From the category archives:

Around the Campfire

In our last gathering about the campfire, I looked at how Technology plays in raising carrying capacity, thereby raising Population and Affluence, and shooting up Mankind’s Impact on wild things.  As I kindle this campfire, I’d like to weigh in on the never-ending squabble over which is heavier in making Impact: Population or Affluence?  As [...]

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In 1974, physicist John P. Holdren and biologist Paul Ehrlich, then both at Stanford University, set down in Science the key scientific formula of our time: I=PAT. Paul and Anne Ehrlich later spelled out what it means, “The impact of any human group on the environment can be usefully viewed as the product of three [...]

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“I can’t think of a more appropriate way or place for Dave to die,” said my friend Kenyon Fields after I narrowly dodged a cranky bull musk ox that wanted to trample and gore me. We were on the banks of the Noatak River in Alaska’s Brooks Range, about midway on our 375-mile paddle this [...]

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Words matter. The other day I was plowing through a stack of things to read and came upon an eye-friendly brochure about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the need to keep it wild and from being trashed by oil and gas drilling.  As I was reading it, though, a line jumped out that made [...]

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The last year has been a hard one from the overlook of losing friends and leaders. Among them have been demigods such as John Seiberling, the Ohio congressman who was a peerless champion for Alaska, wilderness areas, and overall conservation back in the 1970s and 1980s. I think that others would agree with me that [...]

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