Artificial grass is evil

There’s something about the great outdoors that features heavily in childhood memories, regardless of generation. Perhaps it’s the novelty of a place that isn’t so familiar as the four walls of home. Perhaps it’s sensual — the rough, knowledgeable texture …

The end of the culture of narcissism

How did political conversation, especially online, become so crazy? Blame fossil fuels.

When Christopher Lasch wrote The Culture of Narcissism in 1979, well into the post-war wealth boom that turbocharged the industrial era, he argued that narcissistic tendencies develop partially …

The great Net Zero lie

“Net Zero” was supposed to be a straightforward idea — one that could be achieved with a healthy dose of spreadsheet politics, shifting a few numbers from one Excel column to another. It made sense, then, when the UN delegated …

America has an Oedipus complex

As in Sophocles’s tragedy Oedipus Rex, we are witnessing a generational drama in which inheritors kill their proverbial father to marry their mother, in this case Mother Earth. The psychology behind this pattern is above my pay grade, but many …