Five Modern Crusoes
1. It’s not easy being modern. Consider his first surprise: though the shipwreck goes exactly as expected, and no one can complain about the authentic way the waves thrash him around Continue reading
Tag Archives: climate change
The Urbicene
Kin la Belle, the Congolese call their capital, and I’ve looked for Kinshasa’s beauty. The Congo River, pulse of a planet, fifteen miles wide as it courses past? Abdim’s storks wheeling Continue reading
The Omnicene
Back in 1991, I pitched a different name for this time on Earth. That was the year before the Earth Summit in Rio produced the first climate treaty. I’d been reporting Continue reading
Faster Than We Thought
An excerpt from The World as We Knew It: Dispatches from a changing climate, edited by Amy Brady and Tajja Isen. I grew up in Qatar, a tiny peninsula off the Continue reading
The Age of Stolen Salt
Salt is an ancestor. Older than ocean, old as stars. Salt flows through your saltwater body even now like blood, as blood. Salt is nonnegotiable, necessary for the working of every Continue reading