Legendary wilderness warrior, rewilding pioneer, and NumbersUSA friend Dave Foreman died this past September 19 at the age of 75 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, succumbing to an illness called interstitial lung disease. With his death, Mother Earth lost a diehard defender and the United States a formidable fighter for rational population and immigration policies cognizant … Continued
Around the world, those of us who have, for half a century and more, questioned and challenged the reining dogma of “growthmania” — the widespread delusion that infinite population and economic growth is possible in a finite ecosphere — are in mourning. It is as if, as Herman’s longtime colleague and admirer William E. Rees … Continued
I have had the good fortune to experience the charms of both the Tar Heel State and the Palmetto State. For those Westerners who may never have ventured east of the Mississippi River, I’m referring to North Carolina and South Carolina. In the former, I have backpacked the Appalachian Trail from Newfound Gap in the … 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
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
Human Numbers Up, Bird Numbers Down: Not Just a Coincidence Fewer flocks and feathers grace our skies, forests, coasts, grasslands, and deserts these days. A team of scientists writing in the journal Science reports that the number of birds in North America has dwindled by about 30 percent since 1970, or nearly three billion individual … Continued
In today’s polarized America, there are certain “third rail” or “hot potato” issues one just can’t touch without an explosive reaction. They’re too hot to touch, and so most politicians ignore them rather than risk getting burned. Emotionalism, knee-jerk responses, heaping scorn, and scoring cheap political points trump rational deliberation, discussion, and debate. Right and … Continued
The Trump administration recently finalized new rules that it insists will “modernize” the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Unsurprisingly, environmental groups and their media allies are expressing alarm, while extractive industries aligned with Trump reassure the public that the new rules represent an improvement for everyone, not least threatened and endangered species. Yet neither the Trump … Continued
