On Natural Capital: The Value of the World Around Us by Partha Dasgupta – Review
Sir Partha Dasgupta’s "On Natural Capital" translates a 610‑page government report into a concise 200‑page manifesto that argues economics must internalise nature’s value. The book documents stark declines—wildlife down 73% in 50 years, ocean dead zones the size of the EU, extinction rates 100‑1,000 × historic norms—and warns that humanity’s current consumption would need 1.7 Earths to be sustainable. Dasgupta calls for pricing ecosystem services, treating natural assets as rent, and updating GDP to reflect biodiversity loss. The UK has already re‑framed the biodiversity crisis as a national‑security issue, echoing his call for policy overhaul.
Bill Rees: A Childhood Moment on a Canadian Farm Led to Ecological Footprint Analysis
Bill Rees recalls a childhood epiphany on his Ontario farm that sparked a lifelong quest to quantify humanity’s demand on Earth. In 1996, with Mathis Wackernagel, he introduced the Ecological Footprint, a metric that compares global consumption to the planet’s...
There’s No Single Path Through Collapse. It Spans Multiple Systems and Perspectives
In his upcoming book *Collapse: Navigating Civilization’s Predicaments With Wisdom and Courage*, author JP Quinonez frames the unfolding polycrisis as a convergence of ecological limits, thermodynamic constraints, and deep‑seated psychological and cultural forces. Drawing on months spent living off‑grid in...
Toxic Dust From the Shrinking Salton Sea Is Harming Children’s Lung Growth Amid Water Loss, Study Finds
The Salton Sea’s rapid shrinkage is exposing toxic, chemical‑laden dust that is now entering the lungs of Imperial Valley children. A longitudinal study by USC and UC‑Irvine of more than 700 elementary‑age participants shows measurable reductions in lung growth, especially...
The Climate Crisis Is Becoming a Legal Obligation, Not a Political Choice
Environmental scholars have moved from traditional environmental law to a broader ecological law framework, epitomized by the 2016 Oslo Manifesto and the creation of the Ecological Law and Governance Association. The International Court of Justice’s July 23, 2025 advisory opinion declared that...
Solar Panels Aren’t as “Clean” As We Like to Think
Solar panels are often praised for zero emissions during operation, but their production and end‑of‑life stages carry significant ecological costs. Mining quartzite for silicon, energy‑intensive refining, and chemical processing create habitat loss, toxic waste, and high carbon footprints. Utility‑scale solar...
How Pacific Communities Use Sea Worms to Track Time and Seasonal Shifts Through a Changing Climate
Across the southwestern Pacific, the annual emergence of palolo worms (Palola viridis) serves as a precise natural clock that Indigenous communities embed in their ecological calendars. The worms' synchronized spawning, marked by luminous green and orange epitokes, triggers night‑time harvest...
Strait of Hormuz Reopens for Now, but Global Supply Chains Remain at Risk
President Donald Trump announced a two‑week suspension of his threatened bombing of Iran, tying the pause to the safe repassage of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The narrow waterway moves roughly 20% of the world’s oil and gas, a...
The Growing Push to Grant Legal Rights to Nature
The rights‑of‑nature movement, driven largely by Indigenous peoples, has expanded from Ecuador’s 2008 constitutional amendment to a patchwork of national laws and local ordinances worldwide. Landmark cases include New Zealand’s 2017 recognition of the Whanganui River as a legal person, India’s...
Nuclear Safety at Risk: What’s Changing Under Donald Trump
President Trump’s administration has quietly stripped more than 750 pages of nuclear safety regulations, replacing concrete protection standards with vague language and raising the radiation exposure limit that triggers investigations. The revisions apply to a new pilot program for small...
How Environmental Laws Are Shifting the Focus From Humans to Nature
Environmental law has evolved from ancient human‑focused regulations to a modern ecocentric paradigm that grants nature legal personhood. Early examples include Mesopotamian water treaties and Roman sanitation codes, while the 1972 Stockholm conference cemented an anthropocentric framework. Over the past...
Human Nature Odyssey, Episode 21. Earth Abides (Part 1): Life After Civilization
In this first part of the two‑episode deep‑dive on George R. Stewart’s 1949 novel *Earth Abides*, host Alex Leff and guest astrophysicist‑writer Tom Murphy explore the story of Ish Williams, a young ecologist who survives a global plague and witnesses the...
The Restorative Promise of Agroecology: Farming for Sovereignty and Resilience in Malawi – Part II
Agroecology offers sustainable, climate‑resilient solutions for Malawi’s food insecurity, delivering soil health, biodiversity and gender‑inclusive benefits. In contrast, the country’s agricultural policy is dominated by corporate‑driven Green Revolution initiatives—AGRA, NAFSN, and multinational seed and fertilizer firms—backed by over $1 billion in...
How California’s War on Smog and Its Ambitious Car Pollution Rules Made Everyone’s Air Cleaner
California leveraged its unique waiver authority under the Clean Air Act to mandate catalytic converters for 1975 model‑year cars, forcing automakers to adopt unleaded gasoline and emissions‑cutting technology. The state’s tough standards accelerated the nationwide rollout of catalytic converters, cutting...
Climate Cracks Are Spreading — and Even the System Knows It Can’t Hold
A wave of suppressed UK reports—from intelligence agencies, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, and Defra—warn that ecosystems are on a “pathway to collapse,” food security could fail by 2030, and nature loss may cost twice the 2008 financial crash....
