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97% of Mammalian biomass is human controlled
Monopolizing outdoor air
Dear Europe, It's been a lovely trip. We hiked in the Austrian Alps, swam in the Baltic sea, and enjoyed the joyful chaos of Fête de la Musique in Berlin. Despite these beguiling adventures, I remain puzzled. You seem to have given a full monopoly of clear outdoor air...
Chapter in Michael Marder’s Grafts
In case you missed it, a chapter in Michael Marder's Minnesota Press book Grafts on plant philosophy contains a short piece we wrote together.
Biosemiotic Ethics special issue of ZfS
I'm happy to announce that the Biosemiotic Ethics special issue in the Zeitschrift für Semiotik I co-edited with Morten Tønnessen and Jonathan Beever has come out. It's got the great semiotician John Deeley's last article in it he wrote before passing, and we...
Speaking at the Creative Edge Conference
I'm honored to be presenting on "The Ecological Self: Harnessing the Power of Our Interspecies Nature for Good" alongside Flow author and psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi this Saturday, May 13th 2017 at the Creative Edge Conference organized by West LA College....
Taste of Science tonight
Tonight at the San Francisco Taste of Science Festival, I'll be giving a talk on "The effects of pollution on organism signaling and human health" at the San Francisco: Climate Change evening. Thursday, April 27, 2017 7:30pm 9:30pm TechShop Gallery910 Howard...
Bernie Sanders is bandwagoning on Ann Coulter Berkeley Debacle
Vermont US Senator Bernie Sanders' remarks calling for UC Berkeley to go ahead and permit the alt-right darling Ann Coulter speak despite the recent violence of neonazis descending on Berkeley and harming local citizens have been spread across the internet by...
For an Earth Free of Tobacco Waste
Here's a guest blog post I did on the US Action on Smoking and Health website for Earth Day, titled "For an Earth Free of Tobacco Waste." This work came out of the World Health Organization (WHO) chapter I wrote in the forthcoming The Environmental Impacts of Tobacco...
The Irony of UC Priorities
Irony: UCSF sends employees an email warning of the thousands of people descending on Golden Gate Park to celebrate the annual 4/20 Cheech and Chong-inspired marijuana fest, but UC Berkeley sends out no notice to its employees and students that hundreds of violent...
The Limits to Magical Thinking
Philip K. Dick once wrote: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away" ("How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later", 1978). It is so tempting, as academics, activists, or advertisers, to want to believe in a purely...
Taste of Science SF
For those in the San Francisco bay area, I will be giving a 15-minute presentation Thursday April 27th 7:30-9:30pm at the TechShop on “The effects of pollution on organism signaling and human health.” TechShop 926 Howard Street San Francisco California 94103 Taste of...
Music and Preventative Medicine
In UCSF's local online news source Synapse, I have an article about why its a good idea for preventative medicine not to axe the Chancellor's Concert Series here.
Learning from Science in an Age of Marketing
"It was widely believed thalidomide would be useful to control morning sickness. It did – but it did other things, too. We need evidence, but unregulated marketing does not help us get needed data." --A colleague at UCSF The epidemic of reductionism that has swept...
Truth and Facts in an Extramoral Sense
Today at UCSF, I had the chance to hear Michael Specter deliver the 2017 Chauncey D. Leake Lecture: "Do Facts Still Matter? And What Does It Mean If They Don't?" It brought out all of San Francisco's good liberals, concerned about Trump's anti-science anti-fact...
Not My Problem
I've been seeing on social media a new meme, which I had already been thinking about for sometime. I found it compelling, because it is true: the virtue of solidarity is lost on Americans. Unlike a more communal society that is of the belief that we cannot truly...
Upcoming Talk in Berkeley at Terra’s Temple
I'm excited to share my research interests with a more diverse audience February 19th at Terra's Temple, an earth-based spirituality center and place of dedicated practice in Berkeley. This translation process of academic research into practical knowledge is precisely...
Presentation at COLEF
Last Tuesday evening, November 29, 2016, I had the honor to present at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF), in Tijuana, Mexico. Through UCSD's Interdisciplinary Forum on Environmental Research supported by the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at...
Standing Rock
Well, I'm heading off to Standing Rock to spend Thanksgiving with the Native Americans of North America. The indigenous Water Protectors of Standing Rock have taken an unprecedented stand against the corporate interests of fossil fuel industries and their financiers....
