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Municipalism

Resist fascism by embracing municipalism

Municipalism

Donald Trump is now the President-elect of the United States of America.

Many people in the U.S. and around the world are alarmed by the results of the 2024 election. Donald Trump will soon be President again. The Republicans will control both the House and the Senate. The reactionary Federalist Society has taken over the Supreme Court. Project 2025 has become the new playbook for the incoming administration. Trump is already making unhinged cabinet appointment announcements that are raising alarm bells even for many Republicans.

I predicted Trump’s victory with a high degree of confidence. That doesn’t make me any less alarmed by what’s already happening and what’s likely to happen in the coming weeks, months, and years.

Trump’s return to power is just the latest development in the ongoing resurgence of fascism and other forms of authoritarianism in many places around the world. Now that one of the most powerful governments in history has been captured by a candidate and movement that many have characterized as fascist, the outlook for human civilization and the habitability of the planet we call home seems increasingly bleak.

What can the people of the world, and the U.S. in particular, do about the rise of fascism?

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Check out these climate fiction stories and reviews

Are you concerned about climate change? If so, you’re not alone.

According to the world’s largest survey on climate change, 80% of people globally want their country to do more on climate change. Here in the United States, Yale’s “Climate Change in the American Mind: Beliefs & Attitudes, Spring 2024” report tells us that majorities of Americans think global warming will harm plant and animal species (72%), future generations of people (72%), the world’s poor (69%), people in developing countries (68%), people in the United States (65%), and people in their community (52%).

In other words, most people do in fact care about climate change!

If you want more information about the climate crisis and what you can do about it, I can recommend some great nonfiction books about climate change. However, many readers prefer reading fiction, especially in their spare time. As both a reader and an author, I love picking up a good novel or short story collection and spending a couple of hours immersed in a compelling fictional narrative. I read nonfiction too, but it doesn’t fill the same niche in my life as reading a good work of fiction.

If you want to read novels, short stories, and other fiction with climate themes, you’re in luck! Authors and publishers have started writing and publishing so much good climate fiction that you could read a climate novel a week for the rest of your life and still not have time to read it all. But where can you find all of these amazing works of climate fiction? And how do you decide which ones you want to read?

With those questions in mind, I’m excited to tell you about two places where you can find good climate fiction! This includes both the climate fiction I’ve written and all of the climate fiction I’ve read or heard about as a climate author, climate communicator, and avid climate fiction reader.

Check out these climate fiction stories and reviews Read More »

Which Climate Music Sounds Better?

Which climate music sounds better?

Did you know that you can use climate data sets to create music?

Climate data sonification is the process of turning climate data sets into sound — in this case, music. I wrote a blog entry about this back in April of 2023 titled Turning Climate Data Into Music. Now that I’m delving into the world of audiobook production, I’ve decided that it’s also time to revive my interest in creating music using climate data sets.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, anyone with internet access can make instrumental music tracks based directly on climate data sets (or any other data sets). All you have to do is find, convert, or create a data file (.xls, xlsx, .csv, .ods) and upload it to a web-based tool called TwoTone that translates the data into music. You can choose among several computer-generated instruments, combine multiple tracks, use the arpeggio settings to give the data a more musical sound, preview the results in your browser, and export the results in .mp3 or .pcm format.

Which climate music sounds better? Read More »

Climate Communication

Let’s get creative with our climate communication

Climate Communication
Treesong created this Climate Communication art using the a climate warming stripe graphic. The original climate warming stripe graphic was created by Professor Ed Hawkins (University of Reading) and used in accordance with the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

The end of one calendar year and the start of another is often a great time to reflect on the course of our lives and the state of the world. This is particularly true when it comes to the climate crisis.

What happened with climate change in 2023? What might happen in 2024? What can we do about it?

Let’s get creative with our climate communication Read More »