by Omega | Nov 20, 2022 | Environment
My own “Oh Shit!” moment came in early 2009, two years after I began writing on the science and geopolitics of climate change for Agence France-Presse. I had reported on scores of peer-reviewed studies, talked to scientists, attended UN climate summits, and...
by Omega | Nov 20, 2022 | Polycrisis
In this fourth installment of conversations with Daniel Schmachtenberger, we dive deeper into the nuances of humans using energy, materials and technology. Human’s ability to develop and use tools is one of our greatest strengths—yet has also led to increasing...
by Omega | Nov 20, 2022 | Environment
You can never really see the future, only imagine it, then try to make sense of the new world when it arrives. Just a few years ago, climate projections for this century looked quite apocalyptic, with most scientists warning that continuing “business as usual” would...
by Omega | Nov 20, 2022 | Polycrisis
What crisis? A year ago, one might be forgiven for thinking there was a moment of relative calm for wealthy countries: a year of vaccinations had made the pandemic less acute, inflation hadn’t yet provoked interest rate hikes, and labor markets were strong. In the...
by Omega | Nov 20, 2022 | Polycrisis
We’ve all been living in a state of permanent crisis, a “permacrisis” if you will, according to lexicographers at the U.K.-based Collins Dictionary who have anointed it the word of the year for 2022. The portmanteau describes the feeling of “living through [a] period...
by Omega | Nov 20, 2022 | Politics
We live whipsawed by “polycrisis.” That’s the word historian Adam Tooze uses to describe multiple, simultaneous systemic crises that intensify as they collide, resulting in dire and deadly disruptions. The question we confront is whether we can rouse our...
by Omega | Nov 20, 2022 | Environment
A team led by Emily Elhacham, at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot, Israel, performed a series of staggeringly difficult calculations and concluded that 2020 was the year in which the weight of “human-made mass”—all the stuff we’ve built and...
by Omega | Nov 20, 2022 | Culture
Anonymous graffiti artist Banksy, who is known for sending political messages, has revealed a new mural on a building destroyed by shelling in Ukraine. Banksy’s work, which the artist posted on Instagram Friday to 11.2 million followers, features a...
by Omega | Nov 18, 2022 | Resilience
There was a time not long ago when disasters would strike one at a time, and communities would have time to recover and rebuild. Today, however, there is a new normal regarding disasters, one in which most do not occur as isolated events and instead seem to pile on...
by Omega | Nov 18, 2022 | Economy
This article focuses on philanthropy as a territory of transition, rebalancing wealth, knowledge and power while repairing historical injustices. It explores that philanthropy can exacerbates our current exploitative system through undemocratic and unaccountable...
