Category Archives: Environmentalism

iPads and Kindles are better for the environment than books? Come again?

Brian Palmer (aka Slate’s Green Lantern) writes that “iPads and Kindles are better for the environment than books.” If the Lantern has taught you anything, it’s that most consumer products make their biggest scar on the Earth during manufacture and transport, before they ever get into your greedy little hands. He then papers glosses overContinue reading “iPads and Kindles are better for the environment than books? Come again?”

Deforestation: causes and cures

Cute, clever, incorrect. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations’s Forest Resource Assessment for 2005 uses the word “alarming” 20 times to describe the trend lines for deforestation. And, a commonplace inference is that forests are rapidly disappearing due to logging. Yet deforestation is not necessarily the result of logging (illegal orContinue reading “Deforestation: causes and cures”

Science Isn’t Enough: A Forester’s Search for Truth

  A presentation on 10 February 2010, by William W. Keye (of the California Licensed Foresters Association) given at the UC/USFS Pre- and Post Wildfire Conference. You may get the PDF version (with the visuals) of his talk here: http://ucanr.org/sites/Prepostwildfire/files/3765.pdf _____ In looking over the agenda preparing for this talk I must tell you thatContinue reading “Science Isn’t Enough: A Forester’s Search for Truth”

Weekend Postcard from Mountain Home State Forest

I was the Assistant Forest Manager at Mountain Home State Forest in the early 1980’s. Mountain Home Demonstration State Forest is a 4,800 acre tract of forest land in Tulare County managed by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The State Forest lies within the Tule River watershed some 22 air miles northeastContinue reading “Weekend Postcard from Mountain Home State Forest”