KPFA - Against the Grain

“Smart” devices like TVs, speakers, and thermostats. Our cars. DNA tests we might take to learn about our ancestry. Our searches online. Along with Flock cameras and other forms of big data policing contracted by local governments, we’re unwittingly surveilling ourselves at every turn. Legal scholar Andrew Guthrie Ferguson describes how sensor-driven digital technology tracks our daily lives — whether we’re seeking an abortion or protesting our government — and are only, at best, a warrant away from being used against us.
Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance NYU Press, 2026
Photo credit: r.nial.bradshaw
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In 2024 the world, for a year, exceeded 1.5C – the line in the sand we weren’t supposed to cross or risk runaway global warming. We’re now in an era of overshoot, in which elites are depending upon untested technologies for managing the heating which they refused to halt. Political ecologist Wim Carton contends that there is no substitute for slashing carbon emissions and shutting down the fossil fuel industry. He discusses the perils of continuing to emit carbon dioxide with the plan of capturing it later or eventually harnessing geoengineering to cool the planet by spraying aerosols to block the sun.
Wim Carton and Andreas Malm, The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late Verso, 2025
The post Emit Now, Reverse Global Warming Later? appeared first on KPFA.

Journalist David Graham reflects on Project 2025, the blueprint that the Heritage Foundation drafted for Trump’s second term, and if its goals have been achieved so far – on the environment and economy, attacking trans rights and diversity policies, and projecting military might abroad. He also discusses what may come next.
David A. Graham, The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America Random House, 2025
The post Project 2025, A Year In appeared first on KPFA.

Food affects all of us — but while it’s a necessity for our survival, it’s also a vast, sprawling industry spanning the globe, which generates enormous profits as well as significant damage to public health and the environment. Nutritionist and molecular biologist Marion Nestle sheds light on the choices we all must navigate when we enter the grocery store.
Marion Nestle, What to Eat Now: The Indispensable Guide to Good Food, How to Find It, and Why It Matters North Point Press, 2025
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Our modern world was born from destruction — and no more so than in North America, which historian Clifton Crais describes as the most violent place on the planet in the 18th and 19th centuries. Crais describes what he calls the Mortecene against humans and the rest of nature.
Clifton Crais, The Killing Age: How Violence Made the Modern World University of Chicago Press, 2025
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