"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
- William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

This first "feature," which fits with the quote, is actually much the less apocalyptic (especially if you're a conservative). For us progressives, it's a horrible shame how the two leading Dems think they have to keep ( Read more... )

Here are some intriguing closing remarks from President Phil Chase, a character whom I first quoted in this post, from the end of Kim Stanley Robinson's epic trilogy of near-future environmental catastrophe: Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, and Sixty Days and Counting. (These books are far better than their hokey titles suggest.)

( Economics-related )

"If today is a typical day on planet earth . . . [w]e will lose 40 to 250 species, and no one knows whether the number is 40 or 250."
-David Orr, Earth in Mind, 1994

If 40 was a lower limit ten years ago, does that mean we knew of about 40 extinctions per day? Is anyone cataloguing their names? A cursory Web search turns up some fairly extensive ( Read more... )

"Man is the driving force behind what could well prove to be the last and greatest mass extinction, as species are lost at a several hundred times the 'natural' background extinction rate ( Read more... )

"No one knows how many other species are this close to extinction. We don't even know how many species of animals and plants there are altogether in the world. A staggering 1.4 million have been found and identified so far, but some experts believe that there are another 30 million yet to be discovered ( Read more... )

What if humanity handily survives the death of the biosphere? What if we sustain ourselves with vat-grown yeast and algae and live in Asimov's Caves of Steel beneath a nearly lifeless landscape, with the blood of trillions or quadrillions of creatures on our hands ( Read more... )

I think the problem with some people who deny that there is an environmental crisis, or that its solution requires any drastic societal change, is that they value freedom too highly ( Read more... )

"The Sixth Great Extinction" is not just the way anarcho-primitivists like Derrick Jensen and the folks at eces.org describe what's happening to our planet. Many scientists also believe that's what's happening ( Read more... )

A Basic Trend

1. According to modern “scale” economics, producing more and selling more results in more profits. As a result, corporations tend to produce as much as they can, as fast as they can.

2. Continuing technological development ensures that the maximum production rate keeps going up.

3. The living natural resources used by corporations to ( Read more... )

The fight to save the environment must take precedence over battles against terror and tyranny as well as poverty and inequity. Here’s why:

Millions, if not billions of people currently face the serious threat of death from starvation, disease, or war. At the moment, starvation is largely a problem of the poor nations, whose populations increase ( Read more... )