social capital

This blog took a multi-month hiatus (admittedly a bad sign for such a new enterprise) as I moved between countries and had a baby (good enough excuses I think). But now I’m back and I won’t be stopped. Too much of interest has happened to list here but here are some of the more recent highlights:

• Robert Putnam is on a campaign to raise the alarm about the accelerating inequality among our youth (a book tour with a purpose).
• Describing new power plants as powering X thousand/million homes is misleading at best and sometimes purposefully deceptive.
• Just as our definitions for wild and natural are arbitrary and contrived so is our definition of native. Horses make a great example.
• “I think we need to stop kidding ourselves that meat production doesn’t have profound impacts on ecosystems – it clearly does, whether your beef comes from Britain or Brazil. The best way to reduce this impact is by eating less of the stuff.” On a related note a new study details just how destructive cattle are to our public lands (with photos).
• We scientists need to change too. Whether it is what we are doing (can science be driving the creation of a more Sustainable world?) or how we are doing it (can scientists fly to fewer conferences).
• Can we shift or re-define labels around Sustainability instead of inventing new terms, history suggest that would be a better approach than inventing new words.
• In Sustainability we talk about Food Systems because the humans from consumers to workers are centrally important but as this article details, that has been slow to trickle into the “Food movement” as a whole.
• Good news: Bald eagles are making a comeback!