Readers of Stirring the Pot know that I am deeply concerned about the issues of global climate change and inequality in the United States. Climate change, or the larger issue of global change, is an existential threat to modern human civilization. Inequality strikes at the very heart of the American ideal of “liberty and justice […]
Let’s start with two facts. First, the human population continues to change in unprecedented ways how the Earth’s systems function. Originally this was called global warming. The realization that changes in the global climate included more than just temperature changes led to use of the term climate change. Now we understand that more in nature […]
I have listened now to all the candidates for Governor in Maine. There are some I could happily vote for and some others scare the bejesus out of me. But among all the candidates, there is a notable lack of vision for Maine. There are lists of “where I am on the issues.” There is […]
Cornell University ecologist David Pimentel and colleagues estimated that the earth might be able to sustain only 2 billion people by the end of the fossil fuel era. There are about 7.5 billion humans on the planet right now. It seems counterintuitive that there is nearly 4 times the sustainable population now living on the […]
Before last weekend, the last time I had spent any time on Maine’s Southern beaches was a field trip for a geology class in my first year of college (don’t ask the year). Professor Hussey used the trip to immerse us in the patterns of coastal geology. In early April we spent a couple of […]
I first encountered the idea that the future was something one could study in 1971 from historian Roger Howell Jr. In one way or another, thinking about the future informed much that I have written about since, including here in Stirring the Pot. In my way of thinking about the future, I believe there should […]
When I was teaching, I used to joke with students that my classes were particularly demanding because I wanted to be sure they would succeed in the real world so that they could pay for my Social Security checks. Economists are supposed to believe that self interest is the dominant human motivator. I was only […]
