Many scientists believe we are living through the sixth mass extinction — the largest loss of life on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs — and that it is being driven by humans. The 2022 Living Planet Report, compiled by World Wildlife Fund International and the Zoological Society of London, assessed the abundance of … Continued

Americans are living more densely and consuming more efficiently, but on the downside, you have probably noticed that traffic is getting worse, crowds are becoming more ubiquitous, resources are more strained, wildlife is more at risk, and our collective consumption of most resources continues to climb. Why? Simple: there are more of us. Most people … Continued

What Hurricane Ian tells us about immigration policy and resiliency Hurricane Ian will likely go down as the most expensive storm in Florida history: $66 billion in property damage and a record number of homes and properties destroyed. The damage is still being calculated. By one measure, Ian is tied for the fifth strongest storm … Continued

“About every five feet, there was a body….it was the Hunger Games.” – Life in America’s National Parks, 2022 Three out of every four Americans feel an “emotional or spiritual uplift” from spending time in natural areas, and 85 percent of Americans say it is important to be able to access them. From our study: … Continued

Americans are living more densely, on average, than we were 20 years ago, but we’ve paved over the equivalent of more than five Yellowstone National Parks – or roughly eleven-and-a-half million acres during that same period of time. Some of that loss was due to regional differences in land consumption per person; a majority of … Continued

Sadly, in 2020 life is imitating art in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Art: In the Paramount Network’s hit contemporary Western series Yellowstone, set in western Montana’s rugged Rocky Mountains, Kevin Costner plays grizzled old cattle rancher and crusty patriarch John Dutton. For generations, Dutton and his forebears running the vast … Continued

Freaking Out Over A Surreal Summer A resident of Martinez, California, in the Bay Area, texted a friend of mine last week: “Looks so creepy outside today!! It’s 10 a.m. and ash is all over the car; all the streetlights are still on and every car has headlights on too!” Another friend in the San … Continued

Podcaster and Vox newsplainer Matthew Yglesias has a book out today entitled One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger. An excerpt from the book appeared on the Intelligencer website of New York magazine (published by Vox Media) on August 31. Yglesias also did a podcast with Tyler Cowen on September 9. Both are very … Continued

A Bad, Bad Idea Journalist Matthew Yglesias, co-founder of the progressive website Vox, occasionally has some good ideas. But Yglesias also has some really, really bad ideas, as when he claims the United States is “empty” and advocates in his new book One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger, for a tripling of the … Continued