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I have arrived

I think I've finally arrived.

I have now joined the august ranks of journalists -- including such luminaries as Tom Brokaw, New York Times environment reporter Andy Revkin, and AP science reporter Seth Borenstein -- publicly attacked by the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works. They hate me! They really hate me!

Some background: EPW is chaired by everyone's favorite flat-earther, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Mongo). A while back, Inhofe hired Marc Morano of CNS news -- famous (if that's the word) for writing this piece questioning whether war veteran Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA) faked the wounds that got him two purple hearts -- to head up his communications operation. Morano wasted no time firing off press release blasts attacking various reporters and public figures for "bias." (Remember, in the right-wing dictionary, "bias" means a stubborn insistence on distinguishing truth from falsehood.)

Today, I have the dubious honor of being the target of one of these attacks.

Sure wish they’d go green

So this weekend I had the great pleasure of roaming around Manhattan, popping my head into generally closed-to-the-public spaces as part of the annual Open House New York. Among my favorite stops was a small shop in the East village called Build A Green Bakery. Apart from its divine chocolate-chip cookies, the bakery has made a small name for itself for being environmentally conscious, in everything from its supply chain to its ultra-green storefront. (Take a virtual tour and check out the materials they used).

A chat with Worldwatch’s Gary Gardner on faith and environmentalism

Gary Gardner. “It’s because I’m a religious person that I’m an environmentalist,” says Gary Gardner, director of research at the Worldwatch Institute. An expert on nuclear proliferation, population, and world hunger, Gardner returns to a subject close to his heart with his latest book: Inspiring Progress: Religions’ Contributions to Sustainable Development. I caught Gardner by […]

There are enough to shoot again

In the 1800s, the Texas Bighorn sheep numbered about 1,500 in the remote, craggy Texas wilderness. But by the 1940s, their numbers had dwindled to around 35 and they were looking to join the ranks of the dodo bird. However, conservation efforts and personal motivation tapes pushed the Bighorn sheep to clamber and hoof their way gradually back up the rocky, precarious cliff to population rebound, and at the windswept peak the Texas Bighorn found the ultimate reward:

Signs are hopeful

In 1903, a 45-year old Theodore Roosevelt stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon in Northern Arizona. He looked out over one of this country's great wonders and advised the nation to "Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it."

A little over a century later, I am sweating about 175 miles south in the 95 degree heat of Tempe, Arizona.

And although the Grand Canyon is still intact, we have not listened to the advice of this great Republican leader on a global scale. We have, in fact, marred this globe, and marred it badly. And we need to fix it. And to do that we need to build a new world. "Leaving it as it is," complete with its 6 billion greenhouse-gas-spewing citizens, is no longer an option.

I am in town for a conference set up by Arizona State University (ASU) and the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) to confront this very inconvenient truth.

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.

Grace to the Bottom

W.R. Grace must pay to clean up asbestos mess in Montana, Supreme Court decides W.R. Grace & Co. must pay $54.5 million to remove asbestos-contaminated soil from the mining town of Libby, Mont., the Supreme Court decided yesterday. The U.S. EPA sued the company five years ago to recover cleanup costs; a lower court ruled […]