To me, it seems the most common sense of conclusions: if you keep dumping any single thing into a confined space, eventually you’ll create a problem. Water is necessary for the human body. But drinking water to excess produces “water intoxication,” which causes drowsiness, muscle weakness, and in extreme cases, death. Oxygen is necessary for…
Small actions support large changes
We focus much of our political energy about climate change, like much of our political energy in general, at the national level. What laws can Congress pass? What executive orders can the President implement? And don’t get me wrong – these are important questions. When Congress passes laws or the President implements executive orders on…
If you want climate action, take climate action.
Outlandish heat waves around the globe. Powerful hurricanes lashing our shores. Disastrous fires sweeping through forests and people’s homes. Droughts that affect our food supply. More and more people can see the pressing and immediate impacts of climate change on themselves and those around them. At the national level, two-thirds of Americans think that the…
Electrification is a vital part of addressing climate change locally.
Climate change is at the top of many of our minds. The IPCC reports over the past few years have made clear the imperative that we reduce carbon emissions immediately. A key method for local communities to impact the climate crisis is to move away from gas infrastructure to electric. If we shift from gas…
Creatures of pattern
We human beings search for patterns. We look for them in the weather, in the habits of those around us, in the lives of other creatures and in our own. We especially search for patterns in tragedies. We don’t want to believe that horrible events could happen at random to anyone, let alone to us…
Choosing the Earth — our home
The Earth is a regenerative system. It reproduces what it needs to survive on a timescale of billions of years. And for most of humanity's existence, humans have lived within Earth's regenerative cycles. Over the past millennium, we have more and more rapidly broken from those cycles, taking the planet’s resources, converting them to products…
A real chance to address the climate crisis
This fall, for the first time in a decade, our government has a real chance to take action and address the climate crisis. But our chance is a narrow one. To understand the nature of this moment, it could be helpful to trace how we have learned about this crisis over the past 30 years…
Unmaking this world
This piece was also published in the Oak Park newspaper Wednesday Journal. This world will be unmade. Will it be by the creep of increasing vapors altering the chemistry of our atmosphere and oceans? By the waters and winds of a weather cataclysm? By the scorching inferno of an unstoppable fire? By the armed conflict…
Choosing self is death. Choosing us is life.
There is no problem. There is a problem, but it’s not our fault. There is a problem, but it’s not that big a deal… This is a huge problem, but there is nothing we can do! Let’s just enjoy ourselves... This seems to be the arc of awareness for some of us on both climate…
Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act is part of our collective solution to climate change
This essay also appeared in the local Oak Park newspaper Wednesday Journal. Here in Oak Park, Illinois, it can feel like we are insulated from the worst effects of climate change. Huge hurricanes, massive flooding, and horrible heat waves all intensified by the energy of a warming planet can seem like someone else’s problem. And…
Entwining 