The old hunter leaned on his truffle-digging tool and took a drag on his cigarette. “Duemila lupi,” he said. Two thousand wolves. He scanned our astonished faces and then looked down at the dirt and shook his head, not even trying to conceal his disgust. We were standing in a young oak forest in Umbria …
When Humans Design Climate
Last week an article appeared in Forbes magazine bearing the title “As Humans Fumble Climate Challenge, Interest Grows in Geoengineering.” The article reports that during an appearance at Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. David Keith, one of North America’s foremost advocates for research into geoengineering, observed that in recent months serious discussion of geoengineering “really is …
Sailing on Oceans of Grass
“Prairie schooners” they called them. The covered wagons that moved across the tallgrass prairie of the American mid-west in the nineteenth century would have revealed no daylight under their carriage. Their wheels would have been completely obscured by grasses and forbs that stood five or six feet high. The only objects visible from afar would …
To Rise From the Dead
“Extinction,” as they say, “is forever.” It is the threat that has launched a thousand environmental campaigns. Despite being the ultimate fate of all species, extinction remains universally appalling in its finality. The thought of extinction serves as a chilling reference point for almost all conservation thinking. Technologies being developed in the emerging Plastocene epoch …
Fires, Floods, and Falling Carbon
The second half of 2017 must be an uncomfortable time to be a climate change denier. The rapidly growing list of weather records being set in recent weeks must make even the most rabid denialist squirm. The largest amount of rain to fall on the North American continent in a single storm (51 inches from …
Rewilding on the Rocky Mountain Front
Drive west along U.S. Highway 2 from the town of Browning towards East Glacier and your eyes are summoned upwards towards one of the most remarkable vistas in the United States. In front of you rise the piercing peaks and fractured walls of the Rocky Mountain Front. The swift transition from rolling grassland to near-vertical …
Salmon, Forests, and Protein Factories
It only took a day and a half. That was all the rainfall required to turn the lethargic assembly of fish milling around at the mouth of the creek into a full-on salmon run. For nearly two weeks, I had watched a growing school of pink salmon slowly circulate where the dwindling fresh water from …
From Atom to Atmosphere
The short essays that will appear on this page are designed to help with some big choices. They concern decisions that, if we don’t make them ourselves, will be made for us by technologists, entrepreneurs, and the marketplace. These decisions are about what sort of world we want to inhabit, decisions demanded by the unprecedented …
The Plastocene 