Reading Time: 2 minutes Attempts by Texas Republicans to compel corporations to enforce conservative values have now expanded to include climate initiatives. Earlier this year, Texas state lawmaker Briscoe Cain sent a cease-and-desist letter to corporations that provide funds for their employees to get abortions outside of the state. Now the state wants to target corporations that prioritize climate […]
Climate Crisis
Posted inClimate Crisis
When there’s nothing left to burn
Reading Time: 3 minutes Wynn Alan Bruce reached the point where he felt he had nothing left to burn. So he set himself on fire. Since learning of this man’s self-immolation on Earth Day, I can’t shake the mental picture of him sitting in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building, dying in unimaginable pain, his flesh consumed by […]
Posted inClimate Crisis
What Earth Day means to a climate scientist
Reading Time: 3 minutes On the 52nd anniversary of Earth Day, we asked a climate scientist what we need to do to save our world. Here’s what she said.
Posted inEnvironment
What degrowth is, and why it matters
Reading Time: 11 minutes In Livermore, California, there is a light bulb that never goes out. It was installed in 1901 in a fire station that didn’t realize for many decades what a wonder it had on its hands. The bulb was made by the Shelby Electric Company, with a patented-coil carbon filament eight times thicker than the tungsten […]
Posted inClimate Crisis
Cold War II would mean more money for defense. Can climate efforts survive?
Reading Time: 4 minutes During the first Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in an arms race, both countries rushing to stockpile weapons of mass destruction. Both spent an unfathomable amount of money on nuclear weapons and advanced delivery systems in order to gain a competitive advantage. The result was massive defense budgets which consumed […]
Posted inEnvironment
Solarpunk humanism: How we dream bigger than despair
Reading Time: 5 minutes One unspoken tenet of anti-theist discourse is that we are limited by the religious stories at the core of our culture. For that slice of the nonreligious spectrum, it’s not enough not to believe, personally, in a god. The nature of religion poses a narrative problem that anti-theists feel must be confronted at every turn. […]
Posted inScience
There is hope, too, in the well
Reading Time: 5 minutes A common belief in journalism is that you have to emphasize the horror of a situation to spur action. If people aren’t driven by an existential threat, how can we ever expect them to act for a better world? But the well of our world’s suffering runs deep enough with sorrow. We still have a […]
Posted inComedy
Scientific horoscope Sun March 20 – Sat March 26
Reading Time: 3 minutes The scientific horoscope this week covers renewable energy, spooky action, napping, and much more! Pisces You may feel like you’re swimming upstream this week. Renewable energy faces challenges, too. Gravity may just help solve solar and wind’s biggest problem. image by @worachatsodsri Aries This week will have you charging ahead, Aries. Scientists are also moving forward! […]
Posted inEnvironment
Oil imperialism and the struggle for human control over our futures
Reading Time: 4 minutes In March 2020, something unsettling transpired in the global economy. Okay, a few somethings. But while most of the world remembers the sweeping COVID-19 lockdowns, what happened between Saudi Arabia and Russia around oil production is not common knowledge. And yet, as Vladimir Putin has launched a military invasion of Ukraine, we cannot forget the […]
Posted inClimate Crisis
Who’s afraid of an environmental crisis?
Reading Time: 5 minutes When my grandfather died, his books and magazines were packed up and shipped halfway across the country. In that treasure-trove of old reading, I found science-fiction paperbacks, ancient Greek plays, early 20th-century poetry and philosophy, the occasional beaver magazine (which my father hastily took from my curious nine-year-old hands), and… MAD magazines from the 1970s. […]