The Hangover: Mourning After the 2014 Election

Environmental concerns still not a decisive wedge issue — but there are some silver linings

There’s no sense in sugarcoating it: Yesterday’s election was mostly bad news for the environment and for the US environmental movement. Despite investing close to $100 million in key Senate and gubernatorial races, green groups were unable to elect most of their…
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by: Jason Mark – November 5, 2014

Election 2014: A Guide to the Biggest Environmental Battles

Green PACs amping up spending; more GMO initiatives; soda tax fights

Slogan-stacked yard signs proliferating like swarms of locusts. Leaflets cluttering the mailbox and the front porch. Histrionic ads filling up just about every spare minute of cable TV. All of this can mean just one thing – election season. photo by Theron…
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by: Jason Mark – October 8, 2014

“Love Will Save This Place.”

Why we still need wilderness in the era of climate change

This article originally appeared at The Nation.com. Trust the academics, God bless ’em, to confirm the obvious. This summer the journal BioScience reported that global climate change has eclipsed biodiversity conservation as the top environmental concern among philanthropies and scientific researchers, as well as in media…
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by: Jason Mark – September 21, 2014

In Review: Disruption

Documentary film about upcoming People’s Climate March hits all the right notes

In case you missed it (and I’m really hoping you haven’t), environmental, labor and social justice groups are organizing what they promise will be the biggest climate march in history on September 21. Some 100,000 people are expected for a rally in…
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by: Jason Mark – September 9, 2014

National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis

Jon Jarvis, Director of the National Park Service, had a childhood seemingly tailor-made for a career in public lands conservation. His family’s farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley backed up to the Washington National Forest, and as a boy the woods were his playground. He was an avid angler and hunter, and by the time he was 12 had climbed every mountain he could see from his house. “I grew up in the…
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by: Jason Mark – Autumn 2014

Wilderness in the Anthropocene

In the “Age of Man” we’ll need wild places to hold steady the sanity of our species.

photo © John Richter /NPB/ Wilderness We decided to use the long weekend for a backcountry getaway, figuring that the chance to spot a bald eagle soaring over an alpine lake would be just as patriotic as watching fireworks on the beach. Nothing more than a scant two nights and three days in the Emigrant Wilderness of the Sierra Nevada, a quick woodsy holiday. Toward the end of Day Two we were…
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by: Jason Mark – Autumn 2014

Wild at Heart

“The idea of wilderness needs no defense,” Edward Abbey once declared, “it only needs defenders.” It’s a good line and a brave one, but, like so many things, it might not hold up as it once did. September 3 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the Wilderness Act, one of the landmark accomplishments of the modern American environmental movement. We should be celebrating the occasion with champagne and high-fives. Instead,…
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by: Jason Mark – Autumn 2014

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