Amid a horrific human tragedy of sickness and death, much of it taking place in hospitals staffed by brave but overworked and under-equipped doctors and nurses, we are all learning once again what it feels like when economic growth...
Will future generations look back on the coronavirus pandemic as a blip or a game changer? Let’s review a few of the major trends that developed during the Anthropocene and engage in a little informed speculation about how they...
The ways that nations respond to the pandemic today will largely determine their fortunes and fates over the next couple of decades at least, and perhaps beyond. Nations that are more successful at controlling the disease and minimizing fatalities...
The COVID-19 pandemic offers intriguing insights into how networked our modern world has become, and how we’ve traded resilience for economic efficiency. Case in point: someone gets sick in China in December of 2019, and by March of 2020...
The key is to prepare not just for disease, but for a broad-scale societal disruption. Consider how you’ll maintain access to food, water, and money during the next few months if things really start to come apart. Even if...
We humans are aggregating more power, and doing so more unequally across society, than in any previous period in history. Power is good; without it, we would be powerless. But it is possible to have too much of a...
Knowing that the connection, within chaotic systems, between action and consequence is tenuous and unpredictable, it makes perfect sense to act, at least sometimes, in ways that may seem irrational. Specifically, it makes sense to act on the basis...
Life in the early phases of civilizational collapse is filled with absurdities that beg for artful satire. Where is Franz Kafka when we need him? Surely, he could offer a better metaphor than my hackneyed image of a house...
“Resiliency is the capacity to respond to a perturbation or disturbance by resisting damage and recovering quickly.” The definition of resiliency is not only relevant for the Sierra Nevada that we want to create, but also the Sierra Nevada...
A lot of hope is riding on the wheels of the world’s three million electric cars. So, how’s the EV revolution going? And even if it’s going well, is it really the best strategy? Those are the questions I...