Nature (Version 2.0)
It’s the habitat, stupid! Such a well-worn phrase – or something close to it – could serve as a tag line for the alarming report on biodiversity loss released in summary form this week by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The report doesn’t mince words about the fact that human impacts …
Continue reading "Biodiversity Loss and (What is Not) Rocket Science"
On the same day as hundreds of protesters were getting arrested in London for their part in the Extinction Rebellion, a debate was brewing across the Atlantic that goes right to the heart of what may be required to save the planet. Sierra Magazine editor Jason Mark began the debate with a short essay titled …
I crossed the ocean this week on a sparkling new Boeing 787. This may be the fifth or sixth time I have flown on this model and each occasion leaves me filled with admiration for this emblem of contemporary technology. Fuel efficient, light, and comfortable, the 787 feels like a paragon of what human design …
Continue reading "Of Boeings and Biotech: When Trust Is Required"
Carbon offsets - a technique for demonstrating that your greenhouse gas emissions have real costs - are strangely absent from most people's sense of their climate obligations. While purists seem to take great pleasure in pointing out that carbon offsets are not a perfect solution for greenhouse gas emissions, the result has been that very …
Continue reading "Why Offsets Must Return to the Climate Radar"
A mother and calf moose were found bedded down in an alleyway in downtown Missoula, Montana this last Friday morning. They were resting up somewhere between a law office and a bank. People showing up for work at the end of the week were warned to look both ways before they ran across the street …
Continue reading "Of Moose and Sturgeon: Lessons from the Ragged Edges of the Anthropocene"
“Okay, let’s do this.” These were my self-directed words of encouragement as I decided to take the right turn and head one final time up the hill of the outer ski loop. I had been keeping my eye on the clock as I had to pick my wife up from the airport in less than …
With nearly two months elapsed since the world first learned of the existence of CRISPR-edited newborns living in China, it is worth pondering the response this momentous event generated. When considering what people have said about Chinese scientist He Jiankui’s exploits, a disconcerting feature emerges. The ethics of the scientist himself have been front and …
Although it happened nearly three decades ago, I still remember the smugness with which the visiting professor announced to the class that his op-ed had been published. The Washington Post had printed a piece he wrote about how nobody should be cutting down Christmas trees in order to bring them into their living room for …
Continue reading "What a Christmas Tree Taught me about Politics"
With memories of the devastating Camp Fire yet to be extinguished from our minds and with the chilling implications of the IPCC’s recent report on global temperatures settling in, perhaps there is some solace to be found in California’s efforts to salvage an escape-route from the approaching climate storm. The state has consistently been a …
This post was printed in The Conversation US last week. In the context of recent efforts to start cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it asks questions about the prospects for genuine plastics recycling. "The ocean is better off without it, of course, but the plastic problem has many more layers than it first …
Continue reading "Plastics: A Problem Reaching Beyond the Space and Time Horizon"
