Risk For Extinction — And It’s All Our Fault

Overfishing, climate change, and pollution are all on the list of causes Nature is declining globally at a terrifying rate, with over one million species risking extinction, warns a new report. The culprit is, unsurprisingly, humans — and the impact could be more severe than anyone could have imagined. A report issued by the Intergovernmental […]

The climate change story is half true

The climate change story is true is some respects: The climate is indeed changing. And CO2 emissions do seem to affect climate. Burning fossil fuels does indeed make a difference in CO2 levels. The problem I have with the climate change story is that it paints a totally inaccurate story of the predicament the world […]

The “Population Bomb” Bombed

In 1968, the “year’s most important book,” what Greg Garrard[1] called a neo-Malthusian classic, The Population Bomb, by Stanford University Professor Paul Ehrlich, “made dire predictions and triggered a wave of repression around the world.”[2] Authored by an evolutionary biologist known for his “groundbreaking studies of the co-evolution of flowering plants and butterflies,” it became […]

End of the World?

Claims ring saying that human-caused climate change will soon make the Earth unlivable, but other similar claims have been made in the recent past that have turned out to be false. The photo at right, from AP, shows a 1970 Earth Day event in Philadelphia.   “Millennials and people and you know Gen Z and […]

7 things we’ve learned about Earth since the last Earth Day

This year’s Earth Day, April 22, will arrive at a sobering moment in human history. The world is warming faster than ever. The oceans are rising. Thousands of migrants are fleeing environmental disasters. Taxpayers are paying billions to rebuild communities after climate-linked wildfires and hurricanes destroyed them. The Trump administration is unraveling policies designed to […]

Population IS a Problem

And it warrants greater attention, not less. This roundtable discussion with the staff of World Population Balance answers the question, “Is there a problem with population?” An attempt to answer the question with a “not really” was recently published in a commentary at Resilience.org. Population: What’s the Problem?, written by Chris Smaje, made some points […]

Oil-eating bacteria found at the bottom of the ocean

Scientists have discovered oil-eating bacteria in the planet’s deepest oceanic trench, the Mariana Trench. An international team of researchers, including scientists from Britain, China and Russia, used a submersible to collect microbial samples from the trench, which bottoms out at 6.8 miles below sea level. For reference, the peak of Mount Everest is 5.5 miles […]

The real catastrophe is move to eliminate fossil-fuel energy

We are witnessing the biggest scam in human history. The hysteria over catastrophic man-made climate change is projected to cost up to $200 trillion over the next 100 years. The most optimistic predictions say that after spending all that money we will slow the effects of man-made global warming by about four years. While most […]

The Insect Apocalypse Is Coming: Here Are Five Lessons We Must Learn

Scientists estimate that populations of ladybugs in the United States and Canada have declined by 14 percent between 1987 and 2006. Insects are undergoing a massive decline and that spells trouble for humanity.Pixabay In a new report, scientists warn of a precipitous drop in the world’s insect population. We need to pay close attention, as […]

The Future of Growth

By Dr. Milton Saier and Art Elphick, guest writers. [Photo by Flickr user Images Money via Creative Commons license] Recent articles call for higher birthrates to spur economic growth. But upon observing the human impact on our resources and environment, many scientists consider even current economic and population growth rates unsustainable. Our world has just […]

Radioactive Fukushima Particles Found In Alaska’s Bering Strait

Radioactive particles from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have drifted as far north as a remote Alaskan island in the Bering Strait, according to scientists at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. Seawater collected last year near St. Lawrence Island contained a slight elevation in levels of cesium-137, a man-made radioactive isotope formed during […]

‘Doomsday vault’ town warming quicker than any other on Earth

The world’s northernmost settlement and home to what is known as the “Doomsday vault” – the subterranean Svalbard global seed vault which stores specimens of almost all the world’s seeds – is now believed to be the fastest-warming location on Earth, according to a new report. Longyearbyen, on the Norwegian island of Svalbard, had an average temperature in Svalbard […]

Fast-Melting Greenland Glacier Starts Growing Again In Massive U-Turn

A large and fast-melting glacier in Greenland is growing again, according to a new NASA study. The Jakobshavn (YA-cob-shawv-en) glacier on Greenland’s west coast had reportedly been retreating by around 1.8 miles and thinning by nearly 130 feet annually in 2012. May 30, 2012, photo shows an iceberg in or just outside the Ilulissat fjord that […]

The Catastrophe is coming

Dear 22nd century, Do you still use that quaint phrase ‘the elephant in the room?’ Does the family Elephantidae, currently at risk, still exist, or is its extinction such a horrific elephant in the room that no one dares speak that name? Either way, you’ve probably noticed the metaphorical elephant in my letters so far. […]

Richard Heinberg: The House is on Fire

A: The house is on fire! B: You sound so shrill. Can’t you say something witty or insightful? A: How about this: The house is on fire! C: We’re never going to be able to do anything about the house until we defeat capitalism first. A: But the house is on fire NOW! If we […]

Africa Is Running Out of Water

As water supplies in Ghana’s capital grew increasingly erratic, Beatrice Kabuki stopped customers from using her grocery store’s bathrooms and installed a plastic storage tank at her home. “The taps flow once a week and usually at night, so we stay awake to fetch what we can store,” Kabuki, 35, said in an interview in […]

Overheating About Global Warming

Decades of climate-change exaggeration in the West have produced frightened children, febrile headlines, and unrealistic political promises. The world needs a cooler approach that addresses climate change smartly without scaring us needlessly and that pays heed to the many other challenges facing the planet. PRAGUE – Across the rich world, school students have walked out […]

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