Under a Trump presidency, environmentalists must hang on to hope
“I hold one share in the corporate earth and am uneasy about the management.” — E.B. White, “Sootfall and Fallout,” 1956 Not long after the election, I fell down a 5-foot rock embankment. Losing my...
View ArticleMake season of giving more peaceful by letting go of stuff
It’s always an ironic postscript to Thanksgiving: the raucous Black Friday stampede at the starting line of a monthlong shopping marathon. How quickly our gratitude for blessings descends into a...
View ArticleOur health is inextricably linked to the health of the planet
“We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary...
View ArticleApproach college debt with caution or rue the consequences
“What education giveth in terms of freedom and opportunity, student debt often taketh away.” – Zac Bissonnette, “Debt-Free U” Too many high school students stumble through applications for college...
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It’s time to get brighter about LED lights
“There is no such thing as a free lunch,” biologist Barry Commoner wrote in 1971, proposing that as one of four “laws of ecology.” We’ve had decades to absorb that lesson but it still comes hard. Each...
View ArticleBridging chasms: An open letter in support of science
After a recent conversation with a self-described “climate agnostic,” I found myself trying to articulate why that was not a tenable stance. I wrote that person, whom I will call Jane here, a letter. I...
View ArticleU.S. leaders fiddle while rest of world seeks climate action
The politics of climate change are starting to resemble the surface of a melting glacier split by crevices. We appear to be at a shear zone, a major discontinuity between the perspective of most world...
View ArticleIn the depths of mud season, houseplants will lift your spirits
I have a bowl of paper whites, Of paper-white narcissus; Their fragrance my whole soul delights, They smell delissus. E.B. White, “Window Ledge in the Atom Age,” 1946 Winter may finally be over, if we...
View ArticleTry these 3 ways to green your household
“It’s not easy being green,” Kermit the Frog bemoaned back in 1970. What was, for a Muppet, a whimsical play on words has become code for the challenge of trying to live with a lighter environmental...
View ArticleTwo-dimensional living increasingly separates us from real life
“When our attention is perpetually narrowed onto a small screen, our world shrinks to meet it.” — Nancy Colier, “The Power of Off: The Mindful Way to Stay Sane in a Virtual World”” How quickly some...
View ArticleEnergy-saving programs that help Earth and economy need defending
Ask a dumb question and – contrary to the old adage – you might just get a smart response. Take this question, first posed a quarter-century ago to American consumers: “In choosing between similar...
View ArticleThe U.S. barely regulates personal care products, despite the many chemicals...
“Raise your hand if you’re SURE!” a deodorant ad once proclaimed, playing to widespread insecurities about appearance and body odor. The promise of radiant confidence and magnetic appeal is what sells...
View ArticleEnvironmentalist Paul Hawken’s newest project, and book, offers real,...
In a month that began with the president’s misguided decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, I was heartened to discover an inspiring new project and book, “Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive...
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Tiny houses on the rise in Maine to solve cost and environment problems
“Life started feeling very much like a double-edged sword – to be working so much to pay for a house we don’t own, are never at, and don’t have time to enjoy because all our time is spent working to...
View ArticleSince 2006, visitation at Acadia has gone up a whopping 55%
Biking Mount Desert Island’s Park Loop Road over Memorial Day weekend, Friends of Acadia Conservation Director Stephanie Clement witnessed vehicular chaos. She has seen a lot in Acadia National Park...
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New book on Trump finds sliver of hope in lowering clouds
If political turbulence has you feeling sick, the patch you might need is Naomi Klein’s new book, “No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need” (Haymarket Books,...
View ArticleIt’s really OK, even encouraged, to slow down
“I have struggled all my life with a constitutional impatience with anything that threatens to waste what’s left of my minutes here on earth. I start fidgeting at any community meeting where the first...
View ArticleShrink wrap may protect Maine boats, but it can harm the environment
Before long, the recreational boating season will draw to a close and owners will batten down their craft for the winter. Many will choose the low-density polyethylene (LDPE) plastic better known as...
View ArticleEPA’s Scott Pruitt’s push to roll back vehicle emission standards is a disaster
As ineffectual as this president appears, his Cabinet members are stealthily orchestrating destructive changes. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt is intent on subverting that...
View ArticleClimate refugees could see safety in Maine
At first, all eyes were on Hurricane Harvey. Then attention turned – momentarily – to the wildfires raging out West before riveting on Hurricane Irma. Cascading natural disasters in a warming world...
View ArticlePretty Good Houses are pretty good energy-efficient homes
If you haven’t lived in an energy-efficient home, you don’t know what you’re missing. The benefits that green buildings offer – lower operating costs, healthier indoor air, greater comfort, and the...
View ArticleColleges, and their students, must adapt to a rapidly changing world
Watching a child embark on the college search process can be sobering (and not just in making one feel old!). It sparks reflection on how much higher education has changed, and how much it still needs...
View ArticleDon’t let vampire energy users suck your house dry
Halloween is approaching, bringing a night of ghosts and ghouls – or at least bored teenagers bearing shaving-cream. The phantoms on your doorstep may not be real, but indoors you are likely to...
View ArticleWake up and smell the coffee trouble
With all due respect to poet William Carlos Williams, so much depends not on a “red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water” but on a steaming mug of coffee. There may be metaphoric value in a garden cart,...
