Australia’s a hot spot for climate change politics, climate change science, and climate change suffering

Nature News “Global warming tops the agenda as climate brings down a third Australian prime minister” As this article makes clear, Australia is an interesting country. It’s not “ground-zero” for climate change per se, but compared to other developed countries it is suffering from climate change in rather profound ways. Some of this suffering relates to Read More

Is it possible that Trump’s science-adviser is a stealth climate-change accepter?

Nature “Trump’s science-adviser pick hedges on climate change” There’s not a lot of reason to think that anyone can soften President Trump’s irresponsible stance on climate change action, but maybe Kelvin Droegemeier is trying to sneak some climate realism into the White House? It’s bizarre how these things work, but I am actually somewhat more optimistic Read More

Food is personal, sometimes ethical, but rarely political

Image courtesy of Nick Gray via Wikimedia Commons The Chronicle of Higher Education “The Vegetarian Lesson” This article by Chad Lavin neatly distills ideas and issues that I have been grappling with for more than half my life. As a current-day ecologist who was a vegetarian more than a decade before I took my first ecology course, Read More

Would a “labor economy” lead to different outcomes than the “capital economy”?

Evonomics “A Simple Way to Decrease Income Inequality” I am intrigued by the idea that measurements of economic success impact our economic decisions and therefore our economic outcomes. A persistent obsession with capital has created an economic system that responds to capital. But what if employment condition — “labor” — was the fundamental unit of Read More

Crucial climate talks in Paris take place in a socially repressive environment

At Paris, two equally-nihilistic cultures clash, but where do the people get a seat at the table? Today crucial climate talks are under way in Paris, France amid massive police presence and an atmosphere of social repression. The message is to “stay off the streets” as the leaders of world (and a few monarchs and businesspeople) meet Read More

Formation of the Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution has the potential to catalyze research into how culture evolves

I was excited to recently discover that The Evolution Institute, a “think-tank that doesn’t just think” about how to apply evolutionary understanding to human problems, is working to foster a new professional society dedicated to the study of cultural evolution. Dubbed the Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution (SSCE), this emerging society endeavors to Read More

Darwin in social context? Ric Brown’s fascinating survey of some important contemporaries

Until Darwin “Syllabus: Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud (Pratt Institute, Fall 2015)” Ric has been teaching this course for years and at some point I need to sit in. It presents a fascinating look at four very important thinkers that greatly influenced the trajectory of the twentieth century. I think that it is particularly interesting to Read More

Is the threat of regulation enough to incentivize cooperation from nitrogen polluters?

National Public Radio All Things Considered “It’s Raining Nitrogen In A Colorado Park. Farmers Can Help Make It Stop” What I find interesting about this example is how the local nature of this problem creates greater incentives for “voluntary” measures taken by polluters to reduce the impacts of their polluting activities. Because the effects of Read More

In the end, climate compromise comes down to writing and editing

National Public Radio Morning Edition “Editing The Climate Talkers: Punctuation’s Effect On Earth’s Fate” I would suggest that the future of human civilization depends on reaching an international agreement to put a halt to — and partially reverse — anthropogenic climate change. Although the history of climate change agreements is pretty fraught, it does appear Read More

The forces of cultural evolution push hard on political humor