Breeding obvious: Population moratorium…
…civilisation’s best shot at saving itself and what survives of the natural world.
Last habitable landmass must lead covid–climate mobilisation
Last habitable landmass to emerge, and to be inhabited, Aotearoa, should now play to its strengths by demonstrating life after zero-carbon, and covid-19. New Zealanders have never been backward about being world-beating, whether sailing black-hulled America’s Cup yachts or…
ipcc-understates-threat understatement
Bulletins proclaiming that the ipcc 1.5° report understates climate threat are literally understatements of epochal proportions. Self-reinforcing climate feedbacks already irreversibly underway signal civilization’s ever-growing greenhouse gas…
On the unspeakable ephemerality of beaches
Relying on economics to salvage a survivable climate is the 21st century equivalent of a standing down an army and leaving defence of the realm to wizardry. With the United States Senate summarily scuttling the Green New Deal, it might seem…
Odds against tomorrow without ultimate sacrifice
As if its bureaucrats needed any encouragement. Trump’s America now has its Environmental Protection Authority peddling the equivalent of Lisa Simpson’s Ignorital©. The agency requires its officials to lace their public utterances with phrases contrived to…
Paris climate accord not the half of it
Not all agree it’s a bad thing Trump’s made good on his campaign promise to pull the United States out of Paris. One climate researcher argues that the Trump circus could do less damage outside of the tent, than in it. But regardless, a bad-tempered…
Loose affiliation of billionaires and moratorium babies
Bill and Melinda Gates are getting a lot of unwelcome attention. They are bearing the brunt of the Guardian’s otherwise well-meaning fossil-fuels divestment campaign. To paint Bill and Melinda Gates the face of divestment reluctance is a bit rich. For starters…
Sole shot at salvation calls for youth to withhold labour
The Green Party doesn’t understand anthropogenic global warming: “…we can expect droughts to be more extreme and strike more often if we don’t take global action.” Never mind if—droughts will be more extreme and will strike more often, they…
Incalculable celebrity of being the 1 generation in 40 million
Chances, overall, were nominally 1 in 40.01 million. The chances, that is, of being the generation that held the key to the survival of 40 million generations of human beings. Earth has existed for 4.54 billion years. Optimistically, the planet will…
Survival in the hands of generation 10 001
Sustainability could be the death of us. Bursting beyond the seven billion milestone, and with two billion poor and one billion poor and hungry, the global population is projected to swell to between 10 and 16 billion by the end of the century. In 2011, human…
Much-needed storms of our granddaughters
Dick Smith writes entirely eloquently. Which should mean that Dick Smith’s Population Crisis gets to be read by a usefully broad audience. It also helps that his just-published book, at 198 pages, is not too dauntingly lengthy, given the inherently daunting…
Dick Smith to Murdoch: Be a Beaverbrook
In a recent book, Terri Irwin makes this perceptive comment: “In a hundred years, what difference is it going to make worrying about two acres of land. We need to focus on the real change that will make the world a better place for our children and…”
Storm sidestepped over fewer grandchildren
In one notable respect, he was not preaching to the converted. With the possible exception of the odd journalist, the 350 people who packed the 250-seat Auckland University lecture theatre on Thursday evening had been ready to hear everything…
New Year’s resolution breeding obvious
By next New Year’s Day, the population will have just reached seven billion, yet propaganda abounds claiming that it’s not the approaching-seven-billion souls currently inhabiting Planet Earth, but the unsustainable lifestyles of a small proportion of the world’s...