KPFA - Against the Grain

As mega-fires rage around the world, why have so many people given up on the climate fight? Environmental sociologist Diana Stuart examines how fatalism about the climate emergency has been shaped by the erroneous assumption that, if we exceed 1.5C of global heating, we’ve passed the point of no return.
Diana Stuart, Rejecting Climate Doomism University of Michigan Press, 2026
Photo credit: Matt Palmer
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When we think of world makers, we’re unlikely to picture a flower. Yet flowers completely transformed our planet, giving us rain forests, altering coastlines, producing the food we eat, and enticing our pre-human ancestors to climb down from the trees. And they did that partially through reshaping the formerly adversarial relationship between plants and insects into one of mutual aid and cooperation most of the time. Biologist David George Haskell enumerates our debt to flowers.
Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash
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Jessica Mitford revived muckraking journalism in the United States, shaping generations of investigative writers who followed her. She also lived an remarkable life on the left, despite her ultra-reactionary English upper class origins. Carla Kaplan argues that Mitford is woman for our times.
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Are women as strong as men? According to science writer Starre Vartan, in some cases, they are stronger. She argues that scientific research over the last several decades shows that culture shapes strength as much as hormones — and that much of what we presume about sex differences, strength, and athleticism harms all of us.
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Photo by Peter Zhan on Unsplash
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