Through rampant overfishing, pollution, and coastal destruction, humanity has inflicted severe damage on the oceans and its inhabitants for centuries. But conservation successes, while still isolated, demonstrate the remarkable resilience of the seas.
Antarctica represents the simple, extreme end of conditions for life. It can be seen as a ‘canary in the mine’, demonstrating patterns of change we can expect to see elsewhere.
Petrochemicals are rapidly becoming the largest driver of global oil consumption. Fossil fuel companies are trying to offset losses from the renewable energy transition with petrochemicals, which carry other environmental costs.
Soviet scientists tried for decades to network their nation but failed. The first global computer network emerged thanks to capitalists behaving like cooperative socialists, not socialists behaving like competitive capitalists.
It took an epidemic and near-shutdown of the Chinese economy to precipitate a permanent ban on the consumption and trade of wildlife. But the conditions that triggered the emergence of COVID-19 also exist in plain sight on factory farms.
Researchers think it is the destruction of biodiversity that creates conditions for new viruses and diseases such as COVID-19. A new discipline is emerging that focuses on the connections among the wellbeing of humans, other living things, and entire ecosystems.
