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, “The main question is whether we'll be able to hold the rise in temperature to a point where we can, at great expense and suffering, deal with those crises coherently, or whether they will overwhelm the coping abilities of our civilization. The latter is a distinct possibility.”
In this age of climate breakdown and looming societal collapse, we have moved beyond an activism that limits itself to outbursts of outrage, contesting for political power, or trying to move the hearts of those whose corporate interests reside in their bottom lines.
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...
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...
Ironically, what is potentially most promising about our situation today is that the same circumstances that confront us with social collapse and possible extinction also conspire to present us with an unprecedented opportunity to finally get it right, to live the values-informed existence we have been searching for all along, and that we now require more than ever, as a condition of our very survival. As the Chinese ideograms for the word suggest, crisis is a time not only of...
Sandy Golden takes me to task for not practicing what I preach. While appreciating Ms. Golden's reminder of the importance of walking the talk, a reminder I can always use, I would also argue that my essay is not a good example of my failure to do so. In contrast to my insistence that a “functioning democracy is all about valuing life, valuing each other,” Ms. Golden maintains that I contradict myself when I write that the Republican Party, and...
The political reality of our times is that the Republican Party has gone rogue. It is no longer an honorable opponent of the Democratic Party, one that respects the Constitution and plays by the ethical norms of a democratic society. Instead, it has become an incipient fascist outlier. Because the Republicans' priority is absolute power and minority rule, and they are dedicated to achieving these aims by any means necessary. They have become the enemy of democracy. Republicans have been...
What concerns me about hate groups is how their hate seems to infect, or bring out the hate in, those who oppose them. That's depressing, because then hate wins. There's got to be a third way beyond the hatred of the bad guys and the hatred of the good guys.
Proving once again that the pen is mightier than the sword, Iowa's Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, signed into law on March 9 the first of what could be a nationwide avalanche of voter suppression laws that surpasses anything like this since the Jim Crow era. With 253 similar bills being pushed by Republican legislatures in 43 states, the assault against democracy by the increasingly desperate Grand Old Party continues. The Republicans have become a minority party that cannot win elections...