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The Bulletin: May 15-21, 2025
The Bulletin: May 15-21, 2025 This past week’s articles of interest… If you’re new to my writing, check out this overview. Pharaohs to AI: The Long Ascent of the Superorganism | Art Berman No Economies Without Biodiversity: Why Our Markets Rely on the Complexity of Nature Wetlands Disappearing Three Times Faster than Forests | UNFCCC […]
Deforestation and world population sustainability: a quantitative analysis
Deforestation and world population sustainability: a quantitative analysis Abstract In this paper we afford a quantitative analysis of the sustainability of current world population growth in relation to the parallel deforestation process adopting a statistical point of view. We consider a simplified model based on a stochastic growth process driven by a continuous time random […]
Towards a great forest transition – part 2
Towards a great forest transition – part 2 A fundamental sea-change is required in the global approach to tackling deforestation, and it requires a new focus on engendering institutions of cooperation rather than competition. The ‘boycott palm oil’ approach has become a staple strategy in parts of the global environment movement, especially in the West. […]
‘Factfulness’ may calm you down, but won’t change our ecocidal trajectory
‘Factfulness’ may calm you down, but won’t change our ecocidal trajectory Here and there people have been referring to author Hans Rosling’s idea of “factfulness” as an antidote to gloomy thinking about the trajectory of the human enterprise. Rosling writes: [T]he vast majority of the world’s population live somewhere in the middle of the income scale. Perhaps […]
Rainforest on Fire
RAINFOREST ON FIRE On the Front Lines of Bolsonaro’s War on the Amazon, Brazil’s Forest Communities Fight Against Climate Catastrophe THE RIVER BASIN at the center of Latin America called the Amazon is roughly the size of Australia. Created at the beginning of the world by a smashing of tectonic plates, it was the cradle of […]
Abandon All Hope: Moving Toward an Existentialist Environmentalism
Abandon All Hope: Moving Toward an Existentialist Environmentalism As the Earth’s ecological systems upon which we depend accelerate in their slouch towards Bethlehem, our society faces an existential crisis. The effects of climate change are far direr than we initially expected. Global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have risen to 415 ppm for the first time […]
Western Industrial Farming Is Eating Our Forests and Accelerating Climate Change
Image: Shutterstock Western Industrial Farming Is Eating Our Forests and Accelerating Climate Change The dynamics of deforestation are increasingly inseparable from the growing demand for food from consumers in the most developed countries. Humans are eating the world’s forests. Not directly, of course—but a spate of new studies shows we might as well be. This is, […]
Saving the Planet
SAVING THE PLANET I have often found myself wincing as I hear people talking about saving the planet. It’s felt wrong! I can hear the voices of condemnation screaming at me now … ‘What a horrible person you are not to agree with saving the planet.’… but let me explain. I’m the same age as Geoff […]
Ecocide as Creative Destruction
Ecocide as Creative Destruction According to the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), since 1970 60% of the mammals, birds, fish and reptiles on the planet have been driven to extinction. To the extent that the WWF has it right, climate change accounts for less than 10% of these losses (graph below). As important and logistically complex […]
We ignore urgent global warnings at our peril
We ignore urgent global warnings at our peril City lights in this nighttime view of Earth from space provides “an intuitively graspable view of our planet”. (Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Flickr) A year ago, we revisited the 1992 “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity.” Signed by a majority of Nobel laureates in sciences […]
Humanity Sealed Its Own Fate: 15,000 Scientists Sign A “Doomsday Warning”
Humanity Sealed Its Own Fate: 15,000 Scientists Sign A “Doomsday Warning” A catastrophic warning about humanity’s impending doom was just signed by 15,000 scientists; they all agree that we’ve already sealed our fate. The signed letter, which was apparently first written in 1992, claims all of the predictions made by scientists have come true except […]
There’s No APP for That: Technology and Morality in the Age of Climate Change, Overpopulation, and Biodiversity Loss
THERE’S NO APP FOR THAT: TECHNOLOGY AND MORALITY IN THE AGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE, OVERPOPULATION, AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS Download Listen Embed It has become something of a mantra within the sustainability movement that innovations in technology will save the world and all of us in it, but we tend to forget that technology played a […]
How Forest Loss Is Leading To a Rise in Human Disease
How Forest Loss Is Leading To a Rise in Human Disease A growing body of scientific evidence shows that the felling of tropical forests creates optimal conditions for the spread of mosquito-borne scourges, including malaria and dengue. Primates and other animals are also spreading disease from cleared forests to people. In Borneo, an island shared by […]
