Who will pay for the cost of overheated humans in the age of climate change?
Climate-change-induced temperature rises are already testing the limits of outdoor workers. Will governments continue to ignore their protection?
Kurt Cobb
Mexican oil production to decline rapidly after 2030: Tip of the iceberg?
It appears that Mexican oil production is predicted to fall off a cliff after 2030. It’s likely to be just the first shoe to drop in the next few years.
Not with a bang but a whimper: Making our own pandemics
More and more it is becoming apparent that we humans are setting the stage for pandemics with our carelessness and unwillingness to take the necessary preventative actions that might hurt powerful economic interests.
Can coastal property values weather climate change
What’s behind the levitation of U.S. coastal real estate values even as climate change suggests a grim future for those values?
Why adaptation to climate change misses the mark
Climate change deniers strangely think we should adapt to climate change (which they say isn’t happening). But adaptation is turning out to be much more problematic than previously imagined.
Nations of the Learned
When I describe the schools that barefoot rural children once attended, in the USA of 1900 or the Ireland of the 1950s, everyone assumes their education would be pathetic — the “three Rs,” … This belief … crumbles the instant one reads descriptions of schools from a century ago
What the H5N1 scare tells us about ourselves and our society
I don’t know whether there is an H5N1 “bird flu” pandemic in our future. We humans think we can build moats around our modern way of life that protect us from the natural world. All the while we have actually been building the equivalent of superhighways into the heart of human society everywhere due to our dense living arrangements and global travel and trade.
Boondoggle Watch: Carbon capture great for making things worse, study finds
As global society advances further and further into its energy, resource and climate predicament, we can count on the creation of ever more ingenious boondoggles. This is because truly effective responses would require sacrifices and much more intensified cooperation. It is much easier and more fun to contemplate how our myriad boondoggles are going usher in an era of plenty and a stable environment.
Singing lessons
Most people never sing aloud anymore, except meekly in church, and snicker at those who do. Older people, though, can remember people whistling as they swept the streets, everyone singing at the pub, neighbours gathering at each other’s homes in the evenings to sing, or people gathering around a deathbed to caoin.
After Cape Town will a breakdown of confidence bring ‘Day Zero’ to Mexico City and Bogotá?
As climate change proceeds apace, more and more cities will face serious water shortages. Will they be able to cope?
Messy business: Polluted ‘biosolids’ derail recycling of human waste
Recycling always sounds like a good idea unless what you are recycling has become dangerously toxic.
The world made by hand
In the cellar of my parent’s house sit a series of tools that have served my father and grandfather and great-grandfather, for they were created before the throwaway world was conceived. … They were made for a nation of craftsmen, of people who bore in themselves the power that all humans once had, to reshape wood and hide and stone into a human landscape.