Gene Logsdon

The Wild Empire Strikes Back

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I can’t figure out why society is so enamored of movies about invaders from outer space when we have a real life invasion going on from earth’s inner space. Squadrons of deer, raccoons, opossums, skunks, chipmunks, rabbits, squirrels, moles, wild turkeys, crows, robins, wolves, black bears, feral hogs, to mention a few, have unleashed an attack upon homes, gardens and farms unprecedented since the 1800s…In the 1940s when I was growing up, there was not a deer in our county. Now they roam at will across the farm fields, towns and highways, laying waste to everything that grows and causing far more deaths on the roads than bombs do in Afghanistan.

Unlearn, Rewild

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One of the least useful words in the English language is the word “wilderness.” I grew up wandering the woods, and, to me, where the road and the trail end and the animal (and human) paths begin is a point of fundamental transition: beyond this point lies something else an older, perfectly ordinary, normal way of being, in which we are just another animal among many others.

World Energy Consumption Facts, Figures, and Shockers

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In the first installment of this series, I reviewed U.S. and global oil reserves according to the 2012 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. The second installment covered oil production. Today, I want to examine the changes in consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas since 1965 in the three major consuming regions of the world: Asia Pacific, the United States, and European Union countries.

Why Bill Gates Needs To Listen To More Gamelan Music

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Balinese farmers have been growing rice in terraces since at least the eleventh century. Because the island’s volcanic rock is rich in mineral nutrients, water running off mountains fills the rice paddies to create a kind of aquarium.This system has enabled farmers to grow two crops of rice a year year for centuries. They do this using a unique form of cooperative agriculture that enables farming to flourish despite water scarcity and the constant threat of disease and pests.

Interview: Author William deBuys On Climate Change In The Southwest

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As part of my summer reporting project on energy and climate change in the Southwest, I had the pleasure of driving deep into the heart of the Santa Fe National Forest and interviewing deBuys at his home about an hour and a half from Santa Fe. We discussed how he ended up in a far-removed mountain hamlet in New Mexico, what drove him to write his most recent book, and what the biggest takeaways from the project were, among other things.

Moral Failing

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With the national weather maps pinker than a Barbie® SUV, more Americans are grudgingly accepting that climate change is for real, that it’s largely caused by humans, and that it’s a major threat to us here and now. It’s probably only a matter of time before America and the world finally start taking the problem seriously…