All summer, butterflies dance around purple lupine in our Willamette Valley field. They are tiny, the size of a buttercup, but blue. So blue, they look like slips of summer sky, taken flight. Fender’s blue butterflies…
We are climate activists. Don’t call us Grannies. An Inside Climate News article about the strong, experienced women in the climate struggle calls us “Grannies.” I strenuously object. We are white-haired women who are doing everything we can to stop the suicidal cruelty of the fossil-fuel economy. We are experienced. We are courageous. We are smart and sometimes even wise. We are truth-tellers. We are, in my town, about the only ones who are showing up for the struggle…
Here, for Valentine’s Day, is an essay about falling in love, based on an essay in Kathleen’s book, Pine Island Paradox.
We have met the enemy and it’s not us, says Occidental Petroleum’s CEO. It’s YOU. But here’s why blaming oil and gas consumers for climate breakdown is bogus.
A spotter? Yes, a spotter is the person who stands at the edge of the berry field while the crop-dusters come in low, spraying poison. Her job was to wave her arms so the spray plane would sweep around and head the other way. Pass after pass after pass, she waved her arms as the crop-duster buzzed her, glazing her with pesticides…
Okay, folks, the people at the IPCC tell us that the world has twelve years to cut carbon emissions in half. Sounds like you and I need a plan. So, here’s a Climate Defender’s Calendar. Of course, we have to do all these things, all the time, forever – but this might...
The morning after Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accords, this old climate warrior climbed out of bed feeling better about the chances of the sizzling, souring world than I have for months. Not just feeling better, feeling positively energized....
When a fearsome storm is bearing down on a great ship - the first winds shuddering in the sails, the first waves burying the bowsprit, sullen clouds obscuring the horizon - the captain shouts the order. "All hands on deck." Every sailor knows what that means. Each...
Concerned ecologists recently made the case for the ecological urgency of action to save the world’s terrestrial megafauna (Ripple et al. 2016). These large mammals, desperately endangered by human depredation and habitat destruction, are critical to the functioning...
"The Moral Case for Divestment from Fossil Fuels" I’ve just returned from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. Gustavus is a pretty campus in the rain, with blue and yellow banners flapping to celebrate their MAYDAY! Symposium on divestment from fossil...