Here’s a short video featuring the Republican (of all parties) mayor of a town in Texas (of all places), making the point that their commitment to renewable energy is driving down utility bills, while they pursue that radical notion of …
Tag: loss of biodiversity
Indigenous Groups, Environmentalists Score Rare Victory
This may sound radical, but some people suggest that continuing to build out the fossil fuel infrastructure might not be such a good idea, given the horrific environmental consequences: water pollution, lung damage, climate change, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, …
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We Have All the Knowledge We Need
Here’s a photo I just took in downtown Los Angeles. The ultimate building blocks of the universe and the nature of human consciousness are very complex things, and it’s possible that both are beyond the ken of humankind, especially the …
Predicting Our Civilization’s Future
David Benatar, a self-described “anti-natalist” philosopher, believes that life is so bad, so painful, that human beings should stop having children for reasons of compassion. From this article: “While good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, …
Tagged with: 200000 groups on this planet whose missions are environmental and social justice, consumerism drives toxicity, droughts, famines, greedy people don't care about climate change, land loss, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, planet ravaged by climate change, water shortages, wildfires
Looking at the Future of Life on Earth
A friend sent me this wonderful piece in which Popular Mechanics lists its top predictions on what life on this planet will be like in the year 2050 and beyond. I hope you’ll check it out; it’s really worthwhile, and …
Was Obama Terrified of Coal?
Frequent commenter MarcoPolo writes: How much difference a mere nine months can make! One of President Obama’s few real accomplishments was his irrational hatred of the US coal industry. In a mere eight years, President Obama contributed to massive job …
Comprehending the Universe Would Be Nice, But It Could Be Impossible–Or Of No Real Value
As we learned in the early 20th Century, depending on the circumstance, light can behave either as a particle or a wave. Want to see the wave nature of light? Set up a double slit experiment (see photo on left) …
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Fighting for Environmental Protection
Though we tend to think of current-day U.S. politics as being the most contentious ever in our history, that’s not the case. There have been many such periods, starting with the American Revolution itself, in which 70% of the colonists …
The Arc of the Moral Universe: What Can We Expect?
Here’s a question posed by a certain Steve Charleston: I have a simple question for people of faith around the world: must it always be so? Must human history always be written as the aftermath of competition between the few …
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Tagged with: Age of Reason, ascendancy of Donald Trump, but it bends towards justice, Climate Change, end of Apartheid, Enlightenment, human civilization has become increasingly rational less brutal, it's up to every person of decency and compassion to make a daily effort to bend the arc of the moral universe in the right direction, loss of biodiversity, Magna Carta, ocean acidification, prospect of world fascism, Renaissance, the abolition of slavery, The Arc of the Moral Universe, The arc of the moral universe is long, the Geneva Convention, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, U.S. Constitution, women's suffrage
Optimism in the Face of Environmental Pressures
A young reader notes: (Through my religion), I now see hope for this planet where I had not seen any before. I was in fear that I would see the end of the planet during my lifetime. Now I see …
Tagged with: environmentalist, hugely toxic effects of fossil fuels, leaders of the world don’t care about climate change, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, survive environmental damage, wiping out the entirety of the progress that had been made in the direction of environmental stewardship over the past half-century in the U.S.
