Vox Populi

A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.

Esther Duflo: Tax the rich — and save the planet

Nobel Prize-winning economist Esther Duflo calculates the staggering cost of wealthy nations pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, proving that getting billionaires to pay their fair share in taxes is the best way to cover these damages.

November 18, 2025 · 4 Comments

Molly Fisk: The Northeast Edge of Normal

parents of children
I’ll never meet are gone into the open
arms of the sky and the sea and their
sons and daughters with them how
can this happen again

October 18, 2025 · 11 Comments

Derrick Z. Jackson: Protecting Puffins in Maine Is an Emotional Commitment

After contorting under boulders for puffin chicks, chasing skittish tern chicks in the weeds and sitting as stone-silent sentinels in bird blinds to observe feeding and behavior, the five-person research crew on Seal Island relaxed in their work cabin in the orange and purple sunset glow.

October 15, 2025 · 6 Comments

Baron Wormser: On a Sentence by Albert Camus

Sometimes, the illness of our world, the death-in-life that turns nature into nothing more than the source of raw material, seems so boundless that throwing the lasso of language on it seems impossible.

October 5, 2025 · 13 Comments

Michelle Bitting: Before Disappearing into the Fog

here near the sea
soaked in fog
where feathers of radiance
streak the sky
the blood of light

October 4, 2025 · 15 Comments

Frida Berrigan: Preparing for Scarcity

The truck wheel’s inner tube was right in front of me, no longer half-submerged in the pond’s late summer muck. After so many hot weeks without rain, the water had dried up and the garbage was completely exposed.

September 25, 2025 · 4 Comments

Abby Zimet: Optuse Sexual Predator Approved

In honor of his speech at the UN, wherein he raved, bloviated and browbeat world leaders, patriots have erected a new statue in D.C. of Trump and his “closest friend” Jeffrey Epstein

September 24, 2025 · 8 Comments

Tom Engelhardt: A Potentially World-Ending President

A Coming Hell on Earth?

September 10, 2025 · 4 Comments

Sharon Kumar: The Hidden Cost of AI — How Energy-Hungry Algorithms Are Fueling the Climate Crisis

As AI adoption accelerates, its soaring energy demands and carbon footprint raise urgent concerns about sustainability, highlighting the need for greener technologies and policies to mitigate its environmental impact.

September 1, 2025 · 9 Comments

Derrick Z. Jackson: Administration Cuts Will Leave No Refuge for Wildlife

Smyrna, Delaware—Bald eagles descended to pose on the banks and boulders on the mudflats. Shorebirds bobbed in shallow pools. Great blue herons, great egrets, and snowy egrets snapped up fish … Continue reading

July 21, 2025 · 8 Comments

Alfred McCoy: America’s New Industrial Revolution

Ten years from now, Trump will be remembered ruefully for having used the full force of presidential power in a failed, futile effort to halt the tides of technological change that, by then, will have launched this country headlong into the world’s new industrial revolution.

July 9, 2025 · 7 Comments

Miles O’Brien, et al: The scientific impact of Trump’s cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service

Experts have been warning for months that drastic and sudden cuts at the National Weather Service by Trump could impair their forecasting ability and endanger lives during the storm season. Here is what the science reporter for PBS said in February.

July 7, 2025 · 8 Comments

Patrice Taddonio: 10 Documentaries on the Science, Politics and Impact of Our Changing Climate

From early research into climate change by fossil fuel companies, to the organizations that fought the scientific establishment to shift the climate conversation in the U.S., to the role of climate change in deadly American wildfires.

June 20, 2025 · 6 Comments

Teresa Coady: Rethinking Climate Action | A New Guideline for Planetary Health

A new framework for planetary health reveals that our Industrial Age mindset—not human needs—is the real driver of environmental collapse.

June 17, 2025 · 2 Comments

Archives