I just read an article in an online journal countercurrents.org called, “How bad can it get?” In it, Robert Hunziker describes a book by Bill McGuire, Emeritus Professor of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London. McGuire, a highly respected scientist, does not mince words in describing what he calls Hothouse Earth (Icon Books, … More How Bad can It Get? Reality Transformed
All the policy talk around the “climate emergency” is either technical with reference to the effects of carbon pollution, emissions-reduction goals, or political with reference to cost, employment, or other policy matters. But the predicament we face in confronting the climate emergency is far greater and more complex than usually imagined. Public climate-change policy leaders … More It’s Not Just About Climate: The New Great Transformation is a Total Existential Threat and Opportunity
It is not difficult to see the several consistencies between the COVID-19 pandemic and the Climate Emergency. You can find them in more than one dimension. Some involve the trajectories of the crises, while others reside in the human response or lack thereof. Things like acceleration and lagged effects are important for understanding crises that … More Too Late and Too Soon: Corona-Climate Crisis Consistency
In a number of posts, I have discussed various social illusions such as the idea that the extractive industrial consumer economy could just keep growing permanently, as so many economists implicitly insist. That deeply flawed illusion rests on some equally defective assumptions. Many people also believe that as industrial materials reach a state of depletion … More Let’s Get Real: What is Sustainable in Markets, the Biosphere, and Society?
We usually think of something as fantastic if it is so wonderful and amazing that it seems like fantasy. I suspect that is where Walt Disney got the idea for his “Fantasy Land” and the other fantastical components of Disneyland, Disneyworld, and all those animated entertainments. Much of it suggests unbounded human futures through industrial … More Facing a Fantastic Future: Fantasyland, Apocalypse, or Hopeful Realism?
I deepened my carbon footprint this week by flying to Toronto for a conference at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, on “Sustainability: Transdisciplinary Theory, Practice, and Action,” (STTPA) The topic seems crucial for understanding how we must move forward to stem the tide of planetary destabilization of climate, ecosystems, and the threat of societal collapse. … More Renewable Energy and Sustainable Life
We live in increasingly complex systems, more and more of them are of our own making, though not always of our own conscious design. There are two basic kinds, natural complex adaptive systems, such as the Earth System and its many subsystems, and human-made complex adaptive systems, such as social groups and corporations. It appears … More How to Control Complex Adaptive Systems to Survive
Free Trade, Fair Trade, Tariffs, Trade Wars, and all such matters reflect a complex of political-economic issues that will soon become mostly irrelevant. Yet pundits persistently pontificate on their putative principles and pitfalls – within the bubble of business-as-usual. The problem is that all the parties disputing matters of international trade envision the future as … More Some Right Things Done in All the Wrong Ways for All the Wrong Reasons
The words we use to describe the world tend to “frame” our understandings by bracketing the range of images and meanings that make sense to us. Our reasoning builds on deep emotions. Moral reasoning also rests on an emotional sense of right and wrong and the beliefs and personal relationships we hold dear. The terms … More So Much More than Warming: Misunderstanding Climate Change
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 