Do what it takes

I take issue with one thing in this quote: “Agree with Ocasio-Cortez’s solutions or not, it’s to her credit that, in such a short time, she has helped change the terms of the debate. “Radicalism pushes the bonds of what liberals will jump on board with,” Saikat Chakrabarti, the representative’s chief of staff, said. “Every major social movement has worked Continue Reading

What’s really broken?

I think there is more brokenness in focusing on sexual identity differences rather than on trying to confront and heal the broken systems which harm people and planet.

Why should Climate Change matter to me?

“To care about a changing climate, we don’t have to be a scientist or an environmentalist or a liberal political activist. We just have to be a human who wants this planet, the only one we have, to be a safe home for all of us.” — Katharine Hayhoe

“the cost to nature is only one part of the story”

David Wallace-Wells’ own description of the subject of his new book, at the end of the opening from which I have been quoting: “What follows is a kaleidoscopic accounting of the human costs of human life continuing as it has for a generation, which will fill up the planet with only more humans—what ongoing global warming spells for public health, Continue Reading

interlocking effects; still being discovered

So, in a paragraph soon to follow the pieces I just challenged, regarding how they seem to be unaware of the “baked in” effects of 1 or 2 decades ago, he writes this: “Carbon hangs in the air for decades, with some of the most terrifying feedbacks unspooling over even longer time horizons—which gives warming the eerie shimmer of an Continue Reading

The danger of placing too much hope in “Geo-engineering”

Wallace-Wells follows that notion I just “cautioned” about, with another not so helpful notion: “We found a way to engineer devastation, and we can find a way to engineer our way out of it—or, rather, engineer our way toward a degraded muddle, but one that nevertheless extends forward the promise of new generations finding their own way forward, perhaps toward Continue Reading

The “Baked in” consequences

Here’s a notion that Wallace-Wells forwards in his book and to people who ask him about “hope” in the face of his “bleak picture”, which I think paints a false picture: “No matter how out-of-control the climate system seems—with its roiling typhoons, unprecedented famines and heat waves, refugee crises and climate conflicts—we are all its authors. And still writing.” Wallace-Wells, Continue Reading