If you think of dogs and cats as members of the family, you might figure you could collect damages for pain and suffering if they were to die because of wrongdoing.

The law in California and many other states sees things differently. Pets are treated as personal property, like cars and computers.

But that could be changing, as contaminated pet food is believed to be responsible for the deaths of dozens of dogs and cats nationwide.

"You'll see a lot of pressure on legislators to remove liability barriers, to not see these animals as property but as entities like humans," said Jon Katz, the author of several books on the changing relationship between dogs and people. [More]

Labels: culture, food, law, production

Another week has come and gone here on the farm. Madison has had me out digging flowers. Now that the truck is fixed and it’s warmer, we’ve been driving down to the creek a couple miles past the farm so the kids can skip rocks and that’s where Madison found her flowers. There are old home places along the banks of the creek and lots of them have flowers growing abundantly. The kids call it Lilly Valley. That means Dad gets the shovel those that we need at our house. Garett doesn’t get too into the flowers, so he browses around for other treasures or picks up trash. Kind of strange to pick up trash, but he does. He says people are littering and destroying the earth. Hard to argue with that. So usually we come home with flowers and trash. It’s good for the kids to get out in the woods.

It’s time for garden tilling to get busy. I tilled 3 on Friday afternoon. Don’t make a lot of money at it, but at least it helps buy fuel. At $2.60 a gallon I can use the help. I thought I would have some trouble starting the 6000 after running it out of fuel, but all I had to do was loosen the fuel prime pump and pump a few times and it took right off.

1. The unapologetic product plugs for his sponsor. This is how the web is going to deliver bucks, I think. It is also how much of what you will read will be infused with marketing.
2. The pure attraction of the agrarian lifestyle, albeit attached to a full time job elsewhere. It is hard for even me not to envy this simpler, seemingly more rustic life.

Labels: culture, production

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Labels: food, production

Tending to others' spiritual needs certainly qualifies as a career with "meaning." In addition to traditional ministerial and religious education positions, you can also become a celebrant, someone who helps people mark important events in life with customized ceremonies that reflect their beliefs and backgrounds.

Labels: culture, fun

• Cooking with Dr. Pepper
• The Other Other White Meat
• Jello Confronts the Depression

Labels: fun

Labels: farm program, trade

After mosquitoes bite a host with malaria, the parasite that causes the disease proliferates in the insect, readying itself to infect the next human victim. It's no fun being infected, and one might think that mosquitoes would have developed a resistance to the malaria parasite over time. But several studies have suggested that mosquitoes engineered to build defenses against malaria are less fit than insects that chose to live with the parasites.

Now there's reason to take heart. Several years ago, a group of medical entomologists at Johns Hopkins University created a strain of Anopheles stephensi (a mosquito that bites rodents) equipped with a gene called SM1 that makes the mosquitoes resistant to infection with Plasmodium berghei, a rodent malaria parasite. In the new study, published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group carried out a series of experiments in which 250 of these insects were put in a cage together with 250 wild-type counterparts and allowed to feed on malaria-infected mice. The resistant insects lived longer and produced more eggs than did those not resistant to the parasite, and after nine generations, some 70% of the population was resistant. The researchers speculate that carrying SM1 is a less costly strategy than whatever defenses malaria-resistant mosquitoes develop in the wild. [More]

GM mosquitoes that interfered with development of the malaria parasite would make it more difficult for the organism to become re-established after it had been eradicated from a target area, they said.

Malaria, spread by the single-celled parasite Plasmodium, is endemic in parts of Asia, Africa, and central and south America.

The organism is passed to humans through the bite of the Anopheles mosquito. Each year it makes 300 million people ill and causes a million deaths worldwide.

Some 90% of cases are in sub-Saharan Africa, where a child dies of malaria every 30 seconds. [More]

Labels: GM, health, science, technology

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Well, Mr. Bayrou is the anti-excitement candidate, a sort of political Prozac after all the amphetamines of the Sarkozy-Royal conflict. He is fairly young at 55, and he has a relatively full head of hair, but so far he has left the paparazzi in a soporific daze. He wants to unite everyone — he’s a member of a centrist party but might well appoint a Socialist prime minister; he is a Catholic but a staunch defender of secularism in schools. The message is that if he can unite God and the atheists, surely he can unite France.

