climate
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Do you know where your candidates stand on climate change?
With growing numbers of scientists declaring that the global climate crisis is approaching a point of no return, there is a huge and bewildering disconnect between our physical world and our political environment. Our government’s response to the prospect of runaway climate impacts is one of paralysis. The negligence of the Bush administration is understandable. […]
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Plan the rockingest party ever to celebrate Kyoto’s first birthday
It seems like just yesterday that the Kyoto Protocol came into force, only to languish in toothless uncertainty as major powers including the U.S., Australia, Canada, and the U.K. sought to tank it in various ways. But it’s been a whole year! Can you believe it? Party like Bush signed on. Photo: stock.xchng. Yes, today […]
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When inheriting the earth isn’t such a good deal
I’ve seen my future, and it’s scary. It involves hurricanes, floods, destruction, mass evacuations, disease, and death. Hurricane Katrina and the week after it were a serious wakeup call for me. Youth the force, Luke. Climate change promises me that in my lifetime, I will experience many more events like this. As a young person, […]
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Getting to the bottom of climate-change lingo
Remember when you first heard about that big hole in the ozone? Remember how they called it “the ozone hole”? Man, life was good then. Raise your hand if you’re sure … what you’re talking about. Now everyone’s talking about global warming. Or, actually, climate change. Or … uh … anthropogenic forcing? What we’ve got, […]
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Plus Ca (Climate) Change …
Ancient empires crushed by changing climate — not that you should worry Elizabeth Kolbert continues her exploration of climate change in the second of a three-part series in The New Yorker. She begins with a look at the world’s first great empire, founded 4,300 years ago on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. […]
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To address global warming, we must harness rationality, good science, and enlightened globalization
Getting a bird’s eye view of the globe. Photo: Marcelo da Mota Silva. The commonplace view of the earth from an airplane at 35,000 feet — a vista that would have astounded Dickens or Darwin — can be instructive when we contemplate the fate of our earth. We see faintly, or imagine we can, the […]
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Ten ways to turn that global frown upside down
Scientists estimate that we’ve already raised global temperatures by one degree Fahrenheit with our hapless spewing of greenhouse gases, and another one or two degrees are pretty much inevitable no matter what we do. Unstable weather, droughts, floods, and rising oceans are the likely result. We’re in the midst of the sixth great extinction, with […]
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Reading tea leaves for the environment
Every month I get a kind of Reader’s Digest for people interested in the future. It’s called Future Survey, issued by the World Future Society. Each month it contains about 50 extended summaries of recent publications about the paths — economic, environmental, social — we seem to be following. The November 2000 issue, for example, […]
