Browse Topics
Ecology
Bodies Of The Giants
I stayed two days close to the bodies of the giants, and there were no trippers, no chattering troupes with cameras. There’s a cathedral hush here. Perhaps the thick soft bark absorbs sound and creates a silence. The trees rise straight up to zenith; there is no horizon.
September 2014
excerpted from
The Practice Of The Wild
The pathless world of wild nature is a surpassing school and those who have lived through her can be tough and funny teachers.
August 2014
Undermining Democracy
Noam Chomsky On How The U.S. Breeds Inequality At Home And Instability Abroad
Researchers find in their polls that the attitudes of the poorest 70 percent of Americans have essentially no effect on policy. Those people are disenfranchised. It doesn’t matter what they think. Political leaders just don’t pay any attention to them. As you move up the income scale, you see a little more influence. By the time you get to the top, attitudes and public policy are very similar, because the few at the top are the ones who design the policy. They essentially get what they want. You can’t call that democracy. It’s some kind of plutocracy.
June 2014
Thinking
Don’t you wish they would stop, / all the thoughts swirling around in your head like / bees in a hive, dancers tapping their way across the stage?
September 2013Keep Off The Grasslands
Mark Dowie On Conservation Refugees
I do think conservationists are starting to realize that any land worth conserving — because the biological diversity is high, the soil is fertile, and the original endemic species are still there — exists only because native human populations have been good stewards of it. The trick is to preserve the land and leave the stewards there.
August 2013
Sunbeams
December 2012The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone, our home that must be defended like a holy relic. The Earth was absolutely round. I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw Earth from space.
Sunbeams
October 2012Country things are the necessary root of our life — and that remains true even of a rootless and tragically urban civilization. To live permanently away from the country is a form of slow death.
Sowing Dissent
Lunatic Farmer Joel Salatin Digs In
A farm should be aesthetically, aromatically, and sensuously appealing. It should be a place that is attractive, not repugnant, to the senses. This is food production. A farm shouldn’t be producing ugly things. It should be producing beautiful things. We’re going to eat them.
October 2012
Pirate With A Cause
Paul Watson’s Crusade To Protect Marine Wildlife
A few minutes later the harpoon flew over our bow and just missed our boat. It rammed into the back of one of the female whales in the pod in front of us. She screamed, and it sounded like a woman screaming. It was really quite shocking. Then she rolled over on her side in a fountain of blood, dying.
October 2011
Environmental Heretic
Stewart Brand On Nuclear Energy, Genetically Modified Foods, And Climate Engineering
Will we grow buildings? That’s been my hope for thirty years, including making parts of them edible. We’re sitting in a room that has old-fashioned, energy-intensive air conditioning. It could be that someday all walls will be made of engineered living tissue that takes up carbon dioxide and replaces it with nice, clean oxygen while keeping the temperature of the room comfortable for humans and allowing all the microbes in the room to do their jobs.
September 2011
