To love plants is to be in awe of photosynthesis. Even when you know how it works, it’s still a miracle. And a crucial, we-wouldn’t-be-here-without-it miracle. Its ramifications are so vast that once it showed up, it dictated all the evolution that followed. It’s also complicated. There is, for example, a catalyzing enzyme involved called […]
Living light: the crucial miracle of photosynthesis Read More »
We humans have brought ourselves to a challenging point. By our numbers and choices, we’ve become equal to the geological forces that shaped our planet for 4.5 billion years. Our impact on the thin layer of atmosphere blanketing Earth means we can alter the ability of every living thing to prosper, or even exist. Our
The power of radiance Read More »
For 150 years lichen has been known to be a combination of two life forms. The outside is a fungal matrix, rather like the crust of a baguette, which gives structure and protection to the softer, more filamentous inside, formed by one of the algae family, or occasionally a cyanobacteria. These latter two provide nutrients
Pursuing mystery: how we found out lichen has a third partner and is saving the earth Read More »
This is a photo of my refrigerator, filled with its usual groceries, though much more attractively arranged than usual. It represents some of the best and most exciting news I’ve ever heard. It goes back to a question environmentalist Paul Hawken posed: what can we do to reverse global warming? Standard research focuses on ways
Project Drawdown: breakthrough solutions for climate change Read More »
Humans are story-making animals. We have a story for everything, and many, many stories for the same things, depending on where and with whom we found ourselves when we arrived in this life. Our tales explain where we came from, how we got here, why we’re here at all, how to behave now that we
Eostre and the Universe Story Read More »
The lines showed up one morning, on a section of my walk where the sand, driven over by a tractor, is unusually soft and easily shows imprints of desert wildlife. Lizard tails, I thought. I checked carefully for signs of tiny lizard feet but didn’t see any indentations along the lines. About a mile on,
Mysteries at my feet Read More »
The dream shapes the world, the Achuar people told John Perkins on his visits to the Ecuadorian rainforest that forms the headwaters of the great Amazon River. They asked for his help to protect their sacred land — the heart and lungs of the planet — from the dream of the west, with its insatiable
Blessed Unrest: the Pachamama Alliance Read More »
When you look at the mountain above, your reaction is likely to be colored by what is most important to you. Skiers may think of the thrill of the trip down, climbers of the trek up. Mining executives of the coal or metals to be found there. Road engineers of the challenge of finding a
Rights of Nature: a breakthrough in imagining Earth Read More »
I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world These words, from Rainer Maria Rilke’s exquisite Book of Hours, are slightly paradoxical because this year we traveled less than any of the other years since we set off on our journey in 2011. My partner George’s health isn’t up to life
Songlines 2017: widening circles Read More »
One of the blessings of a visit to New York late last summer was seeing something I miss in California: a world awash in goldenrod. A member of the vast and happy Asteraceae family, Solidago canadensis, one of a hundred species of native goldenrods in the US, overflowed fields and banked roadsides near my sister’s
The gold rush: the joyful power of goldenrod Read More »