Savanna Blog
Fifty Years Separates NeverAgain and the NRA
I spend a lot of time thinking about paleo-ecology and about business. This means I need to operate in very different timescales. I need to pay the mortgage and restore ecological processes that are tens of millions of years old. This is relevant because we live in an age where political partisans, special interests, and […]
A History of Science and a Future of ‘Industrial Ecology’
Industrial Ecologist in training? (But he can be whatever he wants) Thanks to the simple disciplines of physics and chemistry, there is now light where there was once darkness and there is clean silverware where before the dishwasher left a sticky film behind. The amazingly powerful idea behind these two simple disciplines is that if […]
Fake Meat in the Fake News Part II
Savannas, megafauna, early humans, and tool use. All in one picture. Most modern agricultural innovations have come from chemists and physicists. These include synthetic fertilizer and DDT. Those technologies have a whole chain of unanticipated negative consequences. We can predict that Fake Meat will exhibit the same pattern. We can predict this fifty years in […]
Fake Meat in the Fake News
A kid in a candy store does not have an overarching theory about candy. In the same way, we, as a society, do not have an overarching theory about technology*. How do I know? Because there are people that are holding up ‘Fake Meat’ as a solution to the ecological/nutritional problems associated with the beef […]
Biomimicry in Agriculture, or, (better yet) Ecomimicry
Biomimicry in Agriculture, or, (better yet) Ecomimicry Us nature-geeks blame technology for modern problems, but we can get a little fuzzy about where to go from there. Some nature-geeks champion the idea of ‘biomimicry,’ which is defined as ‘innovations inspired by nature.’ One example of biomimicry are the swimsuits modeled after shark skin. Or a […]
Heavy Fuel Loads, The Fires in Ventura County, and the Brave New Normal
With the fires in Ventura County, I think we can call it official; our heavy fuel loads have come home to roost. A week ago I could convince myself, while drinking a beer and listening to rain patter on the roof, that the fires that destroyed our home were an anomaly. No, they are the […]