Spring Signs

I know I’m over a month early but there are too many signs not to recognize that Spring is in the air. The wonderful frogs we call “peepers” (they’re really Pacific Tree Frogs) have begun to hunt for mates, chirruping from the nearby wetland. Birds have also begun their predawn serenades. The robins and redwing [...]

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Editorial: Occupy Wall Street/Gathering Hope

It’s nearing the end of day 48 of Occupy Wall Street. Yesterday (remarkably to me) 10,000 Occupy Oaklanders managed to bring the Port of Oakland to a standstill. Although there have been clashes  and arrests there, as well as in other locales around the nation and the globe, overall this massive public demonstration has proved [...]

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Editorial: A Time of Optimism, A Time of Danger

In the early 1990s, with the environment in rapid decline, the idea of sustainability emerged. The term implied this question: How does society pass on to future generations a reasonably whole environment and a reasonably stable and fair economy, all within the framework of social justice? In 1993, Ann and I with several others founded [...]

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The Closed Door

For all intents and purposes, U.S. climate action—at least any that is meaningful in face of the enveloping climatic chaos—is dead. The Waxman-Markey House bill, after being beaten almost to death by big oil, big utilities and big coal would grant mostly free carbon credits to the most polluting industries, making a joke of the [...]

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Thank You, Bill McKibben

I’m appalled by all the folks who are never challenged when they talk about global climate change as though it were some scientific conspiracy cooked up by a bunch of rich climatologists to keep their jobs. We hear this rant from sources as diverse as the TV weatherman (If Global Warming Kills Us, Blame the [...]

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Last Chance?

Last night we had a big storm here in Albuquerque. Our first winter storm watch led to a downpour, thunder and lightning, peak wind gusts of 59 mph, a power outage, and this morning a snow frosted landscape. In places roads are black ice; some locations got a foot of snow. This is not that [...]

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Where Have All the Aspens Gone?

Last week we visited Mesa Verde in Southwestern Colorado. The homeplace to thousands of Ancestral Puebloans for 600 years, the mesatop stone cities and cliff palaces carved into canyon cliff walls were abandoned over the course of the final quarter of the 13th century. Why did they leave? A question with too many answers—extended drought, [...]

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Insanity

This commentary is part of Blog Action Day 2009. For more information please visit www.blogactionday.org Thousands of top scientists from around the world have warned us. They have been out front, these researchers, these value neutral scientists. Any sane person can read about the dire scenarios of climate change. Maybe one half of all species [...]

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