environment 24

Pruning is difficult because we are forced to make a conscious decision to remove something that has been part of a growing plant. But these cuts are necessary and even…

Rather than seeking the elusive mirage of purity, we ought to undertake the contested work of breaking the body of creation respectfully and responsibly. As Nobel demonstrates, the oil industry…

I wish environmentalists would better understand that there are no mustache-twirling billionaires drilling and digging and burning oil just for the hell and the money of it. Like money, petroleum…

Modernity has become permanently liquid; it no longer seeks solid replacements to the pre-modern world but finds greater value in transience, not just of institutions and things, but of human…

Vermont dumps almost all of its own garbage into Mount Casella, though it exports some to New Hampshire and New York. Its own consumption of goods–often including unhealthy processed foods,…

To appeal to personal rights seems to be an appeal to the highest value, and it is no wonder that people are feeling spiritually and socially starved. No one in…

How else does their work inspire you to think differently about your own relationship to your own places? Take action in your own property, if you have it, and in…

Nature doesn’t give a damn what it sounds like.

But, as Shakespeare wrote, we sometimes “by indirections find directions out.”

We lived now in a wrecked forest, but this is only the beginning.

The diversity club ran its course, and has been replaced with "second-wave environmentalism," a.k.a. our culprit, sustainability.

I people really want to see the current state of the union, they need to take a look at my favorite part of Liberty State Park, which is the fact…

Lovers of snow and cold are qualitatively different from the lovers of sun and surf; they are different moral beings altogether.

Kearneysville, WV. The race for New York’s 23rd Congressional District’s open seat has garnered national attention. The Democratic candidate, Bill Owens, is currently running a few points behind Doug Hoffman,…

Claremont, CA. This is just too good. Driving near Universal City last weekend, I saw a sign for what is possibly the most mind-blowing business concept I have ever encountered…

Many who are alarmed at the prospect of the “abolition of man” have found in Huxley’s Brave New World a dark and salutary warning – an imaginative rendering of our…

Alexandria, VA The other night I happened to catch the second half of an ABC special program, "Earth 2100."  The program was a "speculative history" of what the world might…

April was "Media Awareness Month" at our sons' school. I took a couple weeks off from the Porch, and I also published a first draft of this piece in the…

Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. Pope Benedict has recently gained a bit of credit with world media for emphasizing the urgency of addressing the environmental devastation we have wrought. This (combined with…

Via John Schwenkler, I see that Norman Borlaug has just celebrated his 95th birthday. Borlaug, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, is one of the primary architects of modern…

RINGOES, NJ. Recently, a friend and I visited Polyface Farm outside Staunton, Virginia. Polyface is owned and operated by Joel Salatin, whose parents started farming these verdant five-hundred acres in…

BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY--Edward Abbey died twenty years ago today. A product of the perfectly named Home, Pennsylvania, son of the conjugation of a Woman’s Christian Temperance Unionist and a Wobbly…

ITEM: President Obama Calls for Longer School Day, Public Education for Toddlers, & the Abolition of Summer Vacation RESPONSE: The fire captain in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: “Heredity and environment…

E.D. Kain identifies a paradox in modern American conservatism that will be familiar to students of George Grant. Forty years ago, Grant wrote this in his essay, "In Defence of…