The emerging canon of disruptive tech is supposed to save the world, but it might have some unforeseen victims — all of us.
Jim Thomas
Feature Articles
Ecology Fast and Slow
Civilization 2.0 — the pipedream of the ecomodernists — is a mere hardware upgrade of our own accelerated times.
Tom Smith
Mirroring Nature
In Indigenous worldviews, technology is not a product, it is a process, and, therefore, alive.
Esme G. Murdock
Reports
A Glacier Singsin Calgary
Glaciers in the Northern Rockies are dying fast. But with help from a few seismic sensors, 16 speakers, and a pair of dedicated artists, one of them isn’t going quietly.
Elizabeth Putfark
wildlife-tracking-2.0
New AI technologies are offering more humane alternatives to invasive animal monitoring practices.
Ribhu Singh
Data ≠ Change
Thanks to satellites, we can monitor our forests better than ever before. So why is global deforestation still increasing?
Nithin Coca
Small is Beautiful
Seeking simple, human-scale solutions to the challenges of everyday living.
Matt Miles
Reflections
Technocracy, Luddism,and the Environmental Crisis
The green movement needs to think about social power just as much as about technology.
David King
Losing the Forest for the Screens
There is no better app for connecting with the natural world than not having one.
Paul Keeling
Work, Tools, and Austerity
For the Abujhmadia, a hunter-gatherer tribe in central India, work, like much else, is a living abstract mediated by the mystery of the wild.
Narendra
God in the Machine
In certain moments, under certain circumstances, technology can offer just what we need.
The Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas
Born to Make a Mess
We need to tell a new story of humanity’s place among our fellow beings.
Walton Stanley
We Can't Go to the Stars
The notion that humanity could live anywhere else than on Earth is an outlier idea.
Kim Stanley Robinson
To Our Readers
Interrogating the Machine
If technology is the answer, what is the question?
Paul Kingsnorth
Digging Deeper
Food Without Fields?
Tech 'solutions' to agricultural challenges can actually perpetuate the industrialized food system.
Anna Lappé
Earth Island Reports
20 Years of Nurturing Young Environmental Leaders
Two decades on, the Brower Youth Awards continues to lift up youth environmental leadership and honor David Brower's legacy.
Steven Rosenfeld
1000 Words
Making a Mark, Lightly
For Caroline Ross, feathers become brushes, seashells transform into painter’s palettes, and clays offer up pigments.
Zoe Loftus-Farren
Conversation
‘We Have to Live Within Limits’
Conversation: Kris Tompkins
Maureen Nandini Mitra
‘Efficiency is a Renewable Resource’
Conversation: Bruce Nilles
Zoe Loftus-Farren
Online Exclusives
Making the Case for Some Technofixes
To save Earth's diverse life, we need to embrace and improve upon technologies that have already allowed humanity to squeeze more out of less.
Emma Marris
Tempering Tech with Collective Wisdom
As we invent new genetic technologies that could potentially heal or harm our planet, we need to ensure that their use is steered by many and not a few.
Natalie Kofler
When The Lights Go Out
Dreaming of a power outage that lasts forever.
Max Wilbert
Clean Tech Versus a People’s Green New Deal
Rich nations’ proposals for greening the economy need to acknowledge that their wealth rests on economic exploitation and ecological spoliation of poorer countries.
Max Ajl
In Review
Food for Thought on GMOs
GMOs Decoded: A Skeptic’s View of Genetically Modified Foods Sheldon Krimsky The MIT Press, 2019, 216 pages
Austin Price
Unflinching Truth, Unwavering Hope
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming David Wallace-Wells Penguin Random House, 2019, 320 Pages Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out Bill McKibben Henry Holt and Co, 2019, 304 Pages
Tom Athanasiou
Voices
The Risk of Technofixes
'They will increase our dependence on toxic chemicals and fossil fuels and pave the way for further corporate control of global food systems.'