The Natural Patriot

I see the future, and it is . . . Nascar!  (No, come to think of it, that’s the present.) OK, this is a personal confession.  One of the windmills at which I’m tilting with the NP is to do my small part (for the three readers who occasionally come to this site–welcome back guys!) to get out the message that conservation and environmentally progressive activities are not wacko political fringe issues but should be at the center of all our discourse about the future, whether political, economic, or religious. 

Happily, the tide appears increasingly to be turning in this direction.  Still, certain segments of the populace are coming around to it more slowly than others (as can be gleaned from some of the comments in response to Bob Marshall’s discussion of climate change at the Green Sportsman. Sheesh). 

So I have a secret plan.  Read the rest of this entry »

It’s official!  Williamsburg, Virginia will host a rally as part of the “Step it up 2007” National Climate Day of Action on Saturday 14 April 2007. 

The threat of human-induced global climate change is the major issue of our time (see my previous post here), and time is a luxury we don’t have.  That is why we–meaning the human race generally, and American voters specifically–need to get off our rear ends and act.  On Saturday, April 14th people all over America will hold events in parks, churches, universities, state capitols, inside and out, with the goal of convincing Congress to enact legislation promptly to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, and to pledge an 80 percent reduction by 2050. There are now over 1000 events scheduled in every state in the Union.  So I invite my locals to mark your calendars:

Saturday 14 April 2007
10 AM to 1 PM 
Wren Yard, The College of William and Mary
Williamsburg, VA

The venue is the yard of the renowned Wren Building on the College of William and Mary’s campus, the oldest academic building in the United States (begun in 1695), in a classroom of which Thomas Jefferson himself puzzled over his lessons as a lad.  Read the rest of this entry »

[NOTE: This is a copy of my essay in the April 2007 issue of Food Technology Magazine]

Harvesting of wild fish and shellfish from the oceans provides a major source of protein to the planet’s population, and supports an industry worth nearly $50 billion annually in the USA alone.  For the most part, nature provides this service to humanity “free” of charge, in the sense that we do not plow, fertilize, or weed the oceans to nurture these crops.  But any business requires infrastructure to produce and deliver its product, and seafood is no exception.  The difference is that the seafood industry is more intimately dependent on natural infrastructure in the form of biodiversity—the variety of interacting wild animals, plants, and microbes—and the habitats that support them.  In other words, Nature manages the plant and pays the overhead. 

The dependence of wild food harvest on diverse natural ecosystems seems intuitively obvious.  But how important is it?  Read the rest of this entry »

No matter how committed you are to good causes and saving the world, ya gotta eat.  And ya gotta wear clothes.  And most of us can’t get by without a car.  And so on.  We live in a material world and commerce is a central part of it.  So how to conduct your personal commerce so as to leave the smallest possible footprint?

Read the rest of this entry »

How can we save the world from environmental destruction?  If you are a traditional (yes, I mean liberal) enviro-type, your first reaction will very likely involve demonstrating against some evil corporation and/or demanding that the government pass this or that restrictive legislation.

I feel comfortable making this claim because that is more or less the sort of person I am.  These are worthy activities and they have their place.  Obscene profits can and have been made from unscrupulously pillaging nature, and national (or international) governments are in a better position than Adam Smith’s invisible hand to give the perpetrators a whack upside the head.

But there is also another way.  Read the rest of this entry »

I suppose I’m a little behind the times. At the advanced age of 46 I it is a challenge keeping up with the nanosecond-paced world of the modern blogosphere.  So it is only recently that I’ve come across the bizarre phenomenon of “Conservapedia”.  Bizarre because, being old-fashioned, I was still under the same impression that I grew up with, that the purpose of an encyclopedia is to provide the most authoritative and objective information available on a subject. 

Alas, no.

“Conservapedia” offers a brave new new model: an unabashedly (and often inadvertently hilarious) partisan version of the world presenting itself as The Truth.  I’m exaggerating, of course — it’s not such a new model.  If the old Soviet dictator Josef Stalin were still around, he would recognize fondly the transparent rewriting of history that was his distinctive modus operandi.  Mike Dunford at the “Questionable Authority” blog, among many others, has begun cataloging some of the knee-slappers that pass for encyclopedia entries on Conservapedia. 

But my subject here is a specific one, relating to the NP’s solemn duty as a guardian of patriotism.  Read the rest of this entry »