Imagine we found a country the size of France covered in ancient forest, where trees a century old were mere saplings just getting started, where the oldest sprouted when near-mythical monsters roamed the landscape.
It's hard to give up when I have things I care about that depend on me. Call that a blessing or a curse, whichever you like.
It's six of one, a half dozen of the other. Each of you working to make the world a better, kinder, safer place: we need you, and if you deprive us of yourself, you undo the work you struggled so hard to get done.
You have to persevere. There's no other choice, really. Except the one Swartz took, and look at us all now without him, called on to persevere without his help.
Chris Clarke at KCET. Activism and Perseverance: Thoughts on Losing Aaron Swartz
The climate change mitigation movement has become an orthodoxy, and environmentalists challenge it at the risk of ostracism or worse.
Chris Clarke at Coyote Crossing. Orthodoxy in the Climate Movement: Franzen and His Deniers
Jonathan Franzen in The New Yorker. Carbon Capture Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation?
I want a word for the earth’s shadow in the sky on a summer sunset evening, that terminator between pink and indigo, and the knowledge in the gathering chill that tomorrow’s sun will be every bit as hot.
Chris Clarke at Coyote Crossing. Desert words I want
Advocating for better understanding of the plight poor people endure didn’t help me. Criticizing school gardens for being elitist didn’t help me. What did help me was a network of people very much like Michael Pollan and Alice Waters, who blended their concerns about better food with the tools to build an actual functioning community of people who fed each other.