O Pantanal brasileiro é a maior área úmida tropical do mundo, cobrindo uma área quase do tamanho da Grã-Bretanha. Só que hoje, não está tão molhada. Após um verão de seca, estão ocorrendo incêndios catastróficos que já devastaram 2,4 milhões de hectares de terra este ano. (Isso é mais do que queimou na Califórnia, Oregon […]
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World on Fire
Brazil’s Pantanal is the world’s largest tropical wetland, covering an area nearly the size of Britain. Only today, it isn’t so wet. After a summer of drought, catastrophic fires are raging that have devastated 2.4 million hectares of land already this year. (That’s more than has burned in California, Oregon, and Washington combined.) Its precious […]
Numb
The title of this essay comes from a heartbreaking three-minute film made by a teenage girl, Liv McNeil. Simply yet precisely crafted, it documents the withering of a teenager’s life in the time of Covid lockdown. The camera lingers over photographs of her having fun with her friends. Then onto her computer screen, her assignments, […]
The Conspiracy Myth
The other day I was amused to read a critique of The Coronation in which the author was absolutely certain that I am a closet conspiracy theorist. He was so persuasive that I myself almost believed it. What is a conspiracy theory anyway? Sometimes the term is deployed against anyone who questions authority, dissents from dominant paradigms, or thinks that hidden interests influence our leading institutions.
The Coronation
Covid-19 is showing us that when humanity is united in common cause, phenomenally rapid change is possible. None of the world’s problems are technically difficult to solve; they originate in human disagreement. In coherency, humanity’s creative powers are boundless.
Xylella: Supervillain or Symptom
Of Almonds and Olives Once again the dreaded plant pathogen Xylella fastidiosa has come onto my radar. I first wrote about it in the context of olive trees in southern Europe; now it is affecting almond trees as well. In the old us-versus-them, conquest-of-nature paradigm, the response to a deadly plant disease is to exert […]