Goldman Environmental Prize Winners Offer a Lesson in Courage

Annual prize, now in its 25th year, is an important reminder of the seriousness of environmental advocacy

Being an environmental activist in the United States (or Canada, or most of Europe) is so easy. Sure, the hours are long and the pay — if there is any, which is a privilege in itself — sucks. Most of the hard…
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by: Jason Mark – April 27, 2014

Earth Day: Now about as Green as St. Patrick’s Day?

From epic day of citizen action to marketing gimmick in just 40-odd years

It probably has something to do with the fact that I’m one of the last sentimentalists standing in this ironic age, but I’ll admit that I get a little misty eyed when I think about the first Earth Day. Do you remember…
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by: Jason Mark – April 22, 2014

A Way to Come Together on Public Lands Conservation

If Congress doesn’t like President Obama’s national monument designation, it should pass the dozens of pending wilderness bills

Late last month the House of Representatives passed a bill that would restrict the president’s ability to fulfill a key part of his stated agenda. No, this wasn’t the umpteenth vote to repeal Obamacare. Rather, the “Ensuring Public Involvement in the Creation…
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by: Jason Mark – April 14, 2014

Eco Euphemisms Confuse Our Understanding of Environmental Destruction

What’s in a word?

In his now-classic essay, “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell warned: “Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. … But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and…
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by: Jason Mark – March 28, 2014

Sharecropping 2.0

Institutional investors eyeing US farmland. Beginning farmers often priced out.

There’s a global land rush underway. While human population continues to grow, the amount of arable farmland on the planet is essentially a fixed resource, and in recent years worries about long-term food security have spurred a drive to snatch up agricultural…
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by: Jason Mark – March 3, 2014

A Hopeful Tail

One afternoon last summer I was hiking in the hills above Berkeley, California with a friend and talking – as it just so happened – about the nature of wildness when my companion stopped and pointed downward. There, fastened to the trunk of a coast live oak at about shin height, was a wildlife camera trap. We bent down to inspect. The motion detector-activated camera had a sticker from the US Fish…
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by: Jason Mark – Spring 2014

Outgoing Greenpeace Executive Director Reflects on Lessons Learned

Exit Interview: Phil Radford

Last month Phil Radford announced that, after five years on the job, he was stepping down as executive director of Greenpeace USA. Before serving as ED, Radford was Greenpeace’s organizing director, during which time he more than doubled the group’s membership. In…
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by: Jason Mark – February 14, 2014

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