Starting Point

“You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward.” Rocky Balboa
How is today’s warming different from the past? Throughout its history, the Earth has gone through climate changes which were not caused by humanity. Scientists use evidence such as tree rings, layers of ice in glaciers, coral reefs, and sedimentary rocks to determine and build the record of Earth’s past climates. The Paleoclimate record combined ... Read more
Extinction is a fact of life.  Five times in Earth’s history, cataclysmic mass extinction events have wiped out not just a few animals, but up to 96% of life at one time.  Scientists are now raising the question: are we entering the sixth great mass extinction? Catch this episode from Halfway to the Moon and ... Read more
Homelessness is a pressing issue around the globe and the city of São Paulo in Brazil is no exception. The city has opened shelters to help house the nearly 20,000 homeless people living in the streets of São Paulo, but few of them have taken advantage of the situation…until now. Below is a video chronicling ... Read more
The planet is experiencing a mass extinction event with an estimated 30,000 species being driven to extinction per year. This mass extinction differs from all previous extinction events in being driven by a single species rather than a planetary or galactic process.  Humans have cause multiple waves of extinctions, first as hunter-gathers targeted animals for ... Read more
In 1970, the U.S. had the highest rate of school and college graduation in the world. 50 years later, we’ve dropped to No. 21 in high school completion and No. 15 in college completion as the quality of our primary and secondary education falls in comparison to the rest of the world.  Just as importantly, ... Read more
Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish — and how current education culture works against them.  In a funny, stirring TED talk he tells us how to get out of the educational “death valley” we now face, and how to nurture our youngest generations with a climate of possibility. ... Read more
Usually, when we talk about mass extinction, we’re referring to events long past. However, extinction is also a looming possibility of the current world.   Listen below to this insightful episode from The Common Descent Podcast to better understand just how bad our current ecological crisis is, what’s causing it, and whether or not it ... Read more