It was the Late Jurassic. Dinosaurs were still around. The planet was covered in very shallow, warm seas full of plant life. But the oceans were so warm that oxygen couldn’t penetrate them. Anything that died took a very long time to decompose without oxygen. As billions of algae and plankton perished and fell to … Continue reading A Future History of Oil
When I first started gardening, I made one of the most common beginner errors: mistakenly thinking that gardening was all about taking care of plants. It seemed like a perfectly logical assumption at the time, one which however would prove no less than catastrophic just a few months on, as I watched the plant death … Continue reading Conversations with the Afterlife: The Cursed Garden
It was a balmy November morning when Mr Mosquito stretched his long legs for the very first time, and started to crawl out of his egg like a Houdini. He quickly swam to the surface, focused his big, dark eyes, and took a good look around him: “Wow, it’s the world!”, he shouted to himself, … Continue reading November Mosquito
I normally don’t expect a nature hike in the clean suburban air of my beach town to turn into a back-to-the future, post-apocalyptic excursion into the remnants of an extinct society. But hey ho, after we had climbed up the hill, enjoyed spectacular views and traversed a forest that was literally dying for a drink of October … Continue reading They Came. They Danced. They Went Extinct
Contrary to what our impressive technological milestones suggest, we have never been in charge of our fate. Like any organism striving to maximize its chances of survival, our choices were blindly driven by expansion: economic growth, domination, population increase - whatever it took, whatever the cost to us or the planet. From our humble beginnings as monocellular life … Continue reading Designed For Extinction: Why Humans Developed the Wrong Type of Intelligence
As the climate slips further into uncharted territory, it is time climate science admitted that it is in uncharted territory itself. Climate science is quickly becoming an art of unreliable speculation: the models, theorems, assumptions and parameters it operates upon are based on a planet that no longer exists. Just as we were beginning to … Continue reading In The Age Of The Great Meteorological Uncertainty, We Need A New Type Of Climate Science
Our brain has a dangerous affinity for stability: it desperately wants to believe in an unchanging world, even as the world changes. This make-believe stability evolved as a survival mechanism that was fundamental to our feelings of safety, allowing us to "keep calm and carry on" even as our world went through mayhem. Our brain … Continue reading Collapse Denial and the Trauma Response
Years ago, when I warned that one day the climate crisis will be forgotten, many didn’t believe me. Trawling through social media posts in the aftermath of Helene, I came across the pain, the suffering, anger and desperation described in the personal accounts of witnesses who lost everything: their house, their loved ones, sometimes an … Continue reading After Helene: How To Make the Climate Crisis Totally Disappear
The entirety of humanity has become one big business, and each of us is, willingly or not, part of this ever-growing, destructive, polluting, utterly pointless corporation. What is the point of working when there is hardly a job left on the planet which doesn’t guarantee the end of civilisation? The problem with jobs today is … Continue reading Planet of the Working Zombies
Every economy which fails to manage its growth eventually destroys itself. Humanity has embraced continuous expansion, a concept no different than cancer. Pausing or stopping growth altogether is essential for all living organisms - and this is why every single species on this planet comes with genes that are dedicated to managing growth. Degrowth is … Continue reading Biology Lessons In Degrowth
George Tsakraklides 