Should climate denial be illegal?

It's time to stop those who are intentionally sowing confusion about the 'unequivocal' human causes of this crisis

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 […]

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Bathing in the Wisdom of Forests

If we are open to the possibility of plant sentience, forest bathing can be a social or even spiritual communion with nature.

In ancient India, so the story goes, a king facing acute depression stopped his carriage for a breather in a forest full of tall tropical trees. While walking among their giant roots the king noticed the trees’ silence, their quiet steadfastness, and their offer of refuge from the harsh world of human affairs. He felt […]

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The Human Swarm

Taking some lessons from David Quammen's 'Spillover' — and a plague of locusts

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 […]

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