Most of all, he is something that even urban voters see as quintessentially French — a farmer. His official Web site shows him pitchforking hay on the family farm, and he was recently quoted in the weekly Le Point as saying: “My friends and I aren’t the jet set. We’re the tractor set.” [More]

A Bayrou victory, which is unlikely but not impossible, would constitute a triple revolution. It would lead first to the end of the Socialist Party created by Francois Mitterrand. Following former prime minister Lionel Jospin's humiliating defeat in 2002, the Socialists simply would not survive a second consecutive failure to reach the second round. Moreover, a Bayrou victory could signify the end of the conservative party created by Chirac, as well as of Charles de Gaulle's Fifth Republic. But de Gaulle's legacy would most likely be snuffed out gently, with nostalgia for both Mitterrand and Chirac possibly proving very tempting for a people disaffected with the political system but desiring to be reassured. France wants the illusion of change, but is continuity what she truly desires? Finally, while this election was expected to usher in a new generation of politicians, few were prepared to anticipate the peaceful political tsunami that a Bayrou victory would bring. Yet that would be the outcome if the attraction towards the center proves to be as irresistible for significant segments of the Socialists and conservative parties as it now seems. [More]

Labels: EU, politics, trade

While the world is generally familiar with Machu Pichu and the Nazca Lines, another mystery has come to light through the modern science of satellite photography. This phenomenon is one that was previously known but the extent of its size and effort required to make it is just being fully realized.

A series oh holes, usually about 24 inches across and in neat rows of from nine to twelve, stretched for almost a mile in Peru. It starts at the base of a mountain and then climbs up the side and meanders up and down, over some of the roughest terrain. [More]

We have a tendency to grossly underestimate both the capabilities and intelligence of ancient people. Still, discoveries such as this suggest we ourselves may one day be sadly misunderstood as well.

Labels: culture, history

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First, it is not what they did that was important but it is what they said that made all the difference. Fed chief Ben Bernanke basically said that he is more willing to consider the fall off in the housing market and the blow up in the sub prime lending market as a more important consideration short term then inflation. Translation: he is likely preparing the market for the potential for rate cuts in the weeks ahead.

The reason this has significance is because it is telling you the Federal Reserve is ready to put the foot on the liquidity pedal and let Japan decelerate its liquidity pump. This lit a fire underneath the equity markets globally yesterday and has a profound impact on the likely acceleration of global growth as we head into the back half of 2007 and especially into 2008. It does not mean that the transition will happen with out some further disruptions but it does mean the Fed is aware of the danger of the yen-carry trade distortion and is looking to minimize, the best that it can, the effects of its eventual unwinding. Have no illusions of grandeur here: Japan will continue to raise rates in the year ahead and the yen-carry trade will unwind from its current amebic state. So expect the yen to strengthen significantly against the dollar and expect the US dollar to stay under pressure against most other currencies as well.

Labels: economics, economy, marketing

The government is on track to approve a new antibiotic to treat a pneumonia-like disease in cattle, despite warnings from health groups and a majority of the agency's own expert advisers that the decision will be dangerous for people.

The drug, called cefquinome, belongs to a class of highly potent antibiotics that are among medicine's last defenses against several serious human infections. No drug from that class has been approved in the United States for use in animals. [More]

Evidence from national databases suggests that both acute and chronic sinus inflammation (sinusitis) is being overtreated with poorly chosen medications, researchers report.

Data from 1999 and 2002 collected by the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey suggests that there were roughly 14 million visits annually because of chronic sinusitis and 3 million because of acute sinusitis. [More]

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Yaniv Ben-Zaken, a local gas station owner, will be selling Kosher for Passover gasoline during the holiday this year. The move, Ben-Zaken says, has become necessary due to the increased ethanol content in gasoline required by the government. The ethanol is typically derived from corn, which is a forbidden food for Jews on Passover. And, according to Ben-Zaken, underJewish law, it is also forbidden to derive any benefit from corn. [More]

The “article” does get the two points of Jewish law correct. First, we are forbidden on Passover from having any hametz in our possession or ownership and it is forbidden to obtain a benefit from hametz during the eight days of the holiday. Hametz is any of the five forbidden grains (wheat, barley, oats, spelt, rye) that has been in the presence of moisture for more than eighteen minutes.

