“Without some common baseline of facts; without a willingness to admit new information, and concede that your opponent is making a fair point, and that science and reason matter, we’ll keep talking past each other, making common ground and compromise impossible. ... Take the challenge of climate change. In just eight years, we’ve halved our … Continue reading A President’s Final Words on Climate Change

Recently, I was invited to speak to a gathering of trustees from The Nature Conservancy (TNC). The representatives from TNC chapters throughout the Great Lakes met in Buffalo October 4-6, 2016. These are my slightly modified remarks.Forty years ago I was lost in a distant part of the Great Lakes ecosystem.  I was somewhere in … Continue reading A Vision for the Great Lakes

Recently, a Michigan newspaper ran a feature on ten Michigan celebrities who are active on Twitter.  I clicked through the photos and found no one I wanted to follow, which made me think about how I use and value Twitter.  Then I thought about some of the real celebrities who tweet about Michigan and the … Continue reading Ten Great Lakes "Celebrities" on Twitter

How do we become conservationists?  Through the love of a place, a place in nature, a place special to us.  Often that place is a national park.  For Terry Tempest Williams, Grand Teton National Park captured her first. "I am of this place," she writes in The Hour of Land, a new collection of essays … Continue reading National Parks Turn 100

"The wildlife is so tame," said several people on my recent trip to the Galapagos Islands, and the point seems inarguable as a brown pelican landed next to me on the beach.  The exotic blue-footed, red-footed, and Nazca boobies were oblivious to our tour of their home. Snorkeling in the off-shore waters floated us next … Continue reading Galapagos: Garden or Wild Place?