A lot of people are feeling like they don't have much fight left in them. There is a perceptible turning inward. People are avoiding the news in record numbers. It's understandable; reality seems to be unfolding in a fun house mirror. It feels as though someone put the '60s mantra "turn on, tune in, drop out" in a martini shaker, gave it a good bruising, and poured out the words: Turn off, tune out, and drop back from the ledge! Read More
It’s hard to imagine a less plausible venue for the annual UN-sponsored conference on climate than Azerbaijan. Baku, the capital, has a walled medieval centre that’s worth a day or two, but offshore, the shallow Caspian Sea is littered with a century’s worth of old and new oil wells. Read More
There has been a ten-year war within the geological community over what to call the epoch in which we live right now, and an international panel of two dozen senior geologists finally has delivered its verdict. We are not living in a new geological epoch after all. The Anthropocene (the Human era) is now, in George Orwell’s terms, "oldspeak." Read More