Carbon dioxide was about 300 parts per million for millennia. Human actions, the burning of fossil fuels, has raised the CO2 levels to 420 parts per million. NASA.    What happened to the seasons?   I enjoy walking and biking the streets of Claremont, California, my hometown since 2008. On Christmas day, 2022, the streets were exceptionally quiet. With a temperature around 75 degrees Fahrenheit and a refreshing breeze, I was in heavens. My bike sliced through that delightful combination of heat and modestly cold air.   This dream bike ride remained a pleasure for its duration. Yet reality intervened. Nature was in trouble. This was the heart of winter, December 25, 2022. Shouldn’t winter be winter? What happened to cold, nay snow or rain? My white roses were out in their summer best, their aroma delicious. My fig tree, having failed to give me any of its divine figs, was now starting new leaves. My pumpkin seeds had become an interlocking network of connecting...

  Monarch butterfly in my backyard, Claremont, California. Photo: Evaggelos Vallianatos.   Democracy in the Cosmos   The beautiful and the good are at the core of the Cosmos and democracy in Greek thought and civilization. The natural philosopher Anaximander added equality and justice to natural phenomena for a harmonious Cosmos. Anaximander invented the  apeiron  or the boundless creator of everything in the Cosmos, including the Sun and the Earth and the almighty natural world.    Anaximander lived in late seventh to mid sixth century BCE in Miletos of Ionia, Asia Minor. This was his hometown. Miletos nourished Greek thought, especially in cosmology and astronomy.    Anaximander was the student of Thales, another son of Miletos and Ionian cosmologist who put water as a constituent of matter in the Cosmos. The Earth herself floated in the water.    The next natural philosopher of enormous influence was Pythagoras from the Aegean is...

  Coral reefs. Courtesy Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, United Nations.   Humanity at a crossroad   In 2020, a  UN report  (Global Biodiversity Outlook 5) warned:   “Humanity stands at a crossroads with regard to the legacy it leaves to future generations. Biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, and the pressures driving this decline are intensifying. None of the… Biodiversity Targets will be fully met…The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the importance of the relationship between people and nature, and it reminds us all of the profound consequences to our own well-being and survival that can result from continued biodiversity loss and the degradation of ecosystems.”   This partly garbled message is telling us that humans are dangerous and largely stupid creatures. They keep increasing in numbers while they decimate biodiversity and ecosystems – technical terms meaning the very foundations of life: a tremendous variety o...

Home economics   I am not an economist, though economist and economics derive from the Greek words for household ( οικονομικός ,  οικονόμος ,  οίκος ,  οικία ). The activities of the household were taking place in a home / house. This was extremely important, taking care of the needs of the family living in a house. Home economics (primarily cooking, baking bread, craftsmanship, architecture, and farming) sparked the economics of communities and poleis (city-states). Cosmology, democracy and law and justice emerged to give rise to civilization.   I grew up in such a household culture in a tiny Greek village. Despite World War II and Italian and German occupiers, my father managed to keep us self-reliant in food. Eventually I realized we had very little: a few acres of land dotted with olive trees and a few vines for grapes and sweet wine, as well as raising our own wheat, barley, lentils. We also had very small flocks of goats and sheep, a mule and donkey, a cou...

  Organic oranges from the farmers' market of Claremont. Photo: Evaggelos Vallianatos   A beautiful winter day   Sunday, November 27, 2022, was a beautiful day. The Sun bathed the golden trees with slight warm light and a breeze. Leaves had fallen to the ground. I had the impression I was in Alexandria, Virginia in September.    My wife and were walking to the farmers’ market, downtown Claremont. The road (Harvard) facing the public library and City Hall were empty of traffic and barriers protected the gathering crowd from cars. Merchants included farmers / farm workers selling fruits and vegetables, mostly conventional food.    Farmers’ markets   This has been my greatest complain. Why would the City of Claremont, or any other town in this country, not encourage all food sellers to sell only organic food? This reality keeps normalizing the abnormal to the point Americans will one day forget completely. That, in fact, eating conventional / non-org...

  Followers of former president Donald Trump surrounding the US Capitol, Jan. 6, 2021. Notice the tall platform for hanging the enemies of Trump. Wikipedia.   I worked on Capitol Hill for a couple of years – in the 1970s. I used to visit the Capitol, primarily for pleasure. Here was America’s center of political life  designed and built with classical Greece in mind. The architecture and paintings of the large Capitol building do in fact mirror the polis of Athens.    Electing tyrant Trump   However, the election of Donald Trump, a corrupt businessman, to the presidency in November 2016 brought to a head decades-long boiling undemocratic forces in America. January 6, 2021 was a dark day during which Trump launched an unsuccessful coup.   Like an experienced tyrant, Trump invited his followers from all over America to Washington. He was determined to keep his power. He told his followers to go to the Capitol in order to prevent Vice President Mike ...