Aug 24, 2013 | Climate Change/Environment
The link between rapid climate change and human extinction is basically this: the planet becomes uninhabitable by humans if the average temperature goes up by 4-6°C. It doesn’t sound like a lot because we’re used to the temperature changing 15°C overnight, but the thing that is not mentioned enough is that even a 2-3°C average increase would give us temperatures that regularly surpass 40°C (104°F) in North America and Europe, and soar even higher near the equator. Human bodies start to break down after six hours at a wet-bulb (100% humidity) temperature of 35°C (95°F). This makes the 2003 heat wave in Europe that killed over 70,000 people seem like not a very big deal. Factoring in the increase we’re already seeing in heat waves, droughts, wildfires, massive storms, food and water shortages, deforestation, ocean acidification, and sea level rise some are seeing the writing on the wall: We’re all gonna die!
Aug 22, 2013 | Climate Change/Environment
Recently a reader of my website asked me to clarify the difference between resignation and surrender. When faced with catastrophic climate change, near-term extinction, and the worst emission of radiation in the history of the world from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, how should we respond? The reader found himself swimming in deep despair and feeling very much like giving up—perhaps even ceasing the breast strokes of vigorous swimming, plunging further into the despair, and intentionally inhaling as deeply as possible. Well, that would be suicide, and he didn’t feel ready for that—at least not in that moment, and the word “surrender” kept coming to mind, but isn’t that the same as giving up?
Aug 15, 2013 | Climate Change/Environment
When the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere rises, the Earth not only heats up, but extreme weather events, such as lengthy droughts, heat waves, heavy rain and violent storms, may become more frequent. Whether these extreme climate events result in the release of more CO2 from terrestrial ecosystems and thus reinforce climate change has been one of the major unanswered questions in climate research. It has now been addressed by an international team of researchers working with Markus Reichstein, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena. They have discovered that terrestrial ecosystems absorb approximately 11 billion tons less carbon dioxide every year as the result of the extreme climate events than they could if the events did not occur. That is equivalent to approximately a third of global CO2 emissions per year.
Aug 8, 2013 | Climate Change/Environment
Don’t for a second imagine we’re headed for an era of renewable energy.
Aug 4, 2013 | Emotional/Spiritual
Certainly nothing can be done to stop the collapse of industrial civilization, but much can be done to hasten its demise. I will leave that topic, however, to my friends Derrick Jensen, Keith Farnish, and Guy McPherson. Nevertheless, as I have written before, if you choose to invest your time and energy in expediting the unraveling, by all means do so, but giving industrial civilization a swift kick off the cliff, while temporarily exhilarating, is not sufficient to protect you from your own psychotic break or the precariousness of living in a world where violence escalates on a daily basis. In order to forge that kind of stability and enhance your safety, much more will be required of you.
Jun 28, 2013 | Emotional/Spiritual
Whatever our tradition—Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or indigenous, we are now being called to participate in the “unveiling” and pierce the veil of old paradigms. We are being compelled to live and love in new and unfamiliar ways that stretch the heart, perhaps even to the breaking point. This end/beginning invites us to move beyond sectarian labels and elevated piety into the territory of becoming not only a more compassionate human being, but members of a new species of human that fully experiences and lives its divinity.
Jun 7, 2013 | Climate Change/Environment
“One thing that you really need to be able to do is look inwards and look in at your life, and that’s very hard sometimes, you’re so wrapped up in yourself,” he says. “The one place where self indulgence is utterly impossible is grizzly country because there’s something out there that’s big, and if it chooses it can kill and eat your ass.”
May 7, 2013 | Carolyn's Articles
When I began writing this article, a friend of mine had recently entered hospice. While I was finishing the article, my friend died. She was not in the same town as I, but during the past month, we had been able to speak by phone several times a week. Given my friend’s decline and death and its impact on me, I was not taken aback by Daniel Drumright’s essay “The Irreconcilable Acceptance Of Near-Term Extinction,” posted last week on Guy McPherson’s Nature Bats Last blog.
Apr 22, 2013 | Energy Depletion
Brace yourself. You may not be able to tell yet, but according to global experts and the U.S. intelligence community, the earth is already shifting under you. Whether you know it or not, you’re on a new planet, a resource-shock world of a sort humanity has never before experienced.
Mar 25, 2013 | Emotional/Spiritual
This essay is intended to be but a nudge in the direction of greater awareness, and not an in-depth exposition of the challenges that we face as a species. The crux of this short writing will, hopefully, direct my readers toward an awareness of one potential aspect of the solution to personal and global transformation. This facet pertains to gratitude and awareness of beauty.
