the new urban jungle . . . is a growing movement led by cities like San Francisco, New York, and Leiden to restore active and vibrant natural systems in urban areas. Far from the eden-like depictions of nature of yesteryear, i.e. the garden of earthly delights (nonetheless, still attracting some dynamic new christian converts), the movement has morphed into today's backyard and grassroots environmental movement which is more and more a picture of hybridity, compromise, mixed-use, and ultimately, taking nature out of the walled islands of zoos, aquaria, national parks and other thick-walled institutions and offering a different kind of everyday "unmediated" community experience with the new urban wilderness. VIDEO LINK
posted by huckhound on Jul 6, 2006 - 1 comment

The Rapanui (of Easter Island), the Mayans, and the Norse colonists of Greenland all share one similarity: each culture was brought down by preventable, human-cause environmental catastrophe. Sure, Michael Crichton says it's all bunk, but Jared Diamond (the author of the infinitely discussable, Pulitzer prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel) recently came out with a new book that suggests that maybe we ought to be worried after all. Hear him discuss it on NPR's morning edition.
posted by absalom on Jan 10, 2005 - 22 comments

Mountaintop Removal Mining. Now in High Resolution. Some amazing pictures of this mining process.
posted by grefo on Oct 1, 2004 - 8 comments

The National Religious Partnership for the Environment is preparing a grass roots campaign linking fuel economy to morality. The group includes members from the Catholic, Jewish and Evangelical faiths.

Why is this important? With BIG religion vs BIG Oil, where does this leave the Republicans?
posted by CrazyJub on Nov 19, 2002 - 21 comments

This Saturday is "Public Lands Day" in the US! You can volunteer to help clean up some of the 262 million acres of land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management! While cleaning streams and repairing livestock fencing, you can ponder how come in the 21st century the BLM still leases over 163 million of those acres to private ranchers for a pittance! This antiquated, marginal, money-losing institution has damaged 80% of the waterways west of the Mississippi, threatening entire species and ecosystems. A new book, Welfare Ranching, lists and illustrates the many problems with federal livestock grazing, and there's now a campaign to buy out ranchers' permits and turn the "wild" west back over to nature.
posted by soyjoy on Sep 26, 2002 - 12 comments