Evolutionshift

Last week, I wrote to all paid subscribers and Founding Members to let them know the 2026 free eBook is now available. A number of you successfully downloaded this free eBook. However, most people have yet to download it. Again, here is that column from last week: So, please follow the instructions at the end of the above-linked column and get your f…

How many times have we heard the media reporting that a particular flood is a “once in a 1,000 year flood” or a drought being a “once in 500 year drought”? Often. I have always wondered why having yearly back-to-back “worst flood in 1,000 years” doesn’t trigger the obvious V-8 moment of the climate crisis. If there are annual historical floods or droughts, might that not mean that the climate has changed? Duh! The U.S. is the only country that keeps such data; it is not a global phenomenon.

Every year I provide all paid subscribers with, among other things, a free eBook. You can now download the 2025 book. Sorry for the slight delay this year. The free eBook is “Moving to a Finite Earth Economy” This book was co-authored with Bob Leonard. Bob was the very first Director of Operations, and then was the Director of Communications and Content for This Spaceship Earth before it was closed last year. The book was published in late 2019, just before Covid.

Berkeley Earth is a research oriented non-profit organization that, on a monthly basis, puts out some of the best data on the climate crisis. I have written a number of climate oriented columns recently, including this one where I quoted from its earlier findings earlier in the summer. Every month Berkeley Earth produces the latest monthly temperatures for the planet on the warming of Earth. Remember, global warming is the cause of the climate crisis.

All my life, living in post-WWII America, the water was always available. In the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the laundry room, it was always available. It was expected that fresh, filtered [by the city, the county, the state] water would always be available. It was taken for granted, that in America, in the 1960s,1970s, 1980s and 1990s water, fresh water, was always available. It is said that a human can live for several minutes without oxygen, hours without water and days without food.

The obvious new technology today in 2026 is Technological Intelligence/Artificial Intelligence. Right now, it has become a new “other” for large parts of humanity. People are expecting massive unemployment, robotic overlords, and whatever their projected sense of an apocalypse might be. A few months ago, news outlets covering commencement addresses, a common theme was that the graduates – basically Gen Z – booed every mention of AI.

Sorry to stay on this stupidity/incompetency issue a bit more. I am just so disgusted with all the obvious stupidity across the land. I have always assumed that the ‘Masters of the Universe’ that work on Wall Street are smart. However, they have been acting stupid since Trump started the war with Iran on 2/28/26. As of mid-June, CNN had counted how many times Trump has said the war ‘would be over in two-three days’ : 40 times since the start of the war.

Humanity is supposed to evolve. Evolution is the process that got us all here. That has always meant to me that each century/generation would be an improvement on the prior. The Industrial Age word “progress” implied that inventions, technologies would start to stack up through time. The telegraph led to the telephone, which led to the Internet, which led to global high-speed connectivity. The invention and installation of elevators led to verticality in cities.

Clearly, inflation in the U.S. and globally is increasing. Trump’s war with Iran obviously has increased the price of oil, gas and diesel. This means of course that all the food delivered to grocery stores will cost more due to the increase costs for the companies that truck it to the stores. Then, due to the war is the dramatic increase in the price of fertilizer. The price of fertilizer has roughly increased by 50 to 80% at the planting season for at least the northern hemisphere.

Some 10 years ago, a former colleague and co-author of mine, Tim Rumage, said something about humans that has never left me. Tim said: “Humans as a species have two distinct unique qualities. We are the only species that both creates waste and that can live anywhere.” Nature, on this planet, does not create waste. Cow dung is fertilizer for example. The packaging that our store-bought supplies come in is waste, as is the CO2 pollution we put up into the atmosphere.