…what if there was a type of nuclear power that:

• Was radioactive for a few hundred years, not millennia
• Could not meltdown
• Could not be used to make weapons-grade materials
• Burns up existing high-level radioactive waste and weapons material?

There is. Or may be, if the current research versions of Thorium reactors pan out. I still don’t think nuclear is the way to go, and I still think that conservation should be the number one priority, but if this technology could be made to work, I could get behind it as a temporary measure. Continue reading →

In a previous post, I listed mostly illegal things that individuals are likely to do unless serious action is taken on climate change – very soon. The actions listed here are things we all need to be doing to prevent getting to the stage where people are desperate or angry enough to become destructive or dangerous.

Here are useful, worthwhile things you can do right now to be the difference we need.

1. Set an example

Gandhi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world,” and “My life is my message.” Both are still true, and this is the most important thing you can do. We are social animals, and your example will push us toward a social tipping point.

Before the tipping point, there is much resistance and it seems change is impossible, or at best far away. Afterward, when everyone is doing it and a new social norm has been set, it seems impossible we would ever go back to the old way. Think recycling: Now it is shameful not to recycle in Canada and some parts of the United States. Or single-payer health care: there is enormous and well-funded resistance to it in the United States, yet nobody in their right mind in Canada or Europe would consider moving to a U.S.-style private-only system.

When it comes to setting an example, go as far as you can within your circumstances – then push a bit further.  Use some of the ideas below to expand yourself and be a better example. Continue reading →

Every person I know who has faced the reality of our climate crisis battles with feelings of despair, some or all of the time. When you pull the pieces together and take what the scientists are saying and combine it with our foreseeable political reality, it is hard not to believe we are doomed. Meaning, the collapse of civilization and a massive dieback of humanity is inevitable, and the only question is when.

But wait, there’s worse. The more you look into it, the more you realize this collapse and dieback will certainly affect you personally quite negatively, and is likely to happen sooner than later. And you also see such powerful vested interests who have corrupted our economic and political systems to their short-term benefit standing in the way of change, that you really cannot see the needed change as possible.

From James Lovelock saying it’s all over but the crying and dying, to James Hansen saying we are already over the safe threshold and have 5 years to get our carbon under control; or John Holdren saying we are now dealing with climate change and what we are fighting to avoid is catastrophic climate change, to mainstream scientific views that climate change is happening more quickly than they thought…well, it can lead to despair. Continue reading →

To some, this seems ridiculous. To others, however, it is eminently reasonable. Let me explain why the charges are justified, and why Rex Tillerson.

The Case for Prosecution

In a post on Celsias.com, I laid out the case:

If climate change can reasonably be expected to cause severe consequences, including large-scale loss of material goods, wealth, land, livelihood, and life; and