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E.O. Wilson weighs in

E.O. Wilson is perhaps best recognized as a lifelong champion of biodiversity. For the past 50 years, Wilson has been reaching beyond his core discipline of entomology to make connections with evolution and social science, in the 70s becoming the founder of the controversial science of sociobiology.

Now, at the age of 77, Wilson is plunging into yet another contentious territory, hoping to bridge the science/religion divide for the sake of salvaging the planet. His new book The Creation, in fact, takes the form of a series of letters written to a Southern Baptist minister.

Although today an acknowledged atheist, Wilson himself is no stranger to evangelical Christianity -- having been raised a Baptist and "born again" as a teenager.

You can read more about Wilson -- who I admittedly have a "science idol" crush on -- in the current issue of Seed magazine (sorry, it's not available online, but for a mere $4.95 you'll get the feature plus some great photos).

An excerpt:

Ultimately Wilson recognizes the power of numbers. "In order to get a response from political leaders, and of course, a response from the media," he says, "you have to have enough people who are interested and who care."

But his use of the word "creation"?

This approach may be more than just a good deed, well intentioned and exemplary of the power of cooperation. It may be political genius.

Mucho interesting

Yesterday I attended a luncheon put on by Seattle's excellent Plymouth Housing Group, an innovative non-profit working to end homelessness in the city. Malcolm Gladwell -- staff writer at The New Yorker, author of Tipping Point and Blink, blogger, and public intellectual extraordinaire -- was the keynote speaker. (He was invited in large part thanks to his influential piece in the New Yorker arguing that problems like homelessness are "easier to solve than to manage.")

Opinions about Gladwell are mixed and deep-rooted. For my part, I think he's great. He basically lives the life I dream about: someone who takes obscure academic research and buried historical anecdotes and popularizes them for a broad audience. (And it could have been me in his shoes, dammit, if only I lived in NYC and were, uh, smarter. And more imaginative. And a better writer. Damn you Gladwell!)

Anyway, his talk was on social change. Stripped of the anecdotes, the basic thesis of the talk was that social change has three somewhat unexpected features:

We Must, We Must, We Must Increase Our Dust

Saharan dust may decrease effect of Atlantic hurricanes Thick clouds of dust rising up from the Sahara Desert are linked to less frequent Atlantic hurricanes, says a new study in Geophysical Research Letters. Studying satellite data from 1981 to the present, American researchers noted that dust clouds were scarce in years with intense hurricane activity, […]

How to protect biodiversity in the developing world

Indonesia poses a major challenge for environmental conservation. It is an archipelago of over 10,000 islands, the citizenry are relatively poor, the central government is extremely weak and corrupt, and yet it is home to some of the greatest biodiversity in the world, under constant pressure for exploitation. For these reasons, Indonesia has been a focal point for major international conservation groups -- the Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, and the World Wildlife Fund all have major operations in the country.

I recently returned from a nearly month-long trip to Indonesia, where I had the opportunity to meet with many of the people in the conservation community who have been instrumental in the formation of Indonesia's marine protected areas (MPAs). My appreciation for the complexity and difficulty of their work grew enormously. It is one thing as an academic to discuss environmental policy (even with lots of real-world examples), and another to get a sense of the struggles from people who confront them firsthand.

Big sustainability announcement

Remember the big sustainability announcement from DuPont I told you was coming?

Well, they made it. Joel Makower has the rundown.

Someday I'll have time to comment on things like this again. And by "someday" I mean November.

Humanity …

... is officially in debt.

Tune in

Be sure to tune into Bill Moyers' Is God Green? special tomorrow, on your local PBS station.

Here's the trailer:

Also, check out this piece in the L.A. Times today on the same subject.

Update [2006-10-11 0:32:52 by David Roberts]: Here's another piece on the subject, from NYT.

Bill Moyers, Bill McKibben, and others on evangelical environmentalism

Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Forgive and Let Live Talk About the Wither To Catch a Leaf An Embarrassment of Richard Well’s Hells That’s All Wells and Good Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Faith, Hope, and Clarity Heat and Serve Tricks of the Fair Trade […]

New study finds women dress better when they’re fertile

A new study has found that women tend to dress better when they're fertile, according to an article published today by Reuters. Perhaps there is good reason environmentalists, at least as far as the stereotype is concerned, dress poorly. All the hemp ponchos and fleece jackets are really just another way to walk the talk on population control. At least, that's my new excuse for dressing like this. It's my fertility camouflage.

The greatest email ever

On Sunday, we got one of the greatest emails ever. Here it is:

Dear Gristers!

Last Friday Al Gore was presented the first copy of the Dutch version of his book "An inconvenient truth"; he also attended the grand opening of his film in the prestigious Amsterdam Tuschinski film theatre and introduced his film there. All of this would not have happened without YOU.

I (I am the founder -in 1982- and director of a small environmental communication agency near Amsterdam,) learnt from the book and the film through your daily email. I contacted the Dutch publisher that had published his earlier book about the date the Dutch version would be out. To my astonishment they said they would not publish it ("we did not earn money on his first book, and we changed our publishing policy"). No other Dutch publisher, I found out, had bought the translations rights. So I did, and translated it my self, and organised him to be there at the occasion of the presentation and the film premiere. Attached two photo's of the event (the guy left of Gore is me ... The guy to the right behind Gore on the second photo is the Dutch minister for the Environment).

So: THANK YOU! Without Grist there would definitively NOT have been a Dutch edition.

And as I emailed to you before: I thoroughly enjoy your work as well as they way you do it! Keep up the good work!)

best regards,

Maurits Groen
Maurits Groen Environment & Communication

Here's a picture of Maurits with Gore: