Quarter of a century ago, as a science writer, I began encountering a lot of rather depressed scientists. Every day they went to work and grappled with data showing that the Earth was falling apart. Species were vanishing at accelerating rates, poisons were spreading unchecked, the climate becoming more violent, oceans fouled and lifeless and … Continue reading Our existential crisis: what is to be done?*
Solving the mega-risks
By Julian Cribb Humanity’s capacity to inflict mass harm on itself has been accelerating exponentially since the mid-20th Century. It is rapidly approaching the point where it can bring down civilization and, quite possibly, eliminate our species. This is the greatest existential emergency of human history. In the coming decades it will determine whether we … Continue reading Solving the mega-risks
Why 2050 is too darned late…
By Julian Cribb Six million people are already dead, mostly because they and their governments did not act on sound scientific advice about Covid in sufficient time. The question of our Age is how many will die if governments the world over fail to act in time on: global heating, global poisoning, the global water … Continue reading Why 2050 is too darned late…
Food or War: is that the question?
Rather foolishly, when I set up my website some years ago, I wrote that I was thinking of writing a book provisionally entitled Food is a Key to Avoiding World War III. Life has intervened and I haven’t been able to do that. Now Australian author and science writer Julian Cribb has written a book that covers much of the ground I would have needed to. Food or War is not a jolly read. But it does end with a range of proposals to help humanity avoid what has been a recurring feature of human life – conflicts over food, land, and water leading to destructive wars. In this interview, Julian discusses the bleak history of the links between food and war and suggests what might be done to avoid them.
He outlines three key ways to avoid to conflicts over food, land and water and suggests how a…
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Diagnosing the American disease
Coronavirus originated in China, of that there is no dispute. But by the time it has run its course, it will be inevitably be known as The American Disease. While there is a great deal of finger-pointing and blame-laying in the US politicosphere and commentariat about whose fault it all is, the debate has almost … Continue reading Diagnosing the American disease
Is a Food Crisis the next big hit for humanity?
As the world reels under corona virus and the resulting economic meltdown, another crisis - far more serious - appears to be building: the potential collapse of global food supply chains. For those who cry “We don’t want any more bad news”, the fact of the matter is we have landed in our present mess … Continue reading Is a Food Crisis the next big hit for humanity?
Preparing for Catastrophic Risk
Julian Cribb AM FRSA FTSE Humans are facing our greatest existential emergency since we first appeared as a distinct species a million or more years ago. Ours is the era of global catastrophic risk, a beyond-perilous time in which ten great, interwoven threats combine to confront us, as individuals and as a species, with the … Continue reading Preparing for Catastrophic Risk
The War on Global Carbon
Citizens of the USA, Australia, Brazil, Canada and elsewhere are slowly waking to the sickening awareness that they are no longer up against local political forces – but, rather, a metastasizing international power against which they are largely impotent. Common attributes now unify the regimes of Trump, Morrison, Bolsonaro, Trudeau, Salman, and maybe also those … Continue reading The War on Global Carbon
Time to speak the unspeakable
From The Guardian By Julian Cribb On any day between 10,000 and 30,000 wildfires blaze around the planet. Realms as diverse and distant as Siberia, Amazonia, Indonesia, Australia and California are aflame. The advent of ‘The Age of Fire’ is the bleakest warning yet that humans have breached boundaries we were never meant to cross. … Continue reading Time to speak the unspeakable
The methane gun
By Julian Cribb FRSA FTSE In all the sound and fury over climate change, too little public and media attention has been devoted to the ‘methane gun’ [1] – and yet this terrifying phenomenon could usher humans unceremoniously off Earth’s stage for good. Like CO2, methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas that helps trap the … Continue reading The methane gun
Surviving C21 