Greetings, earthlings! I am a writer, code monkey and hyperreality analyst for 
[Hypoxiated dead zones fence in continents of the developed world. Now what? Photo: NASA]
What will our singular planet look like when our still-new century expires? We probably wouldn’t recognize it if we could see it now. But we can see it now, and we’re refusing to look. We know it will be an enviropocalypse for many. For the rest, it will be (r)evolutionary.
That future hinges upon the twin terminology of terra and terror. One is destabilized Earth we call home, and the other is an inflammatory cipher manipulated for control of its shrinking bounty. From New York and Boston to Baghdad and Afghanistan, global resource wars have violently gripped our cities and citizens, while simulations and propaganda have simultaneously stolen our rights and cash.
And then there is the unfurling terror waged by terra itself. Mother Earth is smothering us in our overdeveloped cribs, for defiling the natural wonders her astronomical probability gifted us. From our terrorized 21st century to those in the warming beyond that beckon, she’ll starve and poison us with our own creations, engineering an exponential global crisis that will fuel further resource wars emboldened by phantoms of terror.
It’s a trophic cascade failure for the ages.
“Things are moving way too fast. We are out of control.” — Michael Stipe, speaking to Morphizm of acceleration and devolution…
And our children must either adapt with velocity, or be doomed to dystopia. Well, they already are. Unless they accelerate and decelerate in a game theory empowered by hearts and minds much more humane and ambitious than our own.
I’ve been covering this existential nexus for many publications over the years. I’m collating my past articles and planning my future features and mashing it all into a greater exegesis on the destabilized worlds we’re creating now and closer every minute to inheriting. It won’t be pretty, but it will be pretty informative.
It’s called Terror and Terraformation, and it co-stars envirogees, on the run from exponology, crafting innovative capture strategies, all in an unraveling cli-fi of nightmare and promise.
Please feel free to read what I’ve already written here on Morphizm. And if you’re interested in more, don’t hesitate to MAKE CONTACT. As long as we share the same wondrous planet, we share the same fate, for better or (much) worse.
Catch A (Fierce Green) Fire, You Will Get Learned
With apologies to Bob Marley and the Wailers, but I couldn’t resist. A Fierce Green Fire is an important enough chronicle of our indispensable environmental movement’s last century to merit a nod to the revolutionary spirit of the Wailers’ immortal Catch a Fire. Because it has taken green revolutionaries to awake us to both the science and sci-fi of the singular planet we call home. And we need way more of them.
What they will face when they crash headlong into a dystopian confluence of perpetual resource war and exponential climate change is the challenge of our new century. I spoke with A Fierce Green Fire‘s director Mark Kitchell, who’s Oscar-nominated Berkeley in the Sixties inspired me during Berkeley in the 90s. We published our mindmeld on the history and future of the environmental movement over at AlterNet. Light it up!
‘We Are Slaves To Fossil Fuels:’ Interview With Chasing Ice Director Jeff Orlowski
This year, the Oscars weren’t considered an utter failure until the predictable chauvinism of host Seth MacFarlane played out, with the Obama administration’s public endorsement of Argo‘s propaganda serving as a worrisome chaser. But I called bullshit on it from the beginning, because climate change was a disturbing no-show, despite the fact that its exponential ravages continue to create a new existential normal much more dystopian than the last.
Plus, it’s not like there wasn’t anything to watch for the old white men who annually choose the Oscars. In a year when The Avengers‘ blew up the box office with a heroic rescue from apocalypse in Manhattan, director Jeff Orlowski’s Chasing Ice featured a real iceberg the size of Manhattan (above) calving into the sea within an hour. Cue the fear track.
I chatted with Orlowski about that transformational apocalypse, climate change, the Oscars and much more. Then I fired off an anti-Oscars screed to the righteous enviros at Grist, who kindly signed me onto their green revolution.
Peak Oil and Climate Change Suck. High-Speed Rail Can Help.
I recently pounded out for AlterNet a double-barreled breakdown of the national high-speed rail network gaining ground in America. Which is still lamely addicted to last century’s non-renewable resources, like cheap gas and SUVs, SIVs and easy credit.
Sorry suckers, but it’s time to face the future of climate change and peak oil. If you’re going to survive it, you’re most likely going to survive it with the help of a national high-speed rail network empowered by renewable resources like solar and wind. You’re welcome.
The Oily Tip of the Iceberg
Here’s another existential entry for my exponology’s war on terra. Just as 9/11 sparked a so-called international war on terror, the Halliburton-Transocean-BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico will open the floodgates to the international war on terra. And if we don’t wage them correctly, both resource wars could consume us all. I quickly lit the match for AlterNet.
Why Corporations, Emerging Powers and Petro-States Are Snapping Up Huge Chunks of Farmland in the Developing World
Here’s how the have and the have-nots works. Some lucky souls are born into fertile lands and copious riches. Some are born into rapacious governments and uncompromising economic policy. Some are born into nations of parsing nerds with degrees who dilute reality with boring terminology that buries severe sociopolitical, environmental and financial costs. Telling them apart is a hard job. I tried.