Alexander Archipelago wolf. Photo: Courtecy Robin Silver, Center for Biological Diversity. Tongass National Forest Southeast Alaska is home to the Tongass National Forest, the largest national forest of north America. Tongass has old-growth and temperate rainforests, which shelter abundant wildlife and biodiversity. However, both the forests of Tongass and wildlife have been under attack for decades. Loggers, miners, and developers and corrupt state and federal agencies look at these ancient trees and see primarily dollars. These are the same people who practically extinguished the old-growth forests of northern California. These are the same people who are the enemies of the natural world and welcomed Trump to the White House. They persistently ignore the ecological costs of their hubris. Wrecking the homes of wildlife Logging the magnificent and centuries-old trees of Alaska is fighting a perpetual war against life: weakening and destroying biodiversity, and mak...

Imperial Valley River, California. Photo: Evaggelos Vallianatos Control of nature My lengthy experience at the US Environmental Protection Agency brought me face to face with the terrors of our “modern” times. One of those awful realizations was that the leaders of America – and the leaders of other countries -- are not telling the truth about the impact of people and industries  have been having out there, on the natural world. For example, water. The degradation, poisoning, and the disappearance of water is, first of all, the result of too many people inhabiting the planet. Despite perpetual wars and plagues, world population is steadily rising.  However, an even bigger force has been undermining water and life on Earth: industrialization: the machine power man acquired and employed to reshape the world to his interests.  This engineering power spread to plantation owners and modern oligarchs who rushed and grabbed land from indigenous people...

Origins of science  The Greeks used the word episteme for science. Episteme means knowledge, techne (craftsmanship), understanding, and experience. Episteme / science was primarily knowledge from the observation of nature and natural phenomena, which slowly eclipsed the role of the divine and superstition in the organization and understanding of life and the cosmos.  In the fifth century BCE, Hippokrates, father of  medicine, said there was nothing divine in the disease of epilepsy. Careful observations of the patient  and knowledge of the natural origins of diseases sufficed to explain the natural causes of epilepsy. In the fourth century BCE, Aristotle invented biology-zoology. Science shone through his detailed and extraordinary work on the history, classification, anatomy, and behavior of animals. The Arabs called Aristotle The Philosopher. Charles Darwin praised Aristotle to heavens.  Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great who c...

Plagues from Mao to Trump On July 1, 1958, the ruler of China,  Mao Tse-tung , said farewell to the god of plagues. Mao’s celebration was short lived. The god of plagues has been ravaging China and the rest of the world to this day of the existential corona pandemic in 2020.  China started the twenty-first century with a plague. According to  Yanzhong Huang , professor of diplomacy at Seton Hall University,  the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) plague of 2002 caught the government of China unprepared. This was as much a blow to public health as it was a political embarrassment to the Communist Party. Politicians and doctors from the time of Mao to the time of Trump have treated plagues like so many other diseases: temporary harm exorcised with drugs and vaccines. In 2020, however, the plague of the corona virus demands a different philosophy: sensitive to the nature, harmony, and extreme vulnerability of the world. Humans are on...

The decision of Senator  Bernie Sanders  to withdraw from the Democratic presidential contest is a blow to the prospects of democracy in America. For several years, but especially since 2016, Sanders has been talking of the need for political revolution, by which he means: (1) revitalize democratic institutions and the economy by taxing the rich and closing the gigantic inequality gap between rich and everybody else, including the poor. He would use the revenue from taxing the billionaires for public works paying living wages and employing millions of Americans to rebuild the country’s crumbling infrastructure and fight climate change; and (2) reorganize and strengthen environmental protection and education, offer health care to all Americans, and see that workers had safety and health.   These reforms would raise the living standards and health of most Americans left behind by the present economy and culture dominated by the military-industrial complex and the bill...