Philosophy of the City Conference
This week in San Francisco, I'll be presenting at the Philosophy of the City Conference November 17-19 on November 17th at 4pm on "The Limits of the Automobile City." My talk, alongside the "Extending the Land Ethic" National Endowment of the Humanities Summer...
An Obituary for Douglas Tompkins
Douglas Tompkins (1943-2015) was a mountaineer, Deep Ecologist, conservation activist, lover of nature, and textile entrepreneur, founder of Esprit and North Face. A footloose entrepreneur turned activist, after starting two global clothing brands, Tompkins renounced...
Bioneers 2016
This is the first time since I moved back to California last November that I've been able to engage a world-class group of scholars and change-makers gathered together with the sole purpose of harmonizing human systems with natural ones. Last weekend at the...
Ensemblist Identities and the Ecological Self
I'll be presenting October 5, 2016, 6:30-8:30pm at the California Institute of Integral Studies on the book I'm working on, Interspecies Politics. The presentation, "Ensemblist Identities and the Ecological Self" is part of my larger project of decentering...
The Greening of Everyday Life
The Greening of Everyday Life (2016, Oxford) is a new volume edited by John M. Meyer and Jens M. Kersten. A international collection of essays, it originates from a highly productive and original 2014 Rachel Carson Center symposium by the same name. I'm happy to have...
The Wood Wide Web
The Wood Wide Web is the term used to encapsulate the communication systems between trees in forests. Through the mycorrhiza (fungal networks) in the soil, trees trade and share nutrients. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8SORM4dYG8] Jennifer Frazer's blog at...
2016 APSA appearances
Please visit one of the exciting panels I'm participating in this year in Philadelphia at the annual APSA Conference. Collective Action, Environmental Politics, and (Nonhuman) Animal Rights Division 3: Normative Political Theory Thu, September 1, 2:00 to...
Democracy and the TPP?
Here's a short post I wrote for Medium on the undemocratic features of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Agroecology Now
This is my response to Frances Moore Lappé's recent essay Farming for a Small Planet: Agroecology Now on the Great Transitions Network's website. Yogi Hendlin, "Commentary on 'Farming for a Small Planet: Agroecology Now,'" Great Transition Initiative (April...
Desperate for Nature
The Guardian recently aired an article on a boutique hedgehog petting zoo-café that opened in Tokyo. For $9 per person, visitors can drink coffee and cuddle these animals. Popular with kids and adults alike, this café, named Harry to pun on the Japanese pronunciation...
Normal is Over
I had the pleasure of meeting filmmaker Renée Scheltema recently at the Nevada City Wild and Scenic Film Festival, and after realizing that she would be in town for a bit, we organized this event at San Francisco's California Institute for Integral Studies,...
Los Angeles and the Methane Crisis
There seems to be a proliferation of instances of catastrophe which Ulrich Beck long predicted in his work on our contemporary risk society. Certain events, like the continued unabated spewing nuclear radiation from TEPCO's Fukushima Daichi plants, are world...
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Coping with COP21
Even as the world rejoiced in Paris Saturday night, with the slogan "There is no Plan B" emblazoned in light projection on the Eiffel Tower, the accords usher in a lukewarm compromise. While the original United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development in...
Cruelty?
Not sure what to make of this. I respect the Japanese and their culture on so many counts - but amphibians are intelligent, and this seems to be excruciatingly cruel. To not be able to identify other living beings as having an inner world of their own, to treat them...
Here's a new short article I co-authored with plant philosopher Michael Marder that appears on a Los Angeles Review of Books channel: Communication with the Radicle Other It explores the linkages between certain naturalized notions of communication we have inherited...
Read more“I am pro-coal, and I am pro-coal miner. I will fight President Obama, the EPA, the Senate and anyone else who tries to undermine our coal jobs.”
“I am pro-coal,…
“I am pro-coal, and I am pro-coal miner. I will fight President Obama, the EPA, the Senate and anyone else who tries to undermine our coal jobs.” "In West Virginia, where coal is king, Senate candidate Natalie E. Tennant, a Democrat, quickly turned on Mr. Obama when...
Colony Collapse and the Global Swarm to Save the Bees
Pollinator activists around the world have taken different tactics to address the problem of massive bee die-offs. The pesticides of modern agriculture, especially neonicotinoids, have been discovered as a prime factor in the complex web of human activities leading to...