On April 1st, 1940 in the small village of Ihithe, Kenya, a young girl was born. Her name was Wangari. Her parents were proud, and this is the way it is for all of us. We are the product of the hopes and dreams of our ancestors. While some [...]
Walking through the forest, I am at peace. A soft carpet of red pine needles mutes my footfall, while my eyes follow the trail ahead. It turns and twists organically following the Cascade River valley a hundred feet below. I grew up as a feral child. Like Tarzan, I [...]
The feathers of a sparrow drift down like snow out of a sky made bluer by yellow leaves and white clouds. A victim of a Cooper’s hawk. Life seeking and reducing everything to amino acids. The Junko is oblivious. The energy of the sparrow will power the hawk for [...]
The world is green, cool and humid. The land falls away over a valley, and beyond that, another and another. I ask the driver of the Land Rover to let us off a couple of miles from our camp at 10,000 feet. We are on the slopes of Mount [...]
Forests are the lungs of the earth. They give us about one third of the oxygen we breath, and they sequester carbon dioxide. Around the world, they absorb almost 40% of human carbon emissions and help slow the rate of global warming. I am walking along the east side [...]
Most of us are too busy to think. Yet we are constantly exposed to frames that reshape our thinking. For environmentalists, most of the frames we are exposed to are created by fossil fuel and right wing political think tanks. The result is that public opinion moves toward their [...]
Clarity is your most powerful tool in crafting your message. It confers sincerity, and sincerity, along with competence, builds credibility and trust. Our political discourse today is full of smoke. As a result, no one trusts politicians. The same occurs in the environmental movement. We talk too much, we [...]
The lake is a mirror to the universe. I can not tell where the sky begins and the water ends. There is no boundary. The sun dips below a reef of clouds and the world turns orange. The earth turns and Venus rises as it’s twin reflection sinks. We [...]
You have been infected by fossil fuel companies. You are now spreading their infection. Please stop and wash your hands. To understand why the environmental movement is losing, one has to understand how we are being manipulated by the fossil fuel industry. I’ve written about this subject in Messages [...]
It’s been a while. Maybe two million years. For me personally, about sixty years. What, you ask? Since I’ve sat in a tree. Which is where I am right now. As a species we used to sit in trees. Mostly for safety and to escape nighttime predators; the lions [...]
