On Ditches and The Green New Deal
08 Facebook Twitter I want to talk about the Green New Deal. But I am going to talk about it through the lens of ditch cleaning in western Oregon agricultural land. That’s what I want to talk about but…
Nate Chisholm
Help. I’m too Closely Connected to My Land.
08 Facebook Twitter Last week I described how Bud and Eunice Williams got pretty nervous when I started talking about my passion for grass management. When I asked him why, Bud simply said, “Sometimes people will bring livestock back to…
Ranching vs Hunting-Gathering, Part I
10 Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube We were born into this world with an expectation. Natural selection gave it to us. Our world is very different than the one we expected. This distance is a canyon that gets perceptibly wider and…
I Have a Red Pill, an Antidote for that Other Red Pill You Took
10 Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube On the twentieth anniversary of the movie The Matrix, I might have to remind you that the movie was about a main character given a ‘red pill’ that allowed him to see the truth, that…
Vegetarianism and Veganism (Part 1 I’m sure)
10 Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube I would never tell someone what they should eat. I consider propaganda of that nature to be intrusive, condescending, and dangerous. Trying to modify someone’s diet is a pernicious form of colonialism, or an abrogation…
The Ecology of Suffering (and joy, I guess)
10 Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube Buddhist teaching says that life is suffering. That overstates the point a little bit (for a good reason) but it is true. Buddhist teaching goes on to say that we suffer because we ‘desire.’ There…
Paleoecology and Agronomy Part II
10 Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube In our interactions with the ecosystem we need a healthy dose of humility. Paleoecology can provide that humility. There are many organisms that have this survival thing down much better than we do. Let’s figure…
Paleoecology is More Important than Agronomy. And Everything Else.
The other day I heard Darren Naish and John conway, of the excellent Tetrapod Zoology Podcast, stumble over the question of why Paleontology is important. This was apparently a spill over from a whole panel of experts stumbling over this…
Wolves
An understanding of the paleoecology can shed new light on our current political debate and open up new options for win/win solutions. In other words, my opinions about wolves will make everyone on all sides of the political spectrum angry.…
Disturbing. Or is it?
Words are so useful because they point to Truth. But if they don’t point to Truth, they point away from Truth. As such I think it is time that we ecologists have a sit down with the word “disturbance” and…