Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Kurt Cobb In the post-Cold War era the public and policymakers believed that with every day the world’s economies would become more and more integrated. Now the opposite is happening.
Insurance is a cornerstone of modern industrial life. Without it much of the daily activity of society would come to a halt. Climate change is threatening the viability of insurance arrangements as it brings on ever more destructive weather.
A temperature higher on average across the globe than any previously recorded since instrument readings began in the 1850s was measured on July 3. That record was broken again on July 4, and then again on July 5. We designed our infrastructure and agricultural practices for a pre-climate change Earth. We are unprepared for what is coming.
Autonomous vehicles are touted as safer than vehicles driven by humans. Turns out there are some dangerous glitches.
Drought conditions are sneaking up on us much more quickly, more often than in the past.
Fusion energy has long been touted as a panacea for our energy woes. Even if we are someday able to produce more energy than we consume in creating fusion reactions, fusion will turn out to be far messier and harder to implement than most people realize.
We Don’t See Where Stuff Comes From. We grow up staring at screens without ever seeing the coal plants that power them, speed down motorways without ever visiting the oil derricks that fuel them, and eat the equivalent of several animals a year without having to wrestle them or smell blood.
As predictions about world population decline proliferate, the causes almost never include the toxic chemicals that are dramatically undermining human fertility worldwide.
Denying there are limits to resources doesn’t negate this fact. It only makes it harder when limits appear because we are unprepared.
Artificial intelligence is like artificial sweeteners, not as compelling as the real thing and potentially hazardous to our health.
Dublin, Ireland. We are seeing the first good days here, leading up to the golden days of mid-summer, and I’ve been talking to elderly friends here in the Irish countryside about what they used to do when the sun shone. The answer, of course, was that they made hay. When farmers heard the cry of … Read more
The acceleration of climate change is in the news more and more.
