Our civilization depends hugely on energy and materials. Energy gets a lot of attention, especially our use of fossil fuels, which has the unintended consequence of causing climate change. Materials that underpin our infrastructure get much less attention, undeservedly so in my view, but they are just as critical. After all, stages in civilizational …
The Economist magazine has a sister company, The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which, among other things, maintains what it calls a Democracy Index. You can find the details of how the numbers are calculated on the web site, so I won’t go into them here. According to the index, democracy is in retreat, globally. …
Social Media Broke Democracy – Can it Help Fix It? Read More »
I have neglected my blog in favour of pursuing other interests over the summer, but I want to explore several related ideas over the next three blog posts this fall. The first will explore how much of the environmental crisis is attributable to personal choice and how much is effectively beyond our individual control. …
Personal vs Societal Responsibility for GHG Emissions Read More »
I am deeply angry at the death of George Floyd in the hands of police in Minneapolis and saddened by the events of the past week in the rest of the USA. Once again, we see the deadly consequences of the “crimes” of driving while black, walking while black or shopping while black. As …
What To Do About The Problems I have framed both the COVID-19 and the climate change crisis as a crisis of perception. I have argued that we need fundamental change and that, hitherto, we have not paid sufficient attention to either how we get our information or the barriers to change among individuals and …
In the previous blog post I laid out the case for why I think it’s clear that we need to change the way we perceive the world and the way we do things. Change is the operative word here. How do we change and what are the barriers to change? There is a vast …
The world has faced pandemics before, many much worse than the current COVID-19. The coming of the Black Death (bubonic plague) to the Western world in 1348, is one of the most infamous for which we have records. While the true cause was a bacterium (yersinia pestis), the germ theory of disease was still …
One hundred years ago, about this time of year, the 1918-20 Spanish Flu pandemic was finally winding down. It came in waves, was highly infectious and had a high fatality rate. Canada wasn’t spared. As noted on a Government of Canada website: “The virulent Spanish flu, a devastating and previously unknown form of influenza, struck …
How Spanish Flu 1918-20 Affected My Family – As Recorded in my Grandfather’s Journal Read More »
