Steven Nadler: We have an ethical obligation to relieve individual animal suffering
Last winter, unforgettable video footage online showed a starving polar bear, struggling in its Arctic hunting grounds. Because of global warming, the ice was thin and the food supply was … Continue reading
Emily De Ferrari: On Killing Flies with Dr. Seuss
I killed them in the window. I killed them on the door. And when I killed a hundred flies I kept on killing more. Why is my heart so cruel, … Continue reading
Al Maginnes: The Book of Forgetting
By now she’s tired of stories spotlighting her early deeds, actions too endearing to be plotted, or the years before she came, blanks of time distant as fires in the … Continue reading
Dani Burlison: What Wildfires Do to Our Minds
A Northern California community offers mental health first aid to survivors of devastating fires. It’s late spring, and I’m hiking Sugarloaf Ridge State Park in Sonoma County with therapist, ecopsychologist, … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: Europe’s Heat Wave
Here’s what you give up in a heat wave here in southern France. You don’t leave the house much, since the paved streets can reach well above one hundred degrees … Continue reading
Video: Physicist Emmy Noether’s Theory of Symmetry (animation)
. This short animated film by Rosanna Wan explains how the early 20th century German mathematician Emmy Noether dramatically transformed how scientists think about the physical world when she revealed … Continue reading
Tim Radford: Hothouse Earth could soon be unavoidable
Researchers say the world may be approaching a tipping point, followed by a dangerous slide towards Hothouse Earth, an overheated planet. Human actions threaten to push the planet into a … Continue reading
Joan McGregor: What philosophers have to say about eating meat
WeWork, a co-working and office space company, recently made a company policy not to serve or reimburse meals that include meat. WeWork’s co-founder and chief culture officer, Miguel McKelvey, said … Continue reading
Walter Bargen: Dogs of Beauty
Somewhere in some other place their kind are wild, meant for the verdant and exotic, and on the west slopes of the coastal range, near Palos Verdes, where the foothills … Continue reading
Mel Gurtov: While Rome (and Most Everywhere Else) Burns
The Trump administration is taking action, but in precisely the wrong direction. . The sky above Soda Bay, Calif. is seen on July 30, 2018 as the River Fire burns. … Continue reading
Michael Simms: The Garden and the Drone
We come to the garden because it is beautiful. Arborvitae, hydrangea, anemone— Even the names are beautiful. The men who call themselves our leaders Seem far away. We feel … Continue reading
Sara Bir: A Brief History of the Feral Blackberry
The Himalayan blackberry was introduced to North America as a food crop. Like a Gremlin doused with water, it escaped its confinement and became almost impossible to eradicate. . Blackberries … Continue reading
Stacy Bannerman: Is Climate the Worst Casualty of War?
The money misspent on the Iraq War—a war for oil, let’s not forget— could have purchased the planetary conversion to renewable energy. Just sit with that a moment. . “The … Continue reading
Jessica Corbett: California Fires Are the Nightmare that Climate Scientists Long Predicted
Wildfires ravaging the state have “spawned bizarre pyrotechnics, from firenados to towering pyrocumulus clouds that evoke a nuclear detonation.” . Flames from the Carr Fire burn through trees and a … Continue reading
