Articles by: Frida Berrigan

90 Seconds to Midnight – The Doomsday Clock and Me

90 Seconds to Midnight – The Doomsday Clock and Me

I’m not a TikTok person. I’m too old. But when I finally ventured onto that popular but much-maligned app, which traffics in short videos and hot takes, I was surprised to find many videos about the Doomsday Clock. It’s nothing like a conventional timepiece, of course. It’s meant to show how close humanity has come to nuclear Armageddon — to[Read More…]

by 10/04/2023 Comments are Disabled World
Photo credit: CommonDreams

Living in a Tipping-Point World

When I was growing up, there was a parody of an old-fashioned public announcement tacked to the wall of our kitchen that I vividly remember. It had step-by-step instructions for what to do “in case of a nuclear bomb attack.” Step 6 was “bend over and place your head firmly between your legs”; step 7, “kiss your ass goodbye.” That[Read More…]

by 07/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
What I Can Still Love about My Embattled Country (and World)

What I Can Still Love about My Embattled Country (and World)

It’s hot and hazy as July rolls around. Growing up in the Baltimore swamplands, we used to say, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” Meaning that the humidity was harder to deal with than the feverish temperatures. At some point in my family, the phrase morphed into: “It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity.” At the time, we meant[Read More…]

by 15/07/2022 Comments are Disabled World
A Christmas Confession – I’m Taking an Eco-Holiday From It All (and So Are My Kids)

A Christmas Confession – I’m Taking an Eco-Holiday From It All (and So Are My Kids)

Confession time: this year, I don’t want to buy my kids anything for Christmas. Big one, right? Okay, let me soften that just a bit. I have bought a few modest, useful things. But that’s it!  No new games, no new toys, no new clothes (other than socks)… nothing. They already have too much. We have too much. Our nation is drowning[Read More…]

by 20/12/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Banner held outside of Nuclear Submarine Base, King’s Bay, GA

Living with World’s End in Plain Sight

Groton and New London, Connecticut, are home to about 65,000 people, three colleges, the Coast Guard Academy, 15 nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarines capable of destroying the world many times over, and General Dynamics’ Electric Boat, a multi-billion-dollar private corporation that offers stock options to its shareholders and mega-salaries to its top executives as it pockets taxpayer dollars and manufactures yet more[Read More…]

by 24/06/2021 1 comment World
 Trumping the Future: Which Would Mean No Future for My Three Kids

 Trumping the Future: Which Would Mean No Future for My Three Kids

Okay, I’ll admit it. Sometimes I can’t take the bad news. It’s too much. It’s so extra, as the kids like to say. When I hit that wall of hopelessness and anxiety so many of us have become familiar with, I take what I think of as a “kid break.” I stare into the faces of my three children seeking[Read More…]

by 03/10/2019 Comments are Disabled World
Parenting the Climate-Change Generation Or Will They Parent Us?

Parenting the Climate-Change Generation Or Will They Parent Us?

  Kids are taking over the streets in other countries, rallying and chanting and refusing to go to school one day a week. Young people across the world are striking to draw attention to the ravages of climate change. They are demanding — with their bodies and their voices — that the catastrophe each of them will inherit be a priority for the grown-ups[Read More…]

by 14/03/2019 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
 Can We Stop Feeling Quite So Helpless And Hopeless In A World On The Skids? 

 Can We Stop Feeling Quite So Helpless And Hopeless In A World On The Skids? 

In the wake of Donald Trump’s inauguration, George Orwell’s 1984 soaredonto bestseller lists, as did Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which also hit TV screens in a storm of publicity.  Zombies, fascists, and predators of every sort are now stalking the American imagination in ever-greater numbers and no wonder, given that guy in the Oval Office. Certainly, 2017 is already offering[Read More…]

by 12/07/2017 1 comment Counter Solutions