Bronwen Morgan and Erin Remblance have written an excellent article for the Australian website, http://www.crikey.com, which is so on target, that I urge everyone to read it. They not only predicted the failure of “world leaders” to commit to actual climate action at COP26, but they also identify the key difference between the terminal trajectory … More The COP26 Grift versus Our Survival
My enthusiasm and hope for the prospects for the growing Extinction Rebellion to raise awareness of the converging Earth Systems crises got me to read its founder Roger Hallam’s book, Common Sense for the 21st Century. I had been studying what I call “The New Great Transformation” for my own book, At the Edge of … More Why the Extinction Rebellion is Needed, and So Much More
Just about everyone now knows that Senator Joe Manchin is courted by and takes significant donations from oil and gas industry lobbyists. Yet, his blatant though somewhat subtle gaming of the legislative negotiating process clearly smells like quid quo pro. Virtually no other senator who is asked will directly confront that fact. They all dodge … More Corruption Nation: Acceptance Becomes a Norm
The COVID-19 pandemic is not so much about the characteristics of a virus as it is about the organization of modern societies. The modern infrastructure of hyper-mobility allowed the virus to move rapidly all over the world. Without that infrastructure, the pandemic could not have happened. The Black Plague in the Middle Ages, when mobility … More Rethinking Modern Infrastructure: The Vulnerability of Complex Systems
Brian Tokar has written an excellent synopsis of the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report (AR6) on the state of Earth’s climate. The latest findings of climate science clearly delineate the worsening conditions that are forcing us into today’s generally unacknowledged deep human predicament. The report just released is the first of three parts. The IPCC has … More No More Time to Kid Ourselves: The Climate Emergency is Now
Have you ever been lost in the woods? Or just in an unfamiliar urban neighborhood? As it turns out, getting lost is not that uncommon. However, most of the time things work out because we got lost within the familiar bounds of civilization. We can rely on others to give us some directions. Today, industrial … More Who Survives and Who Does Not: Civilization Lost in a Wilderness of Mistaken Mental Models
“Risk on” and “Risk Off” are terms heard among stock market traders, analysts, and investment advisors. They indicate whether the speaker feels that risk is high or low for investing in markets or in a particular stock. Risk is always a matter of degree, except under conditions of certainty—and when does that happen? Yet, “risk … More Risk On Risk Off: Likely or Unlikely, Catastrophic or Not
Now that I have read President Biden’s “fact sheet” on his infrastructure plan, dubbed the American Jobs Plan, I have to wonder whether it will devolve into an “upgrade” to “modernize” business-as-usual. What we need is a genuine emergency response to the converging crises of climate, a crumbling main street economy, and the continued enrichment … More Building Back Better: Deferred Maintenance vs. Emergency Response
HERE IS AN INSIGHTFUL HYPOTHETICAL DIALOG BETWEEN ECONOMISTS AND ECOLOGISTS OVER SEVERAL DECADES, WHICH EXEMPLIFIES THE CULTURAL STALEMATE BETWEEN IDEOLOGY AND SCIENCE. THAT IS WHAT STIFLES PROGRESS IN FACING OUR CLIMATE/ECOLOGICAL/EXISTENTIAL CRISIS TODAY. (I inserted a few links for reference.) A completely made up story about the history of economics and ecology By Katy Shields … More Here is Why Economists Cannot Hear Ecologists
The tension between Democratic and Republican politicians is greater than at any time I can remember. The Republicans have no policy agenda; they just focus on obstruction just as they did to the Black President about whom they preferred to remain in complete denial. At least Joe Biden seems to have learned the lesson of … More To Filibuster Democracy, or Not
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 