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Columns

August 5, 2021

Influence peddling threatens democracy

Modern-day democracy has numerous weaknesses, as we’ve been made well aware: policy differences that cannot be resolved, corruption, manipulation of voting and elections, and the refusal of one side to allow the other to pass legislation.

July 22, 2021

Hard lessons from the border

The wall between the United States and Mexico has come to stand for desperation and suffering for many people. For most of us who live within 20 miles of this 452-mile wall, it’s also seen as a bizarre experiment: How much damage can ripple into the surrounding landscape from a wall that cuts a 60-foot swath through the natural world?

July 15, 2021

Family tree farms can help fight climate change

As climate change concerns grow, researchers are turning to small tree farmers for help. Actually, they have been helping for nearly a century, but their efforts have largely gone unrecognized.

July 8, 2021

What happens after the immortals die?

Giant sequoias come as close to immortality as living organisms can. Many live over 1,000 years, an almost unimaginable span of survival in the face of all of nature’s challenges.

June 24, 2021

U.S. leaders must talk about climate-driven migration

The Biden administration has made some admirable moves and gestures toward addressing the immense challenges posed by climate-related migration. But it hasn’t adequately educated the American people about the issue, hamstringing its own efforts to advance an ambitious immigration agenda, including the creation of a path to citizenship for the 10.5 million residents who are undocumented.

June 17, 2021
The Martin Canyon fire outside of Bellevue, Idaho, burns on the Twin Falls BLM District adjacent to the EE-DA-HO Ranch in 2017. (Photo by Jonathon Golden, courtesy of Writers on the Range)

What do we owe wildland firefighters?

“It’s like having gasoline out there,” said Brian Steinhardt, forest fire zone manager for Prescott and Coconino national forests in Arizona, in a recent Associated Press story about the increasingly fire-prone West.

June 10, 2021

Saving Democracy in America

American history is replete with warnings of impending disaster that went unheeded: Pearl Harbor, 9/11 and, more recently, the climate crisis, COVID-19 and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol building.

June 3, 2021

Why riot when nonviolent protest works far more often?

In Myanmar in early March of this year, people began to attack and vandalize more than two dozen businesses. These rioters helped convince the military government of Myanmar to continue and to escalate the use of brutal crackdowns on all activists, up to and including the use of lethal force that left dozens dead over just one weekend in mid-March.