In Northern European communities around the 15th Century, the prohibition on eating hametz was extended to a category of grains called kitniyot: rice, millet, corn, and legumes. Because ground up rice flour or corn meal closely resembles wheat flour, Ashkenazi Jews exclude kitniyot from their Pesach diet as well. However, as “Rabbi Shalom Silver” is quoted as saying in the article, one may possess kitniyot and obtain a benefit from it, use it in any form or fashion, so long as one does not eat it. Baby powder that contains cornstarch, for example, is perfectly acceptable on Pesach, so long as one is not tempted to make a snack of it. [More of the debunking]

Labels: culture, ethanol, fun, religion

Behold - the One-Click butter Cutter.

Ingenious as it is, it only needs a few upgrades to be the perfect table-top accessory.

• Battery power
• Remote control
• iPod connection

Labels: fun

Because emerging economies' supply of financial instruments is so unreliable, people may hoard more of them as a precautionary measure. Firms and households fear they will not be able to borrow to tide themselves over bad times, therefore they choose to save for a rainy day instead. Because they cannot transfer purchasing power from the future to the present, they must store it from the past.

If global imbalances are the result of such frictions, they are unlikely to unwind quickly. Financial systems, after all, do not mature overnight. If Mr Caballero is right, America is also less vulnerable to a sudden run on its securities. Where, he asks, would the excess demand for global assets go? [More]

Labels: economy, trade

But for ethanol made from trees, grasses and other types of biomass which contain a lot of cellulose, the energy balance can be as high as 16, at least in theory. In practice the problem is that producing such “cellulosic” ethanol is much more difficult and expensive than producing it from other crops. But the science, technology and economics of treethanol are changing fast. Researchers are racing to develop ways to chip, ferment, distil and refine wood quickly and cheaply. [More]

The Southern California Biorefinery Project will turn green waste and wood residues at landfills into about 19 million gallons of fuel grade ethanol per year. Additional products that will also be sold include lignin, gypsum, and yeast. BlueFires's current production estimates for the project will be significantly lower that DOE's cellulosic ethanol goal of $1.07/gal in production costs by 2012, and DOE's current estimate of approximately $2.26/gal. [More]

Labels: energy, ethanol

Forget mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. When somebody collapses in cardiac arrest, experts now say, bystanders should not bother breathing into his or her mouth, once considered a key component of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

"Rescue breathing is an oxymoron," says Gordon Ewy of the University of Arizona College of Medicine. "We've been doing it wrong for 40 years." [More]

Labels: health

And another: Every year private pensions pay billions of dollars to retirees that aren't counted on the positive side in the official savings rate.

There is a rationale for this. The government books pensions as personal income when employers contribute it to a pension pool, not when it gets paid out years later, and retirees can actually spend it, said Oak Associates investment strategist Ed Yardeni, another analyst who holds higher-than-average faith in the U.S. consumer. (The idea is to measure income produced by current labor.)

But since the mid-1980s, as the population has aged, and traditional pensions for younger workers have dwindled, pension payouts have vastly exceeded pension inputs, and the gap has been getting wider. "A big discrepancy," Yardeni said.

Pension benefits surpass contributions these days by some $200 billion a year, said Franke. That's $200 billion in household income that doesn't get counted in the official savings accounts. If it were, it would add another 2 percentage points to the savings rate, I figure. [More]

Labels: economics

Richard Hebron, 41, was driving along an anonymous stretch of highway near Ann Arbor, Mich., last October when state cops pulled him over, ordered him to put his hands on the hood of his mud-splattered truck and seized its contents: 453 gal. of milk.

Yes, milk. Raw, unpasteurized milk. To supply a small but growing market among health-conscious city and suburban dwellers for milk taken straight from the udder, Hebron was dealing the stuff on behalf of a farming cooperative he runs in southwestern Michigan. An undercover agricultural investigator had infiltrated the co-op as part of a sting operation that resulted in the seizure of $7,000 worth of fresh-food items, including 35 lbs. of raw butter, 29 qt. of cream and all those gallons of the suspicious white liquid. Although Hebron's home office was searched and his computer seized, no charges have been filed. "When they tested the milk, they couldn't find any problems with it," says Hebron. "It seems like they're just looking for some way to shut us down." [More]

Labels: food

Monster whirlpool off Sydney

Explaining the image

Variations in sea levels above or below the normal are shown, with the two icy whirlpools in dark blue because the deep cold water has helped pull the ocean surface down by around 70cm.

The icy whirlpool closest to Sydney is 200kms across and plunging 1km towards the ocean floor. It's about 100km east of Sydney and moving clockwise.

Dude, a "MONSTER WHIRLPOOL" should not have to be explained.

