Tim Stevenson
Fascism is not a future threat. It’s here.
Tim Stevenson, a community organizer with Post Oil Solutions, is author of Resilience and Resistance: Building Sustainable Communities for a Post Oil Age (Green Writers Press) and Transformative Activism: A Values Revolution in Everyday Life in a Time of Societal Collapse (Apocryphile Press). Contact him at [email protected].
'Our opposition is part of a growing worldwide condemnation of Israel's behavior'
By way of taking to task Tim Wessel for criticizing those of us who are righteously standing up against Israel's genocidal assault upon the people of Gaza, I offer the following. People need to remember that our opposition is part of a growing worldwide condemnation of Israel's behavior as...
Climate: code red
It’s too late to fix an unraveling climate and its rising heat, which is already inflicting loss of property and life. It’s time for municipalities like Brattleboro to set an example by treating the climate emergency as a climate emergency.
The current state of the climate is in a "code red for humanity." So stated the August 2021 report of the United Nation's authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As the U.N.'s secretary-general, António Guterres, noted, "The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable." The only...
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Misguided irrelevance
I have always found Bill McKibben to be an inspiring and committed climate activist, as well as just one of those special people in the world, a truly decent human being. What I have especially appreciated about him, however, is his ability to present a credible balance between realistic possibilities for change while at the same time offering a no-bull assessment of our current climate situation. But in his otherwise-fine and aptly entitled essay "Global Temps Not Just Off the...
This is unadulterated fascism
Tuesday, Nov. 8 will be a most significant day in the history of our nation. Though a midterm election, it nevertheless could determine which party controls Congress and, therefore, determine whether we continue as a democracy - or whether we succumb to the undisguised attempts on the part of the Republican Party to eliminate our democracy in all but name. The British paper The Guardian recently observed that the United States “is seeing a dizzying number of assaults on democracy.”
Activism in the uncharted waters of our new normal
As the daily evidence of scientific reports and graphic images of fires, floods, droughts, and people on the move vividly testify to, we are either in or rapidly approaching what scientists call “hothouse Earth,” a condition where climate feedbacks could lead to runaway heating. The series of increasingly catastrophic climate-related events that have occurred this summer clearly suggest we are rapidly approaching the point beyond which human mitigation efforts are not possible. As Bill McKibben wrote a few years ago,
We need to address the real business at hand - namely, how are we to live in a collapsing world?
Dear Nancy Braus: Having been there myself, I appreciate the frustration and rage you expressed with the Democratic Party in your Viewpoint and the party's continuing unwillingness to fight for the values and policies you and I stand for. However, I have to admit that, given your years as a progressive activist, I was also puzzled that you were seemingly surprised by this long-established fact about the Democrats. Perhaps you expected something different from the liberal wing of the ruling...
Doomed from the start
According to the United Nations, current national policies put the planet on track to heat up by 4.9 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. “That level of warming,” The Washington Post noted, “would be catastrophic for people and the ecosystems on which they depend, triggering inexorable ice sheet melt and catastrophic sea level rise. Deadly weather disasters, chronic food and water shortages and intolerable heat would become fixtures of life for much of the world.” In a surprising...