Your Top Science Stories This Week
Dear Reader,
One of my touchstone philosophers is Teilhard de Chardin, a paleontologist, geologist and Jesuit priest who believed in evolution a bit too much to quite be able to agree, except on faith and when forced to choose by the Catholic Church, that all humankind descended from Adam. For Teilhard, evolution is an irresistible impulse, a relentless arc toward ever-unfolding life. And it didn't stop with the arrival of humans. What does that have to do with this week's stories? This week, the U.N. released a report on how global heating is threatening the world's food supply, but really, it's a threat to how we grow food. It's a threat to our habits, the existing structures of our global agricultural economy. Perhaps Teilhard would say that some agricultural practices are on an evolutionary path toward extinction.
In June, we covered some of the solutions Californians are evolving in order to grow food in a low-carbon or no-carbon way aimed at aligning farming with the ecology of soil, and with the biosystems that make possible our breath and bones. We're bringing back those stories in this week's newsletter. In fact, this week's newsletter is oozing with the primordial matter that brings forth ideas: questions, ruminations, reflections, drama, and a spark of joy. Don't miss the wolf pup video. | | |
Kat Snow
Senior Editor, Science
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| | | Better land use, less-meat-intensive diets and eliminating food waste should be priorities to help forestall a climate catastrophe, the authors say. | | |
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| | | Asking people to move their homes out of the so-called wildland-urban interface isn't realistic, Columbia University social scientist Lisa Dale says. But there are plenty of other ways to minimize the destruction. | | |
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| | | Kelley Watson Snyder opposed vaccinations for many years. Now, she administers a pro-vaccination Facebook group. | | |
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| | | California's only wolf pack is known as the Lassen pack; trail cameras spotted at least three new pups. | | |
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| | | In the latest sign the Earth is undergoing unprecedented warming, European scientists said Monday that July was the hottest month ever recorded. | | |
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| | | Audience interest in climate coverage is on the rise, according to one set of data acquired by the Columbia Journalism Review. | | |
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| | | The quarter-sized robot created at the Tsinghua-UC Berkeley Shenzhen Institute resembles a scrap of confetti but is built like a roach. | | |
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