I will never forget the pity (
couched as compassion) and the shame (
couched as encouragement to
excel or admonitions to lean on God — not my own strength) that were heaped and heaped and dumped on me before I left.
The planetary boundaries hypothesis may fall short
as a scientific concept, but it
excels as a political one, offering experts a way to
couch what are really political decisions in the inviolable authority of science.