It should be sucking oil tankers in.

Labels: fun, science

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When it comes to online news in particular, however, there are clearer signs that the size of the audience has leveled off. That was true both for occasional news consumption and for the percentage of those going online for news more frequently.

As of December 2005, 68% of Americans report ever going online for news, down slightly from the last time this question had been asked by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans going online for news frequently may not be growing either. In last year’s annual report, we discussed that while the overall online news audience wasn’t growing much, every-day use had increased. [More - same source for following quotes as well.]

In 2006, the traditional indicators were all negative:

*Circulation fell even faster than in 2005 — down 2.8% daily and 3.4% Sunday for the six months ending in September compared to that period a year earlier.3

*Industry revenues were flat, a poor showing in a non-recession year. On the print side, retail, national and automotive classified all showed weakness. Online growth left most companies roughly even in revenues for the year.

*Earnings fell. Wall Street responded by marking shares of publicly traded companies down by about 14%, after a tumble of 20% in 2005.4

*At big metro papers, such as the Dallas Morning News and the Philadelphia Inquirer, there were deep newsroom cuts. Together with some closings of national and international bureaus, the trend was to smaller, local papers with diminished ambitions.

Our sense remains, too, that traditional journalism is not, as some suggest, becoming irrelevant. There is more evidence now that new technology companies have had either limited success in news gathering (Yahoo, AOL), or have avoided it altogether (Google). Whoever owns them, old newsrooms now seem more likely than a few years ago to be the foundations for the newsrooms of the future.

But practicing journalism has become far more difficult and demands new vision. Journalism is becoming a smaller part of people’s information mix. The press is no longer gatekeeper over what the public knows.

Journalists have reacted relatively slowly. They are only now beginning to re-imagine their role. Their companies failed to see “search” as a kind of journalism. Their industry has spent comparatively little on R&D. They have been tentative about pressing for new economic models, and that has left them fearful and defensive. Some of the most interesting experiments in new journalism continue to come from outside the profession — sites such as Global Voices, which mixes approved volunteer “reporters” from around the world with professional editors.

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According to de Soto, the poor of Third-World countries are not victims of rapacious capitalism, but rather are wronged by the lack of property rights and with outright bureaucratic barriers that prevent the poor from gaining access to capital. Thus, they languish in the vast "informal sectors," or underground markets, that so characterize much of the Third World.
The elite of Third-World nations, he writes, have been able to use the Western systems of laws and property rights to participate in ownership of capital, which is why they are prosperous. Using Braudel’s (1992) analogy of the "bell jar," de Soto writes that the elite are inside this "jar" and take advantage of the blessings of capitalism, while the poor, who are "outside the jar," are left out. [More]

This latest law, likewise, will not bring the full property-rights revolution China's development demands. Indeed, it will not meet the most crying need: to give peasants marketable ownership rights to the land they farm. If they could sell their land, tens of millions of underemployed farmers might find productive work. Those who stay on the farm could acquire bigger land holdings and use them more efficiently. Nor will the new law let peasants use their land as security on which they could borrow and invest to boost productivity. Nor, even now, will they be free from the threat of expropriation, another disincentive to investment. Much good land has already been grabbed, and the new law will merely protect the grabbers' gains.

This law cannot in itself resolve the murkiest question: who owns what? This is especially true in the countryside, where the mass collectivisation during Mao's Great Leap Forward of half a century ago left farmland “collectively” owned. Peasants have since been granted short (30-year) leases. But even outside agriculture it is often unclear whether a “private” enterprise is really owned by individuals or by a local government or party unit. Conversely, some “collective” or “state” enterprises operate in ways indistinguishable from the private interests of their bosses. Moreover, should an underdog try to use the new law to enforce his rights, the corrupt and pliant judiciary would usually ensure he was wasting his time. Since the Cultural Revolution, when the NPC passed just one law between 1967 and 1976, the legislature has been legislating quite prolifically. But the passage of laws is not the rule of law.

Which leads to a final obstacle: without an accountable executive branch, the necessary reform of the legal system is not going to happen. As the passage of the property law itself demonstrates, the party is showing itself somewhat more responsive to public opinion than it was in the past. But it still runs a government that does its best to silence most dissenting voices, strictly controls the press, and lavishes resources on the best cyber-censorship money can buy. Property rights are a start; but only contested politics and relatively open media can ensure that they are enforceable. [More of a must -read article]

Labels: economics, globalization

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"This bill creates a set of winners and losers," said Ray Clifton, executive director of the Colorado Rural Electric Association, representing the state's 22 rural electric co-ops. He said under the legislation, payments to renewable owners would be more expensive than the wholesale electricity that co-ops buy for the bulk of their power.

