You have probably heard a variation of the story, “The Star Thrower,” about a man who comes across a young girl walking along a beach throwing starfish back into the sea. In one version he says:  “Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! You can’t save all these starfish. You can’t […]

This might not surprise many of you, but I want to talk about the new IPCC climate report. What might surprise you is that I want to talk only about one word in the report: “unequivocal.” Ok, two more as well: “virtually certain,” which is scientific shorthand for a 99-100% certainly level (one rarely used by […]

Recently I read about the new “lie flat” movement in China. Lie flat (or tang ping) essentially means to “reject grueling careers for a ‘low-desire life.’” It sounds very similar to the voluntary simplicity movement of the 1970s and ‘80s* (work less, earn less, want less), and is being adopted especially by young Chinese burnt out from years […]

Here’s the thing: there’s a COVID pandemic raging around the world, with more than half a million new cases every day (and someone dying from COVID every 7.2 seconds). But in the US, we’re suddenly in a happy little bubble where infections have fallen and people are heading to restaurants, gyms, and organizing their summer travel plans. […]

As I write this, the waxing moon is in its gibbous phase—heading toward a full moon in less than a week. For the vast majority of my life, I had no idea what phase the moon was in (and I still need help of a calendar). I didn’t know what the terms meant, I didn’t […]

How much do you know about the radioactive history of the radium industry? I recently watched the Radium Girls on Netflix, which reminded me of the brutal abuses suffered by radium workers (often women). Radium Girls were the young women who painted luminous watch faces with radium paint and were taught by their supervisors to […]

A few months ago my karate sensei shared with his students the Zen story of The Monkeys Reaching for the Moon. If you haven’t heard it, there are many versions. Here’s mine:

The climate needs us to do more nothing—as it is our pursuit of growth and more, more, more (whether profit, stuff, or children) that is at the heart of our sustainability crisis.

2020 was a year lived in fear—fear of the surprise arrival of a novel coronavirus, of not understanding it, of getting it, of watching a loved one get it—never being sure if they’d survive. Now, with the vaccine being distributed (6.7 million doses have been given in the US as of 01/08/21), I find myself, […]

We’re in an outbreak currently. But I don’t mean the COVID pandemic. It turns out that outbreak has a second definition: it means when populations grow dramatically large, beyond their carrying capacities. As David Quammen details in his book Spillover, disease outbreaks can be considered “as a subset” in this broader category. In Spillover, Quammen goes into […]

Erik Assadourian is a writer who describes himself as a “sustainability researcher, ecophilosopher, servant of Gaia, and father of one.” A characteristically zen description for someone who, as a Senior Fellow at the now-dormant Worldwatch Institute and founder of The Gaian Way, has been trying to come to terms with the collapse that is unfolding […]