“in two generations, the entire story of human civilization”

This guy writes very well. And sees very well. And processes very well. “climate change is .. an “existential crisis”—a drama we are now haphazardly improvising between two hellish poles, in which our best-case outcome is death and suffering at the scale of twenty-five Holocausts, and the worst-case outcome puts us on the brink of extinction. Rhetoric often fails us Continue Reading

Surely a different “nature”

This is horrific:“In just the last forty years, according to the World Wildlife Fund, more than half of the world’s vertebrate animals have died; in just the last twenty-five, one study of German nature preserves found, the flying insect population declined by three-quarters.” Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth (pp. 25-26). Crown/Archetype. Kindle Edition. This just in from a phone call Continue Reading

Feedback Loops

Back to the Wallace-Wells book, on “Feedback loops”: “A warming planet leads to melting Arctic ice, which means less sunlight reflected back to the sun and more absorbed by a planet warming faster still, which means an ocean less able to absorb atmospheric carbon and so a planet warming faster still. A warming planet will also melt Arctic permafrost, which Continue Reading

The “Climate Caste system”; Environmental justice

“This is what is often called the problem of environmental justice; a sharper, less gauzy phrase would be “climate caste system.” The problem is acute within countries, even wealthy ones, where the poorest are those who live in the marshes, the swamps, the floodplains, the inadequately irrigated places with the most vulnerable infrastructure—altogether an unwitting environmental apartheid. Wallace-Wells, David. The Continue Reading

we must mobilize

“It is important to mobilize people who at the moment are concerned, but basically complacent, and turn them into people who are much more activated and essentially voting about climate as a first-order political priority rather than a third- or fourth-order priority – judging politicians on the basis of their climate policy.”— David Wallace-Wells in an interview in The Guardian Continue Reading

Time to step aside and listen to those who inherit this mess

Feinstein: “Ive been doing this for 30 years”.What? Putting off meaningful and sufficient action on the mess we’re making? Voting to kick the can down the road? I think it’s enough (and too much). Please step aside. (My comments inspired by McKibben’s article in the New Yorder, and observation that it’s been 30 years since James Hansen testified before Congress Continue Reading