Stan Lewandowski, general manager of Intermountain Rural Electric Association, said the legislation would reward owners of solar systems that generate power during daytime nonpeak-demand periods, leaving co-ops responsible for acquiring more expensive power during morning and evening peak periods. [more

Labels: energy

Raising a point of contention with the U.S., tariffs, Brazilian ethanol producers wanted Lula to press Bush to end the 54-cent-a-gallon levy on fuel shipped to the U.S.

``It's not going to happen,'' Bush said at a joint press conference with Lula today. The U.S. president said the law governing the tariffs ends in 2009 and that ``we'll look at it when the law ends.''

So what exactly did Bush and da Silva agree to, you know, actually do?

As near as I can tell, they agreed to sign an agreement.

Labels: ethanol, trade

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But, in a twist of science, the law and what some call trans-fat hysteria, Mr. Reich and other wholesale bakers are being forced to substitute processed fats like palm oil and margarine for good old-fashioned butter because of the small amounts of natural trans fat butter contains.

Some researchers believe that the trans fat that occurs naturally in butter, meat, milk and cheese might actually be healthy. But to satisfy companies that want to call their foods completely free of trans fats, bakers like Mr. Reich are altering serving sizes, cutting back on butter and in some cases using ingredients like trans fat-free margarine. [More]

In the mid-1980s, Jacobson launched a campaign against saturated fats—then CSPI's "panic du jour." In turn, CSPI demanded that restaurants stop using beef tallow to cook French fries and other foods. By the early 1990s, most restaurants had acquiesced to Jacobson's demands.

At the time, partially hydrogenated oils were the only viable alternative to beef tallow and other oils high in saturated fat. Jacobson and CSPI, driven by their myopic dislike of saturated fats, dismissed a number of studies connecting partially hydrogenated oil—and the trans fats it contains—with increasing levels of cholesterol.

In 1988, Elaine Blume wrote in the Center's Nutrition Action Healthletter: "[H]ydrogenated oils aren't guilty as charged... All told, the charges against trans fat just don't stand up. And by extension, hydrogenated oils seem relatively innocent." Two years later, CSPI nutrition director Bonnie Liebman put it more succinctly: "The Bottom Line... Trans, shmans."

So, after years of pressuring restaurants to stop using beef tallow and other oils, and at the same time exonerating partially hydrogenated oils, CSPI bears much of the responsibility for restaurants using oils high in trans fats. [More]

Labels: food, policy, science

The other reason it's so hard to call a bottom has to with how bubbles burst. After investors and corporations overreact on the upside, they overreact on the downside. As a result, it generally takes more than a few quarters for equilibrium to return to turbulent markets. For example, lenders are just now starting to tighten standards on the loans they make to subprime borrowers—a measure that is sure to weigh further on an important sector of the housing market.

All of which means that the housing industry in 2007 may be where technology was in early 2001—engaged in the first serious hard times the industry had seen in more than a decade, finally aware of the problem, but still a long way from the bottom. [More]

Labels: farmland, production

Windows Vista: more than five years in the making, more than 50 million lines of code. The result? A vista slightly more inspiring than the one over the town dump. The new slogan is: "The 'Wow' Starts Now," and Microsoft touts new features, many filched shamelessly from Apple's Macintosh. But as with every previous version, there's no wow here, not even in ironic quotes. Vista is at best mildly annoying and at worst makes you want to rush to Redmond, Wash. and rip somebody's liver out. [More]

Citing concerns over cost and compatibility, the top technology official at the federal Department of Transportation has placed a moratorium on all in-house computer upgrades to Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system, as well as Internet Explorer 7 and Office 2007, according to a memo obtained Friday by InformationWeek. [More]

They were surprising: it seemed Vista was riddled with security precautions that had little to do with enhancing the customer's experience or making a PC perform better, or even making it more secure from external attack. Instead, they were all about preventing movies and music being copied and distributed on home computers.

