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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Listen to "System Warning" here. Refrain: Breakdown, Planetary system warning. Breakdown, Our society's in mourning. x2 Verse 1: Burning up the buried energy created over eons, Just to have the sparkly stuff that capitalism feeds on. Dumping all these gases in our atmospheric system, We've desensitized ourselves so we don't feel the fear of this…
The cicada emerges from its burrow. It spent 17 years underground and has just appeared into the morning sun for the first time. Time to stretch its wings -- one flap, two, then more. It is moving along the ground, first slowly, then quickly. Ready to attempt full-fledged flight through the air, it pauses. A…
Entwining 