Roadkill of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
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.'

Dana Perls

Talking Points

Talking Points: Autumn 2019

News in Brief

Journal Staff