Posts by Pando Populus
Should climate scientists frankly tell the public just how dire the situation is? On this question, there are differences of opinion within the climate community.
July 13, 2015
The history of a world composed of nation states has not been a pretty one. Why should we care? It is not promising that governments are ceasing to be sovereign. It is hard to expect transnational corporations to make the decisions needed to save the habitability of the planet.
July 12, 2015
Our knowledge of the microscopic world has exploded. For machines, without human programming, to “communicate” and “sense” does indeed sound “almost magical.”
July 7, 2015
Marilyn Hempel on population: “We’re still adding about 220,000 people a day. The question is: what will be left, of civil society and of the non-human world, by the time human population finally stops growing.”
July 6, 2015
John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker with more on Laudato Si’: On June 30, 2015 a high level discussion was held marking the publication of the encyclical Laudato Si’. The Secretary General has observed that the pope’s “moral voice is part of a growing chorus of people from all faiths and all sectors of society speaking out for climate action.” Cardinal Turkson strongly underscored a basic point of the encyclical, namely, ”We are all in this together.”
We have a front row seat on the destruction of nation states — or possibly a refusal to surrender to domination by financial institutions.
July 5, 2015
To become fellow creatures / with ant bee elephant deer / cedar sequoia spruce oak / mitochondria / To live in this world / as one among the multitudinous many
June 30, 2015
“Reimagining and Reinventing Bodily-Spiritual Health” by Tucker Nichols for Pando Populus. Artwork copyright (c) 2015 by the artist. Do Ideas…
June 26, 2015
I don’t know Who—or what—put the question, I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone—or Something.
Cyril said that water is the sign of the Spirit because it adapts and transforms into all living things. Christians need to reclaim the embodied spirituality that suffused early Christianity, as a way to feel part of nature and thus committed to its preservation.
It would not surprise me now, however, if 2020 turns out in fact to be the peak year for consumption and population.
June 24, 2015
The legal system is based on a “design” mentality that was doomed to fail from the start, due to the dynamic nature of human systems. It is impossible to engineer systems like we would program a computer; they will always evolve beyond the purposes they were designed for, and it is impossible to predict what they will become.