ECOANIMAL

MATT SIMON—The two ocean heat waves started like those we experience on land, with the atmosphere warming things up. Indeed, the ocean has absorbed 90 percent of the additional heat that humans have created. Accordingly, while in the 19th century just 2 percent of the ocean surface experienced bouts of extreme temperatures, that figure is now well over 50 percent. Such events will only grow more common and more intense unless humanity dramatically reduces its greenhouse gas emissions, and fast. As it happens, the northern Pacific has once again been smashing records of late, perhaps in part due to regulations in 2020 cutting the amount of aerosols generated by ships, which usually cool the planet by reflecting the sun’s energy back into space.

Like our most ferocious atmospheric blasts of heat, a lack of wind during the two events made matters even worse. Typically, after the seawater warms in the spring and summer, winter winds blow across the surface, pushing it along. This forces deeper, cooler waters to race upward to fill the void, keeping the water column more uniform, temperature-wise. This didn’t happen during both heat waves, and the sea remained more stagnant, as it normally does later in the year. 

VIJAY PRASHAD—The problem with the term Anthropocene (which began to be used first by scientists, then by social scientists) is that it implies that humans — as an undifferentiated whole — have created the ecological crisis we are facing. This subtly downplays the role of the capitalist system and its accompanying class and national divides.

However, data show that humanity is using the equivalent of about 1.7 Earths to sustain our current consumption levels. In other words, we are consuming natural resources 75 percent times faster than nature can regenerate them each year.

Unless we find another habitable planet, there is no arithmetic way to solve the problem. This is not a matter of the climate alone, but also of the environmental stress we have placed on the Earth (such as through deforestation, overfishing, overuse of fresh water, and soil degradation).

INDRAJIT—The key insight of China’s reforms in the 80s was that you can have markets within socialism as long as you keep power over them. Capitalism, on the other hand, puts society inside a market where even politicians are bought and sold. A communist (or socialist) government can put the community (or society) at the center of decision-making, but letting capital decide on its own is a recipe for disaster.

EDITOR—Although it sounds inconceivable under the current hellish circumstances and uncertainty confronting most Palestinians returning to their Northern Gaza homes—currently mere piles of gigantic rubble— many are bringing their animals with them, as they simply refused to leave them behind. 

CHRIS HEDGES—Almost two million acres of boreal forest have been destroyed by extraction industries and timber companies. They have scraped away the topsoil and left behind poisoned wastelands. The production and consumption of one barrel of tar sands crude oil releases between 17 and 21 percent more carbon dioxide than the production and consumption of a standard barrel of oil. The oil is transported thousands of miles to refineries as far away as Houston, through pipelines and in tractor-trailer trucks or railroad cars.