Conservation
A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall — and Then Get Wasted
A friend from New York, recently transplanted to Los Angeles, has watched aghast as, again and again, weather reporters have greeted any local rainfall more than 1″ with feverish STORMWATCH headlines. That said, the Southland got hit with quite a storm these last 48 hours. “Well,” say most Angelenos unaccustomed to precipitation. “At least we …
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CONTINUE READINGHabitat loss still the key conservation concern
Some time ago, I noted this essay in Slate by environmental journalist Brendan Borrell, arguing that our current obsession with climate change is inhibiting more important conservation work. A new report from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature provides some support for Borrell’s position. The IUCN periodically updates its Red List of Threatened …
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CONTINUE READINGAre we too obsessed with climate change?
Slate has an interesting piece by Brendan Borrell arguing that the current laser-like focus on climate change may be getting in the way of effective conservation measures. As he tells it, being green today “is all about greenhouse gases,” to the point that people have forgotten about plain vanilla habitat destruction. That, he thinks, is …
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CONTINUE READING“Nature,” not nature, makes us happier
Yale professor of psychology Paul Bloom published an essay this week in the New York Times Magazine arguing that the pleasure that “real natural habitats” provide to humans is a significant argument for “preservation” of these habitats. The essay was deeply unsatisfying to me, as it avoided all the hard questions that anyone grappling with the …
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CONTINUE READINGWhy futures markets won’t save species
Conflict, or perceived conflict, between profits and conservation drives much of the controversy over implementation of the Endangered Species Act. Landowners and resource users resist species listing and protection because it comes at their expense. For years we’ve been talking about whether and to what extent to incorporate compensation or other economic incentives for conservation …
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CONTINUE READINGConservation in a warming world
The latest issue of the journal Science includes another reminder that our current approach to conservation is ill-suited to a world where the climate is changing rapidly. A study led by Phillip van Mentgem of the U.S. Geological Survey (323 Science 521 (Jan. 23, 2009), subscription required) finds that trees are dying more rapidly in …
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