Do you remember playing outdoors as a child? I remember climbing a five-trunked maple tree, playing house in the shady gaps of a honeysuckle thicket, tasting the nectar of columbine flowers, stripping the seeds from plantain stems, for that satisfying prickle along the fingers. If you have kids, I hope they’re getting to have their … Continue reading Kids and nature deficit
Scientists throw out predictions on how long it’s going to take for the average temperatures on Earth to rise 5 degrees and what the effects will be on sea level, agriculture, and human existence—but many people are skeptical because it’s all based on computer modeling. As a former computer programmer, I know how impossible it … Continue reading The Saving Grace of Computer Modeling
Aldo Leopold was a visionary ecologist of the first half of the twentieth century. I'm reading his classic A Sand County Almanac (Oxford University Press, 1949), a then-radical view of the imbalance between human activity and the needs of the environment, as considered by a scientist, hunter, and deeply thoughtful observer of his surroundings. It's … Continue reading An early environmental activist
