Today, our Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decided 5 to 4 that there’s no limit to the $$ consumers of politicians can spend to buy them. I don’t think the word has been invented that describes our present form of national government, but it’s quite clear that Jimmy Carter is correct: we no longer have a functioning...Continue Reading
Our national economy isn’t making us happy. We don’t want to contribute to global warming, for example, but our economy does and so do we. We don’t want to drink plastic-bottle water, and fill up the sea and cover the land with them, but the tap water tastes bad or we’re traveling or whatever. Many,...Continue Reading
Written today in Zipolite, Mexico on the Playa Amor. Yes: wonky, truncated, imperfect—but do please read and comment. Notes for a definition of Field Environmental Philosophy (FEP) Historical and epistemological background— 1) The academic industrial complex has succeeded in graduating several generations who have no “place” and are now suffering from it, economically, politically, aesthetically,...Continue Reading
I posted recently about how the University of Connecticut sited its hazardous waste facility directly on top of its own water supply. UConn promised to move the facility in 2005, but didn’t; and in 2010-11, I was told that the reason it wasn’t moved was because the UConn Police Chief didn’t want it moved for...Continue Reading
As I was saying, while I was earning my PhD at UConn, I learned that its administration was trying to develop water protecting land that was illegal to develop, and falsifying population figures so it could build lots of industrial sprawl without having a sufficient water supply. There was another thing I noticed when I...Continue Reading
Having alienated its local chapters by selling out its name and mission to Clorox in 2008, and through its failure to get neoliberal carbon-trading legislation passed in Congress 2 years later, the Sierra Club has struggled to maintain both its relevance and funding. Cleverly adhering to the EDF “market-based solution” model of actively greenwashing to...Continue Reading
Environmentalism—in the form of a bureaucratic class of professional experts whose science-based & commonwealth-ethic views are respected by politicians, business-people and the public—is dead. The reason is it dead is that professional environmentalists, at the Sierra Club and other big name enviro-action corporations, bought into the neoliberal ideology of “market-based” solutions to the problem that...Continue Reading
Perhaps you have seen them: flying bugs on the ice. I’ve written but not published a few blogs over the past 2 months because the subjects were difficult and disturbing, and who wants to hear more bad news about life on earth? We have enough bad news. Critical perspectives, rooted in bad news, can point...Continue Reading
I”m trying to remember where I was. Until I do please let me entertain you with a tale of local color. When my family moved from to Westhampton about eight years ago, one of the first friends we made were our neighbors, Dan and Jessie Krug. We were very lucky to meet them because they...Continue Reading
Biocitizen maxim: “You are more than you have ever been taught.” You are the product of 4 billion years of evolution by natural selection. In other words, you”re not 12 or 65 or 27 or 34 years old. You are the breaking crest of a wave of life, a tsunami of being, generated in deep...Continue Reading
WHAT IS BIOCITIZEN? The word “biocitizen” is a contraction of “biotic citizen,” a term and idea conceived by Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) who is widely celebrated for conceiving the “land ethic.” A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. A […]
Charlie is a recent graduate from Wesleyan University who is just beginning to get his footing in the big wide world and figure out where he’s going. Although he majored in music, his studies always seemed to circle around environmentalism and the more-than-human world, a cross pollination which began the summer after his freshman year […]
Lugar son historias en las que vivimos. Y algunos lugares nos gustan más que otros. ¿Por qué? Ricardo Rozzi nos cuenta una historia sobre un lugar que ama. —secundo de […]
Lugar son historias en las que vivimos. Y algunos lugares nos gustan más que otros. ¿Por qué? Yubitza Bermúdez nos cuenta una historia sobre un lugar que ama. —primero de […]
Westhampton, MA