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...