It doesn’t. Graeber was an anthropologist and Wengrow is an archaeologist. It’s a review of existing evidence from past civilizations (the diversity of which most people are hugely ignorant about), making the case the most common representations of “civilization” and “progress” are severely limited, probably to a detrimental extent since we often can only base our conceptions of what is possible on what we know.

That’s highly subjective, but the fascinating book The Dawn of Everything argues otherwise. There are even parts about the anthropological evidence some peoples just up and changed systems every so often (yes, non-violently). Our problem as people in the modern era is many can’t imagine anything else, not that no one ever did.

This article isn’t just about random raw materials entering the atmosphere, it’s specifically about the potential dangers of pollution of the magnetosphere and ionosphere with magnetic metal dust. The author claims to be the only one out there studying this but isn’t the only one who has expressed such concern. From the conclusion:

“Our technical civilization poses a real danger to itself,” Carl Sagan warned in his 1997 book Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium. The magnetosphere is our first line of defense against an otherwise lethal solar system, and any pollution of it should be intensely studied and monitored. Indeed, if an asteroid the size of a Starlink satellite was headed towards Earth, it would activate planetary defense monitoring. But since it’s a human-made object impacting the atmosphere, we don’t monitor it at all.

Space companies need to stop launching satellites if they can’t provide studies that show that their pollution will not harm the stratosphere and magnetosphere. Until this pollution is studied further, we should all reconsider satellite internet.

Indeed, it seems like campaign finance reform would be a better start than to pray for fossil fuel and other industries to develop a a conscience.

I’d like to think we can all agree across the political spectrum that we need to find a way for politicians to represent the interests of citizens rather than just ruling over us.

Yeah that’s why I left it at “companies,” and even that much would be a monumental achievement…

May we all be warmed and fuelled by the burning of these companies in place of their product.

Certainly but Shell and BP are two of the top 10 biggest energy companies in the world. I guess it comes down to which industries are most closely wedded to the politicians and the monarchy.

Any state successfully withdrawing from an ISDS-infested treaty should be a huge victory for its people, but I wonder if the UK or any nation that benefits from sales of oil/petrol would even bother taking advantage of their regained sovereign powers to regulate more effectively? Also, there seem to be propaganda efforts out there to rile up farmers and their sympathizers to fight against meaningful regulations (rather than for consideration and assistance with adjustments). I wonder how this might play out.