In an apparent capitulation to the demands of Hollywood studios and music moguls obsessed by piracy, Vista was packed with "digital rights management" (DRM) "features" that could cripple a PC's performance as a media player at the merest whiff of copyright infringement, reducing screen resolution and sound quality or stopping playback altogether. And these hyper-sensitive features seemed to have the potential to over-react, blocking movies or music that had been legitimately purchased or created by the computer owner. [more]

I don't think this story is over yet.

Labels: computer

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The study adds to evidence that modern central and northern Europeans are mostly the descendents of a small group of dairy farmers found in the 5th millennium BC, he said.

"The ability to drink milk is the most advantageous trait that's evolved in Europeans in the recent past. Without the enzyme lactase, drinking milk in adulthood causes bloating and diarrhoea," said co-author Mark Thomas.

"The benefits of milk tolerance … include: the continuous supply of milk compared to the boom and bust of seasonal crops, its nourishing qualities and the fact that it's uncontaminated by parasites - unlike stream water - making it a safer drink. All in all, the ability to drink milk gave some early Europeans a big survival advantage," said Thomas [More]

The idea of milk being safer because it had been "filtered" through a cow never struck me. It's like how Chinese laborers fared better during the building of the Transcontinental Railroad because they drank tea which had been effectively sterilized by boiling instead of raw water .

Labels: culture, dairy, science

But the key question centers on both the number needed to treat to avoid one adverse neonatal outcome and the level of risk that is currently considered acceptable. As practicing obstetricians, we find that the risk that women are now willing to assume in exchange for a measure of potential benefit, especially for the neonate, has changed: for many, the level of risk of an adverse outcome that was tolerated in the past to avoid cesarean delivery is no longer acceptable, and the threshold number needed to treat has thus been reset.

In the face of the resulting continued increase in cesarean deliveries, our obligation as providers is to educate patients about the trade-offs entailed in choosing a particular course or intervention and to ensure that their choices are congruent with their own philosophy, plans, and tolerance of risk. In areas in which there is still uncertainty, we must organize clinical trials that will produce the data we require for counseling patients. For the moment, however, few of the relevant factors seem likely to change, and the cesarean rate can be predicted to continue its climb. [More]

Labels: culture

The AP ran a story about miniature cattle that was picked up by papers all around the world. I love this idea! As we create more successful small farms, miniature- but familiar - livestock strikes me as an idea whose time has come. It looks to me like all the pieces are in place:

• A growing number of small acreage farms with limited pasture sizes
• A "native" species that looks familiar and is docile.
• An enormous cuteness factor [Note - this link to the NY Times requires registration. It's free, they don't spam me, and nothing bad has happened in three years since I registered, so judge for yourself]- this is a real and important market quality, folks.
• An infrastructure already in place to feed, house, treat, and research these livestock

Labels: fun, rural life

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Because Republicans are concerned about losing both control of the legislative branch (2006) and the executive (2008?), the base has decided to be pragmatic. Find me a winner and we'll back him. Because Democrats need to retain control of the legislative branch and believe that they have their best shot since 1992 at picking up the executive, the Netroots are being as pragmatic as the GOP base. So the "aura" if inevitability and electability keeps everyone in their places. Lose that aura and you're done. The front-runners (all of them) can lose that aura completely in Iowa and New Hampshire. And if they do, there's nothing to fall back on, the base will cut them loose in a heartbeat. [More]

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In January 2005, I attended a meeting of the Quivira Coalition, a New Mexico organization that brings together ranchers and environmentalists to find common ground. The coalition is now working on a plan to promote ranches as the new schoolyards. When my turn came to speak, I told the audience how, when I was a boy, I pulled out all those survey stakes in an attempt to keep the earthmovers at bay. Afterward, a rancher stood up. He was wearing scuffed boots. His aged jeans had never seen acid wash, only dirt and rock. His face was sunburned and creased. His drooping moustache was white, and he wore thick eyeglasses with heavy plastic frames, stained with sweat. “You know that story you told about pulling up stakes?” he said. “I did that when I was a boy, too.”

The crowd laughed. I laughed.

And then the man began to cry. Despite his embarrassment, he continued to speak, describing the source of his sudden grief: that he might belong to one of the last generations of Americans to feel that sense of ownership of land and nature. The power of this movement lies in that sense, that special place in our hearts, those woods where the bulldozers cannot reach. Developers and environmentalists, corporate CEOs and college professors, rock stars and ranchers may agree on little else, but they agree on this: no one among us wants to be a member of the last generation to pass on to its children the joy of playing outside in nature.

Labels: culture

Labels: energy, environment, population, science

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