Once upon a time, there was a beautiful valley in the northwestern part of Yosemite National Park known as Hetch Hetchy Valley. Today, there lies a reservoir in this part of Yosemite. The story of how Hetch Hetchy Valley was transformed involves a bitter debate between the two major factions of the environmental movement in …
Continue reading “Storytime Sunday: The Hetch Hetchy Controversy”
During my time as an undergraduate, I took a class about severe weather. Every Tuesday and Thursday from 2:00-3:15, I got to hear wondrous, fantastic lectures about topics such as tornadoes, droughts, and lightning. Eventually I became a TA for the class, which meant that I had an excuse to attend the lectures over and …
Continue reading “Throwback Thursday: HH Bennett & the Founding of the Soil Conservation Service”
Amid the fires raging in the Amazon Rainforest, there are still wonders to be found. Far from charting all existing species of animals, plants, and fungi existing within the rainforest, scientists regularly discover new types of living beings within its boundaries. 10% of the world’s known species live in the Amazon, with an unknown number …
Continue reading “Shocking Discovery in the Amazon: New Eel Species Sets Electric Records”
18 August 2019 – No, that is not a misspelling in the title. One of the best titles on an academic paper I have ever seen was “Dam Nation,” which was a survey of American dams and their effects on the environment. The second best title I have seen was “How Green is My Value,” …
21 July 2019 – Many international treaties either fail abysmally or do not even come close to achieving what they were supposed to do. But we’re not here to discuss those treaties today. This post is about the Montreal Protocol of 1987, a shining example of human cooperation on the international scale. In 1985, a …
Continue reading “That Time When Humanity Came Together and Agreed to Save Itself”
14 July 2019 – Yesterday I was collecting some petitions for an environmental group, and heard many erroneous and disheartening opinions about clean energy from people I talked to. This blog is dedicated to all those misguided folks. The fact that we need to move to a system of 100% renewable energy is obvious. This …
Continue reading “Green Energy Advocates vs. An Unfortunate Misconception”
9 June 2019 – The current administration’s Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a new plan. Under this proposal, the year-round sale of gasoline blended with 15% ethanol (known as E15) would be permitted. Right now, this form of fuel is banned during the summer months. This ban is not just for an arbitrary reason. Ethanol …
Continue reading “Oil Companies & Environmentalists Unite: What a Time to Be Alive!”
Agriculture is an important topic that is too often ignored in discussions of sustainability. However, it does take up a significant fraction of the earth’s surface, uses a huge sum of resources each year, and produces the stuff that keeps us alive, so our system of food production should receive more consideration by policymakers. This …
Continue reading “The Future of Agriculture I: Agroforestry”
28 May 2019 – Hello there! Thank you for stopping by. Here it is, the post that started it all, whatever limited thing “all” might be. I don’t climb El Capitan without ropes, search for rare abyssopelagic fish, or have any other hobby in my personal life that is really worth blogging about. Still, I …
Continue reading “Railroads and National Parks: A Hidden History”
Green Humanist