Prairie Prophecy: A Powerful New Film on Wes Jackson and the Future of Agriculture
Prairie Prophecy, a documentary about ecologist and Land Institute co‑founder Wes Jackson, has premiered on PBS with a 55‑minute version available for online streaming and a 90‑minute theatrical cut touring the country. The film showcases Jackson’s pioneering work on perennial...
The Restorative Promise of Agroecology: Farming for Sovereignty and Resilience in Malawi
A grassroots initiative led by EARTH Workshops and Butterfly Space is teaching Malawian villages regenerative agroecology techniques, from composting and urine‑based fertilizer (Mbeya) to intercropping and tree nurseries. In Chombe Village, 112 fruit‑tree seedlings sell for about $1.70 each, generating...
Cities: Canary in the Coal Mine?
British chemist Luke Howard first documented urban heat islands in 1818, noting London was 1.57 °F warmer than surrounding countryside. Modern measurements show city cores can be 5 °F to 9 °F hotter, with extreme cases exceeding 26 °F. The article argues that the...
Editorial Shift at Resilience
Long‑time editors Kristin Sponsler and Simone Osborn are leaving Resilience after steering the site from 2008 to 2026, overseeing two major redesigns and sustaining growth while many peers folded. Their departure marks the end of a formative era for the Post...
Inside the Off-Grid Earthship Community in New Mexico (YouTube Film Review)
Peter Santenello’s 64‑minute YouTube documentary spotlights the 640‑acre Earthship community called Atlantis just outside Taos, New Mexico. Founder Michael Reynolds, despite a stage‑four cancer diagnosis, walks viewers through self‑sustaining homes that harvest rainwater, generate solar power, and use tire‑filled rammed‑earth...
Finding Life in the Flux
The essay contrasts Helen Czerski’s *The Blue Machine*—which treats the ocean as a mechanistic system—with Robert Macfarlane’s *Is a River Alive?*, which adopts an animist, experiential narrative. Czerski’s scientific framing limits emotional connection to the sea, while Macfarlane’s immersion in...
Yet Another Apocalyptic Prediction…
A wave of recent reports—from the UK government’s National Security Assessment on biodiversity loss to studies by Carbon Tracker, the IFoA, and WWF—warn that ecological collapse could trigger severe economic contraction, heightened geopolitical tension, and a widening insurance protection gap....
Three Visions of Green AI — And Why the Differences Matter
Green AI now spans three distinct orientations: technical greening that trims AI’s own energy use, ecological intervention that applies AI to monitor and mitigate environmental damage, and relational reorientation that questions the underlying assumptions linking intelligence, nature, and power. The...
Essay Five – Facing the Abyss
Essay Five contends that civilization’s core process—systematic erosion of relational being—has transformed human societies from integrated hunter‑gatherer cultures into a fragmented, abstracted modernity. The narrative links the origin to Sumerian grain‑distribution controls, then follows religious‑secular amalgams that reinforced relational loss,...
Entropia and the Disintegration of Empire
Samuel Alexander’s 2013 eco‑fiction *Entropia* imagined a post‑industrial community born after a 2027 energy shock that crippled global trade. The novel’s second chapter, “The Disintegration of Empire,” describes the Great Disruption—bombings of the Ghawar field, the Suez Canal and the...
Notes on Being a Man: Review
The article reviews Scott Galloway’s "protector, provider, procreator" model of masculinity, noting its emphasis on personal discipline, financial success, and competition. It argues that this narrow framework overlooks the broader ecological and social systems that sustain individual prosperity. By linking...
Oil Price Manipulation, an Unrecognized Stratagem and an Unhinged Plan
Governments are scrambling to curb soaring oil prices after Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz cut roughly 20% of global supply. The International Energy Agency authorized a historic release of 400 million barrels from strategic reserves, equivalent to about 20...
Isn’t It Time We Had a Back-Up Plan ‘Just in Case’ Things Do Go Catastrophically Wrong?….
A new report argues that climate and ecological crises demand a pragmatic "Plan B" rather than endless debate. It labels discussions such as degrowth as unwinnable, urging focus on adaptive strategies that work across political divides. The authors propose concrete community...
Wide Boundary News: The Iranian War, Rising Gas Prices, and the Single Point Failure
The latest Wide Boundary News episode examines the U.S. and Israeli military offensive against Iran and the resulting closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint that handles roughly 20% of global oil and a significant share of LNG, sulfur...
When Experts Go Silent: Climate Misinformation Threatens Rights
During the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, false claims and AI‑generated images spread rapidly on social media, confusing residents and complicating evacuation decisions. Government agencies responded by coordinating emergency messaging and issuing federal guidance that treats information management as a core public‑safety...
Wide Boundary News: Biodiversity Depletion, Iran & the Strait of Hormuz, and the Green Wedge
In the latest Wide Boundary News episode, Nate Hagens connects the EU’s surge toward a 50 % renewable electricity mix and flattening CO₂ emissions with rising electricity prices that are spurring German industrial decline and chemical‑sector exits. He highlights China’s record...
Restoring Water to Arid Lands: Rethinking Dams and Soil in the MENA and Global South
Water scarcity in the MENA region and the Global South is driven more by land‑management failures and centralized hydraulic policies than by climate alone. Large dams, while symbolising progress, exacerbate evaporation losses and sedimentation, undermining long‑term water security. Healthy soils...