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 “
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.
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?
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 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.