Shifting Baselines
“Nature has no hope in the absence of history.” Carl Safina in Shifting Baselines: The Past and the Future of Ocean Fisheries We face a paradoxical bind, needing simultaneously to look backward and...
Category: Coastal Issues
Greener Boat Storage?
Before long, the recreational boating season will draw to a close and owners will batten down their craft for the winter. Many will choose the low-density polyethylene (LDPE) plastic better known as shrink-wrap. It...
Safeguarding Favorite Places–from Ourselves
Biking Mount Desert Island’s Park Loop Road over Memorial Day weekend, Friends of Acadia Conservation Director Stephanie Clement witnessed vehicular chaos. She has seen a lot in Acadia National Park over two decades but...
No Place Offers an “Escape” from Climate Change
“The man who is often thinking that it is better to be somewhere else than where he is,” Henry David Thoreau wrote, “excommunicates himself.” The same might be said for those who ask, as...
Casting Ballots for the Planet
It’s been a long campaign season, and many of us are ready for a respite from barbed political banter. So let’s take a high-altitude look at what this looming election might mean–for our planet....
Grieving Big Changes along Maine’s Shore
I walk the shore in a place I have known longer than memory stretches. There are wide expanses of rugged beach, a tide-tumbled assortment of small rocks, sand and crushed shells. From afar, it...
Hurricanes: Why Worry
As a child, Kerry Emanuel was captivated by thunderstorms–planting himself by windows to watch them. He has followed that meteorological passion through decades of research and teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to...
Saving Water without a Drought
Even in a spring dry by Maine standards, it’s hard to envision how parched some places can become. Water scarcity is increasingly coming to define landscapes and lives. By the start of 2015, NASA...
