What will happen to the 82 USFS experimental forests around the country? Many sites have decades-long experiments that are tracking how forests are changed by timber harvesting practices and climate change. As I say here, “you can't just pick up an experimental forest site and move it to SLC.”
A pragmatic reason to get into YIMBY is that it has political momentum, but as @kevinjkircher.com suggested, YIMBY reforms are not all created equal from an environmental or climate perspective. If reforms are happening, seems good for climate people to have a seat at the table.
I’ve experienced the other end of this interaction; I was once making polite conversation with an NYC hairdresser about smoke from Canada wildfires and she told me they had been started on purpose as a way to get rid of trees.
Earlier this week I spoke with @thewildlifesociety.bsky.social about pending #NEPA reforms. Listen for a basic primer on NEPA, people's objections, and the subsurface disagreements that run through reform efforts.
open.spotify.com/show/6Xl0Ueb...
I love that the justification for assigning zero quantitative value to health benefits is that they're uncertain. Because there's obviously no uncertainty on the compliance-cost side of the ledger. No need to worry about "false precision" there. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/c...
one defense of CBA has always been that it forces admins to be explicit about their values....
"Over the past four decades, Republican and Democratic administrations have used different estimates of the monetary value of a human life... But until now, no administration has counted it as zero."
EPA is lipsticking this pig by saying that lives saved will be considered, just not assigned economic value. But history shows that agencies frequently undervalue unmonetized effects relative to monetized ones.
In addition to being completely divorced from EPA’s mission, this move overturns decades of precedent and is clearly irrational from an economic perspective. And it’s antithetical to the admin’s alleged commitment to MAHA.
This is nuts. Now, when EPA does a cost-benefit analysis of a regulation, it can only consider downsides to industry, not upsides to public health. Even though the latter is the core mission of the EPA.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/c...
This Yglesias piece in the NYT is horrifically bad. Almost every "fact" it cites is provably false. At best it is cocktail party banter from a pundit who knows nothing of energy. At worst, it was cut/paste from oil industry talking points. So, a rebuttal: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/o...
TIL that a mountain goat is not a goat.
@themountaingoats.bsky.social is also not a goat.
Specifically, we argue: (1) FWS must consider economic benefits of *including* areas in critical habitat, not just benefits of exclusion and (2) FWS should recognize that Americans are willing to pay for species conservation. Conservation not only drives tourism, etc.; it has economic value itself.
Critically, the ESA in most respects doesn't hinge on economic impacts, but the statute allows economics to influence critical habitat designation. Nonetheless, to comply with rational decision-making, that econ analysis cannot be lopsided against species conservation.
Prof Bob Fischer & I authored comments for the Ctr. for Policy and #Animal #Welfare on the proposed reg detailing how the Fish & Wildlife Service will analyze "economic impact" in critical habitat designation per the Endangered Species Act #ESA.
Curious how, if at all, his thoughts on permitting reform have changed under a presidency hostile to renewables and eager to speed fossil fuel projects. Does it reform now make sense if in the short term fossil fuel projects seem likeliest to benefit? Does the type of reform that is prudent change?
The Ocean is huge and we are stupid.
100%. Meat can also be a hard pivot for climate folks who (for good reason) deemphasize individual behavior and instead demand systemic change. But in the context of meat and dairy, consumers’ personal decisions really *can* make a big difference. Jennifer Jacquet:
This is one of those you know is coming, but still hurts when it happens.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...
Finally, a monumental squirrel statue. In Jeffrey Gibson’s Sculptures, Child’s Play and Indigenous Truths www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/a...
my takeaway from climate week nyc is that "climate storytelling" is a little too much "we must reimagine our deepest souls in relationship to mother nature and the moral abyss of the polycrisis into which we must now stare" and not enough "ok but get a heat pump"
National Academies is releasing their fast-tracked review of the science of the endangerment finding in about 1 hour, with a webcast in about 2 hours.
www.nationalacademies.org/event/45701_...
The last passenger pigeon died 111 years ago today and not a day goes by that I don't think about how their flocks numbered in the *billions*, that their roosts covered 100+ square miles, that they collapsed trees with their nests. America is incomplete without them
After years in development, my article Crafting a New Conservationism is out in California Law Review! It's about how U.S. agencies manage conflicts between conservation goals and individual wild animals' intrinsic value. Thanks to the many people who provided feedback and Cal.'s editors!
I am delighted that my book 'More Equal Than Others: Humans and the Rights of Other Animals' is featured in Psychology Today @psychologytoday.com and has been made an essential read in their Philosophy section. Many thanks to Marc Bekoff for interviewing me! www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anim...
A pika sits on a mossy rock.
Tighter crop of the same pika, focusing on its head.
An even tighter crop, focusing more on the pika's eye.
An extremely tight crop of the pika's eye, emphasizing their reflection of an early morning mountain scene.
"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?"
Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.
