Ecology | World Change Cafe

Our Plunder Of Nature Will End Up Killing Capitalism And Our Obscene Lifestyles

To anyone who is paying attention, things look doomed. Fortunately for American capitalism, nobody is paying attention. They never have. [...more]

Capitalism, Consumerism, Ecology, Environment, Global Warming, Government, Sustainability Comments (0)

Nature’s Bottom Line

Ecological collapse is all around. But faith in economic growth as the only path to prosperity shows no sign of fading. Wayne Ellwood examines the folly of endless growth on a finite planet. [...more]

Capitalism, Ecology, Environment, Global Warming, Government, Sustainability Comments (0)

Humans vs. the environment – A thought experiment

Protecting the environment isn't a "liberal" idea; it's everybody's business. Liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, the environment provides life support for us all, and if we fail to recognize that, we are truly doomed as a civilization. [...more]

Civilization, Ecology, Environment, Global Warming, Population, Sustainability Comments (0)

An Ominous Warning on the Effects of Ocean Acidification

A new study says the seas are acidifying ten times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred. And, the study concludes, current changes in ocean chemistry due to the burning of fossil fuels may portend a new wave of die-offs. [...more]

Ecology, Environment, Global Warming, Ocean Comments (0)

There Really Is Only One Kind Of sustainability

Like the word green , sustainable or sustainability has become the buzzword of the millennia. Corporations and governments of the left or right feel compelled to dress up the most ecologically invasive development proposal or economic activity with assurances that it is sustainable . But there is ultimately only one sustainability . The sustainability of the whole, not its constituent parts. [...more]

Ecology, Environment, Green Living, Population, Sustainability Comments (1)

Bluefin Tuna Loses Out

Idiots. Morons. Blockheads. Numbskulls. Nothing quite captures the mind-withering stupidity of what has just happened in Doha. Swayed by Japan and a number of other countries, some of them doubtless bought off in traditional fashion, the members of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) have decided not to protect the Atlantic bluefin tuna. [...more]

Animal Issues, Ecology, Environment, Ocean, Sustainability, Wildlife Comments (0)

As If Humanity Actually Mattered

I am about to make you feel uncomfortable. Sorry, but there’s no way of avoiding it if I’m going to tell this story as it should be told. You are a human being; a member of the species Homo sapiens sapiens, although the second “sapiens” was only put there because we like to feel we are important. Remember that. There used to be other species within the genus “Homo” but they died out, or were possibly killed off, most recently a few thousand years ago when Homo neanderthalensis finally succumbed to the insurgent sapiens somewhere on the Iberian Peninsula. [...more]

Consumerism, Ecology, Economics, Environment, Government, Poverty, Social Justice Comments (0)

Playing for Keeps

PEOPLE WHO READ MY WORK often say, “Okay, so it’s clear you don’t like this culture, but what do you want to replace it?” The answer is that I don’t want any one culture to replace this culture. I want ten thousand cultures to replace this culture, each one arising organically from its own place. That’s how humans inhabited the planet (or, more precisely, their landbases, since each group inhabited a place, and not the whole world, which is precisely the point), before this culture set about reducing all cultures to one. [...more]

Ecology, Environment, Global Warming, Sustainability Comments (0)

Shrimp’s Dirty Secrets: Why America’s Favorite Seafood Is a Health and Environmental Nightmare

Americans love their shrimp. It's the most popular seafood in the country, but unfortunately much of the shrimp we eat are a cocktail of chemicals, harvested at the expense of one of the world's productive ecosystems. Worse, guidelines for finding some kind of "sustainable shrimp" are so far nonexistent. [...more]

Animal Ag, Animal Issues, Diet, Ecology, Environment, Health, Ocean, Sustainability Comments (0)

Who Will Build The Ark?

The single most important cause of global warming the urbanization of humanity is also potentially the principal solution to the problem of human survival in the later twenty-first century. Left to the dismal politics of the present, of course, cities of poverty will almost certainly become the coffins of hope; but all the more reason that we must start thinking like Noah. Since most of history s giant trees have already been cut down, a new Ark will have to be constructed out of the materials that a desperate humanity finds at hand in insurgent communities, pirate technologies, bootlegged media, rebel science and forgotten utopias [...more]

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