Category: Climate Change

Big Oil, Climate Change, Eco, Freak U.S.A, PoliticsLeave a comment

The Steep Cost of Cleaning Up California’s Oil Sites

Fernando Kaskais

Top: Oil and gas activities on public lands in the San Joaquin Valley, California. Visual: Bob Wick/BLM A recent study estimates that the cost of onshore clean up could be triple the industry’s projected profits. BY MARK OLALDE FOR WELL OVER a century, the oil and gas industry has drilled holes across California in search of black gold and a lucrative payday. But with production falling steadily, the time has come to clean up many of the nearly quarter-million wells scattered from downtown Los Angeles to western Kern County and across the state. The bill for that work, however, will vastly exceed all … Continue reading The Steep Cost of Cleaning Up California’s Oil Sites

Buddhism, Climate Change, Health, Philosophy, PsychologyLeave a comment

Meditation in an Age of Cataclysms

Fernando Kaskais

When despairing thoughts about climate collapse become overwhelming, try turning towards feeling.  By David Edwards  If consciousness is an ocean, thoughts are waves that can be churned into vast storms. Have you ever awakened in the wee small hours, adrift on your tiny raft of awareness, to find yourself confronted by such a storm? Perhaps an icy wind is whipping up the memory of something you read about COVID and slapping you in the face with it: So now I have to tell the daughter that both her parents are dead in a matter of three days. Her dad’s not even buried yet. … Continue reading Meditation in an Age of Cataclysms

Architecture, Climate Change, Eco, Future, Politics1 Comment

How Nature Can Help Cities Survive

Fernando Kaskais

Top: The central downtown district of Singapore. Visual: Calvin Chan Wai Meng/Moment via Getty Images Book Review – Ben Wilson’s “Urban Jungle” is a nuanced history of urban ecology, and its vital role in the climate-change era. BY RICHARD SCHIFFMAN CITIES ARE AT WAR with the natural world. To build them, forests are razed, streams get buried underground, wetlands are filled in, and wildlife gets exiled to the suburbs and beyond. Worst of all, Ben Wilson reports in “Urban Jungle: The History and Future of Nature in the City,” the residents of cities are outsized consumers of the Earth’s resources, responsible for three quarters … Continue reading How Nature Can Help Cities Survive

Climate Change, Eco, Planet, Politics, ScienceLeave a comment

Disturbance

Fernando Kaskais

Professor María Uriarte assesses damage to the Luquillo Experimental Forest of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Photo courtesy UriarteL How atomic doomsday experiments, fuelled by Cold War fears, shaped then shook ecologists’ faith in self-healing nature by Laura J Martin is a historian and ecologist and a professor of environmental studies at Williams College in Massachusetts. She is the author of Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration (2022).  When Hurricane Fiona flooded regions of Puerto Rico with up to 30 inches of rain in September last year, the island was still recovering from hurricanes Irma and Maria, two catastrophic storms in … Continue reading Disturbance

Climate Change, Eco, Health, Planet, ScienceLeave a comment

Unknowns Swirl Around How Plastic Particles Impact the Climate

Fernando Kaskais

Top: Microplastics found washed up on a beach. About 11 percent of microplastics in the atmosphere over the western U.S. come from the ocean. Visual: Alistair Berg/DigitalVision via Getty Images Airborne microplastics can absorb or reflect sunlight and seed clouds. How might that change the planet’s trajectory? BY NICOLA JONES PLASTIC HAS BECOME an obvious pollutant over recent decades, choking turtles and seabirds, clogging up our landfills and waterways. But in just the past few years, a less obvious problem has emerged. Researchers are starting to get concerned about how tiny bits of plastic in the air, lofted into the skies from seafoam … Continue reading Unknowns Swirl Around How Plastic Particles Impact the Climate

Climate Change, Eco, Future, Planet, ScienceLeave a comment

There’s no planet B

Fernando Kaskais

Scientific researchers on a bat-collecting expedition in Sierra Leone. Photo by Simon Townley/Panos The scientific evidence is clear: the only celestial body that can support us is the one we evolved with. Here’s why Arwen E Nicholson is a research fellow in physics and astronomy at the University of Exeter in the UK. She has developed Gaian models of regulation to understand how life might impact the long-term habitability prospects of its planet. Raphaëlle D Haywood is a senior lecturer in physics and astronomy at the University of Exeter in the UK. Her research focuses on detection of small, potentially terrestrial … Continue reading There’s no planet B

Brain, Climate Change, Planet, Psychology, ScienceLeave a comment

Why Climate Science Shouldn’t Forget to Factor in Brain Health

Fernando Kaskais

Visual: PM Images/DigitalVision via Getty Images Scientists need to learn more about climate change’s negative impact on the nervous system in order to mitigate it. BY BURCIN IKIZ CLIMATE CHANGE IS the biggest global health threat facing us today. According to the Lancet Countdown’s 2022 report that came out in October, the climate crisis is “undermining every dimension of global health monitored.” Its effects include direct impacts, such as extreme weather events and sea-level rise, as well as indirect ones, like increased food insecurity, forced migrations, the spread of infectious diseases, and heat-related illnesses. But one piece of information missing in most health reports, … Continue reading Why Climate Science Shouldn’t Forget to Factor in Brain Health

Architecture, Climate Change, Future, Politics, TechnologyLeave a comment

Concrete Built The Modern World. Now It’s Destroying It.

Fernando Kaskais

Artem Grigorov for Noema Magazine A growing chorus of architects argue we have to build differently with concrete — which contributes to global warming and environmental destruction on a scale that’s hard to fathom — or perhaps abandon it altogether. BY JOE ZADEH, Joe Zadeh is a writer based in Newcastle. ZÜRICH — In the aftermath of World War II, the leaders of Switzerland decided that the country needed to urgently modernize, and concluded that a remote and picturesque valley high in the Alps could be developed for hydropower. Nearly 350 square miles of snow and ice covered the mountains there, and … Continue reading Concrete Built The Modern World. Now It’s Destroying It.

Climate Change, Future, History, PlanetLeave a comment

Learn from Dystopia: 536 AD, The Year of the Apocalypse

Fernando Kaskais

We live good lives. We hope for the best. That is the greatness of humanity. However, we recognize the struggles we face and they become uneasy bedfellows. Today, we are more advanced and have pathways to solutions that can help create resiliency against the struggling industrial complex.  Constantly transforming water-energy-food ecosystems, waste as a cultural artifact, disease (new and old), multi-generational trauma and mental health declines, and the acceleration of climate change and the effects of global warming are all narratives that we revile or explore to understand more. One thing is sure. Difficult and dark days will come, and … Continue reading Learn from Dystopia: 536 AD, The Year of the Apocalypse

Climate Change, Curiositys, Globalization, Health, Politics, ScienceLeave a comment

How To Protect The Economy When It Becomes Too Hot To Work

Fernando Kaskais

Billy Clark for Noema Magazine We will have to reorganize everyday economic life around what the human body can bear. BY JUSTIN H. VASSALLO Justin H. Vassallo is a writer and researcher who specializes in party systems and ideology, political economy, American political development, and modern Europe. Nearly every country and economic sector is heading for a tipping point that could derail efforts to decarbonize the economy: A time when it will be too hot to work for weeks every year, not just isolated days. Farm and outdoor workers, low-income people dependent on public transit and those who work indoors without adequate cooling … Continue reading How To Protect The Economy When It Becomes Too Hot To Work