Using the ESA to Protect Wolves

Another courtroom battle pitting environmentalists against some government entity is about to start.
This time, it’s our friends over at EarthJustice filing a suit on behalf of a couple of conservation organizations, including the Sierra Club and the Defenders of Wildlife (two organizations who themselves are filing suit against the Department of Homeland Security, as I [...]

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Earth Day Trees!

As a fun Earth Day sort of thing, I thought I’d post up some photos of the trees on Seattle University’s campus. A few months ago, I toyed with the idea of writing an urban field guide to SU’s trees, and I took some photos to send to an artist friend of mine who [...]

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Border Fence Harming Wildlife; Grants DHS Power to Waive Any Law

An excellent article in the Washington Post the other day about this border fence we’re building to keep out illegal immigrants.
The basic situation is this:  Congress passed a law that gave some guy (really specific, I know) the power to “waive” any law that would delay the construction of the border fence.  Those include [...]

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Vertical Thinking; The Kogi and Nature

Here’s a short reflection I wrote about the Kogi, an indigenous tribe that live in the mountains of Columbia. It was for my “Religion and Ecology” class, taught by Dr. Gary Chamberlain of Seattle University.  I’d love to hear from you!  I’d especially love to hear from people who may have met some of the [...]

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A Speech About Nature

Here’s a transcript of a speech I gave tonight; my girlfriend made fun of me because I wrote in the jokes.  Anyway, the speech is in its rawest form, so pardon any weird punctuation, etc.  Video was taken, so I might try and get my hands on that and put it up, as well.  Let [...]

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Our New Metaphor

Such an ambitious title.
If you read the post below, “Metaphorical Vision,” you’ll know that William J. Mills, the article’s author, believes that a large part of our ecological crisis is derived from a metaphor that takes the holism of nature and turns it into a machine. Because of this “desacralization,” –probably going to be [...]

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America’s Power?

Oh, my. Where to start?

I think this ad speaks for itself. I found it while I was looking for examples of exploitation of the natural world for a talk I’m giving Saturday on my campus (I’ll post a transcript of the speech as well as an upload of my [...]

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“Metaphorical Vision: Changes in Western Attitudes to the Environment”

I read this essay for Environmental History the other day, and though it may seem sort of obvious at first, when you think about the implications, they really can be quite astounding. [N.B. I just finished writing this; I was originally going to put my explanation of the article and my reflections on [...]

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Native American Organisism and Western Approaches to Nature

Some really quick thoughts I had today in class about the title of this post (which I don’t have the audacity to retype).
I was thinking about the differences between those two approaches to Nature, and I think what it really boils down to is a different set of metaphors or understandings of knowledge and the [...]

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