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 [...]
by TRI on January 25, 2011
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 [...]
by TRI on October 27, 2010
“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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]