Food for Thought
“We say that America is a Christian and a democratic country. But I find nothing in the gospels or in the Declaration of Independence or in the Constitution to justify our support of puppet tyrants, or our slaughter of women and children, or our destruction of crops and villages and forests, or our herding of civilians into concentration camps in Vietnam. We do these things because we have forsaken our principles and abandoned ourselves to the inertia of power. We have come to depend obsessively on an enormous capability of violence -- for security, for national self-esteem, even for economic stability. As a consequence we have become blind to the alternatives to violence.”
Wendell Berry (1968)
Monthly Archives: September 2007
Trees save lives
We often hear that nature provide “ecosystem services” to humanity that would be difficult or impossible to replace if lost, and that support various aspects of human well-being. The evidence and rationale for this view was recently synthesized in the monumental work … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiversity, Sustainability
4 Comments
Note to “Security Moms”: here comes the next big threat
In the wake of the 2004 US Presidential elections, one of the buzz streams we heard from the punditocracy concerned the allegedly historic metamorphosis of soccer moms to security moms. Regular folks were (and are) terrified of another 9/11, evidently, … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Sustainability
Leave a comment
Seafood of the 21st century: Bonsai cod
Yesterday I stopped by the fish counter at my local grocery store for something to grill on a Saturday evening. The selection was typical — farm-raised salmon from Chile, farm-raised tilapia from Ecuador, farm-raised catfish from Mississippi, farm-raised crawfish from … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiversity, Oceans, Sustainability
3 Comments
Conservatives for . . . science?
Oh, wait, now I get it — this news is from the UK. Yes, the country where it is evidently understood on both sides of the aisle that vigorous science is the key to a strong, sustainable economy, a safe … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Sustainability
2 Comments
Biodiversity, trash heaps, and the evolutionary origins of crops
The dawn of what we now consider civilization (in the various places where it arose independently) hinged on an event that was probably little noticed at the time, namely the transition from hunting and gathering of wild foods to the … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiversity, Sustainability
Leave a comment
You’ve got mail!
Probably quite a bit more than you’d like, in fact. But on the off chance that all that spam in your inbox is getting lonely, you can now dilute it with with something of substance — the Natural Patriot is … Continue reading
Posted in Blogospheria
Leave a comment
Wildlife conservation: a culture of denial?
Once again it’s that somber time of year when the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) issues its “Red List” of threatened and endangered species. The report has never been an occasion for celebration, and this year is … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiversity, Biophilia, Sustainability
Leave a comment
In memoriam: Alex the Parrot, 1976-2007
Sometimes a bump in the road knocks us out of the rut we often find ourselves in, and we get an unexpected glimpse of what a miracle the world really is. OK, I know this is corny. But a bird by the name … Continue reading
Posted in Biophilia
Leave a comment
Green building’s too expensive . . . (not!)
Imagine a future world of extremely efficient buildings, arranged in their environment so as to maximize passive heating and cooling, outfitted with solar panels and highly efficient windows, and geothermal heating so that they are actually net producers of electricity by … Continue reading
Posted in Sustainability
1 Comment
The power of weeds
Can we have our biofuel and eat it too? Obviously not. Which is one reason that the current euphoria in some quarters about corn biofuel is all wet. Corn agriculture is extremely resource-intensive and putting land into corn production for … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiversity, Sustainability
Leave a comment
