Category: Climate
Tadpoles teach us in Kern’s ‘Real Sugar’
Stories for those who feel ‘fragile about frogs’. We can grieve “all the frogs that aren’t.” Some of our stories going forward, though, have to be about the frogs that are. Which will those be?
How we’re here now: Poems of California
Poems in ‘Rift Zone’ and ‘Last West’. We know in our bones what being is. Because we are. ‘To be’ is to exist in a place, to grow, to break off, to feel how this ties us to past and future.
We know who’s responsible for orange sky
We need to hold them accountable. It’s Exx-smog and Shell-smoke. The big orange cats must be held accountable, and there’s more than one. Each of us has a role to play.
Designing a town people can get around? Repeat this exercise.
Anna Zivarts reminds us how we can take an hour to try harder. Sometimes we lack empathy for each other’s transportation needs and preferences. We have no idea because we haven’t stopped to try.
Why we’re so bad at solving long-term problems
‘The Optimist’s Telescope’ by Bina Venkataraman. It’s hard to ditch our loyalties and biases. It’s hard to stop focusing on past and present and to ponder what legacy we’re leaving for the distant future.
Life on Earth: What has been, what will be
Climate change forces us to find life beyond our assumptions. We can’t stop all the major tipping points that are coming. We may be able to adapt to some. We have to try. We won’t be what we thought we were.
‘Atlas of a Changing Climate’ shows warming in images
Fundamentals and details explained in Brian Buma’s 2021 book. ‘The Atlas of a Changing Climate’ explains the science in a “relatable and understandable” way, admitting that readers may react with “wonder” or “despair.”
War may change how we rely on big oil
Energy companies’ reactions to Russia’s war on Ukraine. Often, a catastrophe forces a business to change by hitting it in its wallet. This is an ethical crisis too. Businesses have to change. Today.
What we can’t conquer, we destroy and deny
A mindset that rejects wilderness will also reject people. Wilderness is the unknown. Much in the human is unknown too. A mindset that rejects wilderness will also reject humans who don’t fit social norms.
Talking to climate skeptics
Reflecting on ‘How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate’ (2015). Most USAmericans are scientifically illiterate. It’s not that they don’t memorize scientific facts; they don’t even know how scientific reasoning works.
Climate change, predicted (three decades ago)
Returning to an environmental classic: ‘The Ages of Gaia’ by James Lovelock. We don’t yet know what it will be like when the forests are gone. But we should live in a way that prevents this outcome. We must support our own survival.
The Industrial Revolution: All of it has to change again
Trains represent where we’ve been & where we‘ll go next. Steel, aluminum, concrete; fossil fuels; electric light; transportation, communication, refrigeration, medicine. Do we know what we have to change?