A Few Rules For Predicting The Future
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Meeting the Enemy
The catastrophic effects of climate change can seem overwhelming. What can we do? Who is responsible? In the tradition of Walter Wink, O'Brien reminds us that Christians have the power to name and oppose the enemies of God's good creation. The fossil fuel industry is just such an enemy. We can courageously confront these powers of evil and build a more faithful future. O'Brien paints the structural evils of the fossil fuel industry in sharp relief, helping readers understand that a Christian climate ethic must move beyond individualistic blame and individualistic solutions. While we bear responsibility for our personal actions, O'Brien demonstrates that fossil fuel companies are far more to blame for the contemporary climate crisis. His reframing shows us that the problem is the system. Having fully developed his case for the blame fossil fuel companies bear, O'Brien helps readers consider the options available to us as Christians to bear witness to evil and address the roots of this system of powers that bind us. O'Brien's approachable and engaging analysis makes Meeting the Enemy a powerful resource for both the classroom and informal educational settings.
Understanding Octavia E. Butler
Author: Kendra R. Parker
language: en
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
Release Date: 2025-04-24
New insights into the work of an acclaimed science fiction author Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006), a pioneer of science fiction and foremother of Afrofuturism, is among the most influential science fiction writers of all time. Her work blurs the boundaries of commercial genres, exploring themes of race, gender and sexuality, religion, politics, and environment. A recipient of the MacArthur "Genius Grant" and PEN America Lifetime Achievement Award, Butler is best known for her novels Kindred (1979), Parable of the Sower (1993), and Fledgling (2005). In Understanding Octavia E. Butler, Kendra R. Parker surveys Butler's life, career, and major works, highlighting her ongoing interest in Black peoples' pasts, presents, and futures. After a biographical introduction, Parker evaluates Butler's career chronologically and thematically, with chapters covering her engagement with the African American literary tradition, her romance novels, and her nonfiction.
Scatter, Adapt, and Remember
In its 4.5 billion–year history, life on Earth has been almost erased at least half a dozen times: shattered by asteroid impacts, entombed in ice, smothered by methane, and torn apart by unfathomably powerful megavolcanoes. And we know that another global disaster is eventually headed our way. Can we survive it? How? As a species, Homo sapiens is at a crossroads. Study of our planet’s turbulent past suggests that we are overdue for a catastrophic disaster, whether caused by nature or by human interference. It’s a frightening prospect, as each of the Earth’s past major disasters—from meteor strikes to bombardment by cosmic radiation—resulted in a mass extinction, where more than 75 percent of the planet’s species died out. But in Scatter, Adapt, and Remember, Annalee Newitz, science journalist and editor of the science Web site io9.com explains that although global disaster is all but inevitable, our chances of long-term species survival are better than ever. Life on Earth has come close to annihilation—humans have, more than once, narrowly avoided extinction just during the last million years—but every single time a few creatures survived, evolving to adapt to the harshest of conditions. This brilliantly speculative work of popular science focuses on humanity’s long history of dodging the bullet, as well as on new threats that we may face in years to come. Most important, it explores how scientific breakthroughs today will help us avoid disasters tomorrow. From simulating tsunamis to studying central Turkey’s ancient underground cities; from cultivating cyanobacteria for “living cities” to designing space elevators to make space colonies cost-effective; from using math to stop pandemics to studying the remarkable survival strategies of gray whales, scientists and researchers the world over are discovering the keys to long-term resilience and learning how humans can choose life over death. Newitz’s remarkable and fascinating journey through the science of mass extinctions is a powerful argument about human ingenuity and our ability to change. In a world populated by doomsday preppers and media commentators obsessively forecasting our demise, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember is a compelling voice of hope. It leads us away from apocalyptic thinking into a future where we live to build a better world—on this planet and perhaps on others. Readers of this book will be equipped scientifically, intellectually, and emotionally to face whatever the future holds.