View ArticleNarcissism prevents global solutions to our shared problems
“Let me tell you, the one that matters is me. I’m the only one that matters.” – Donald Trump, November 2017 The problem with being Trump is the same thing that explains the enormous fame and success of...
View ArticleCars cost you a lot, and they cost the planet a lot, too
Many millennials show little enthusiasm for cars and driving, but for “Gen Z” – those born from 2000 on – the jury is still out. Well, not entirely; one member of that generation – under my own roof –...
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Trees can teach us to value a world of connection
“If you could spend, as I did, the sweeter part of four good years in that forest, scanning a sea of treetops for a twist of smoke, walking beneath that canopy of leaves in the chill clear mornings and...
View ArticleLearning to shed stuff, like losing weight, makes you feel lighter
The bitter winds of January blow in, bringing guilt over seasonal excesses and resolve to show greater restraint. It’s an apt time to consider the advice of a self-described “personal trainer for your...
View ArticleSome tips to help you navigate the renewable energy jungle
Two-thirds of Americans want to “prioritize clean energy sources,” the Pew Research Center reports. But for energy consumers, deciphering the jargon of electricity generation can be disempowering. The...
View ArticleTwo naturalists, one in midcoast Maine, closely observe as the climate changes
“We have only just begun to feel the repercussions of climate change: we are today in a position likely to be envied by future generations.” – Cornelia F. Mutel, “A Sugar Creek Chronicle” The first...
View ArticleMount Desert Island – a small place with some big environmental goals
Mount Desert Island is a long way from the corridors of power, and what’s happening in Augusta and Washington holds scant promise of fostering a healthier environment or economy. So a growing number of...
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Ratepayers weary as CMP falls short in 3 key areas: Reliability, cost, carbon
There’s a growing gap between what Maine’s ratepayers want and what they’re getting from the state’s dominant electric utility, Central Maine Power (CMP). The wish list is short: reliable power, low...
View ArticleBan by ban and bag by bag, Maine municipalities making a difference
“Just because plastic is disposable doesn’t mean it goes away. After all, where is away? There is no away.” — Jeb Berrier in the documentary “Bag It” It’s easy these days to feel as if environmental...
View ArticleMulch with arborist wood chips, and your garden will thank you
Even before the soil could be worked this spring, I indulged my impulse to dig – shoveling into a pile of wood chips that an arborist delivered last fall. The chips were sodden from snowmelt and did...
View ArticleAppreciating Mother for sharing the gift of wonder
With all its fits and starts – unexpected April snows and fierce Nor’easters, spring has finally sprung. For southerly locales, the March equinox may herald the season’s arrival. But here, at least...
View Article‘Daring Democracy’ says environmental degradation, racial tension, poverty...
“Democracy is a process, not a static condition. It is becoming rather than being. It can be easily lost, but never is fully won. Its essence is eternal struggle.” — William Hastie, first U.S....
View ArticleField-grown perennials: Don’t be spooked by the esoteric label
Shopping didn’t used to require a glossary. But now there’s a profusion of labels like “pasture butter” and “field-grown perennial” that require translation. Consider the latter term: what portion of...
View ArticleLeaf blowers – a source of pointless pollution and maddening cacophony
It’s a gorgeous summer morning, fragrant with the scents of lilac and abelia, but my office windows are shut. A swarm of leaf blowers has descended just down the road, generating plumes of dust and a...
View ArticleEcology reminds us that we’re all connected
“The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too.” — T.C. McLuhan,...
View ArticleAir travel the ‘fastest and cheapest way to fry the planet’
It’s been seven years since I set foot on a plane. I have not missed flying: not the sock-footed security drill, the shrinking seats or the fumes lingering in lungs and luggage. Now, it seems, I have...
View ArticleScientists struggle to measure change in the natural world
“Nature has no hope in the absence of history.” Carl Safina in “Shifting Baselines: The Past and the Future of Ocean Fisheries” We face a paradoxical bind, needing simultaneously to look backward and...
View ArticleWell-positioned trees can reduce household energy consumption
Maine, it appears, is no longer exempt from the warming patterns that made five of the last seven years the hottest on record. Two summers ago, I wrote about staying cool without air conditioning but...
View ArticleMainers get a charge out of more affordable electric cars
Not all of us can, like the royal couple at their wedding last May, drive a vintage Jaguar modified to be all-electric. Even most Teslas remain beyond reach. Yet while 1 percent of Americans own...
View ArticleWhat shared family camps can teach the country about working together
There’s great comfort to being in a place where – even in solitude – you’re not alone. When no other humans are at my extended family’s rustic camp, I’m still surrounded. The picnic table, perched on a...
View ArticleTry cover crops – a living blanket for your garden
They suppress weeds, attract pollinators and add nitrogen to the soil.
View ArticleA candidate deserving of your support: The planet
With all the floods, hurricanes, record heat and wildfires, do you know how Maine politicians plan to slow climate change?
View ArticleAs price of climate change climbs, consider how much we could save
Costs in dollars, to the environment and to living things could fall if we reduce emissions and adapt quicker.
View ArticleAt fall lawn-feeding time, we offer you a recipe for nourishing your garden
Use local amendments, mostly plants, in moderation.
View ArticleCarpets could be causing trouble underfoot
We don't know what microfibers may be doing to us.
View ArticleSea Change: Can we survive this year of unprecedented change?
From the melting of the Arctic to a sixth mass extinction, it's far from clear whether humans will change their behavior in time.
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