Exploring Humanity’s Place In the Journey of the Universe by : Yale Environment 360

• …There’s starting to be a sense now that  there’s a moral issue about degradation of the environment, that there is something here that’s larger than us, something that’s given birth to all life forms and sustains us. And if we degrade that, it’s to the degradation of future generations. So there’s an inter-generational ethic here. And there’s a new emerging ethic of responsibility to people in other parts of the world who are suffering from our actions with things like climate change, which is affecting people along coastal waters.So where is the moral force going to come from for inter-generational ethics or ethical responsibility for people in other parts of the world? It’s going to come from longer-range thinking, and that’s what the religions can contribute.

• YALE e360

The Age of Man Is Not a Disaster – NYTimes.com

• Yes, we live in the Anthropocene — but that does not mean we inhabit an ecological hell. Our management and care of natural places and the millions of other species with which we share the planet could and should be improved.

Preserving Singapore’s ‘Green Spine’ – Southeast Asia Real Time – WSJ

• …away from the crowds and noise is an unexpected sanctuary: a 26-kilometer, century-old defunct railway connecting Singapore to Malaysia, which environmental groups dream of turning into Singapore’s own version of New York’s High Line, the former elevated rail line that was converted into a trendy urban nature walk through Manhattan’s Meatpacking District and Chelsea neighborhoods.

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  Singapore is positioning to be “A city in the Garden”. Julia and I were there briefly, years ago, moving quickly in the blazing heat in search of shadows at midday. The Japanese and Chinese Gardens in the city center are memorable as are the traveller’s palms, sentries in front of the old Raffles Hotel. 

New England Moves to Preserve a More Recent Heritage – NYTimes.com

• While their creations might seem out of place here, they match the ideals of Thoreau, said Alexander Gorlin, an architect whose book with the photographer Geoffrey Gross, “Tomorrow’s Houses: New England Modernism,” came out this year.

  Mr. Gorlin said the plain, functional style of modernism, meant to blend into the landscape, echoed Thoreau’s desire to live simply and in harmony with nature. Gropius, he added, was inspired by another early New England thinker, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Fearing Climate Change’s Effects on the Adirondacks – NYTimes.com

By LISA W. FODERARO

• Mr. Jenkins, who is the author of the book “Climate Change in the Adirondacks: The Path to Sustainability,” spends much of his time on the water and in the woods, documenting the ecosystem with a notebook and a camera. He thus brings an unusual perspective to the scene. Where a casual observer might behold diversity and continuity, he projects decades into the future and finds absence and loss.

Keep the Clean Water Act Strong – NYTimes.com

• When the act became law, two-thirds of our nation’s lakes, rivers and coastal waters were unsafe for fishing or swimming, and untreated sewage and industrial waste was routinely dumped into our waters.

In Philadelphia, a Garden Grows Wild – NYTimes.com

• Ms. Ruddick decided to embrace the philosophy embodied in a line she remembered from an old New Yorker: “Don’t just do something. Stand there!”

• She worked for years in India, she said, where people stop for the rituals that mark the passages of life.

  “How many times has somebody gotten married, and you just can’t go because of too much work or something?” she asked. “They don’t miss these things. The whole place stops. I feel like we just don’t stop enough.”

  What a radical thought: just standing there, in the gardens, and in our lives, too.

Facebook Brine Garden page

• Monday: Anne Raver talk on her FAVES at the Horticultural Society “closer to home, Duncan and Julia Brine, who have created six acres of wild, painterly gardens in Pawling, NY.? “

   

  The Horticultural Society of New York

  www.hsny.org

  April 11, 2011

Acorn glut signals Lyme risks | poughkeepsiejournal.com | Poughkeepsie Journal – Annotated

• In the 20 years we’ve been monitoring tree seed production, this is the first time we’ve seen such an acorn glut.

   

• We have been tracking acorn production by Hudson Valley oaks for 20 years and have consistently seen a spike in cases of Lyme disease in Dutchess County residents two years after large acorn mast years.

   

• If oak trees produced a modest acorn crop each year, they’d run the risk of having every one consumed and leaving no descendants. But if they make few seeds in most years, then let loose with a bumper crop, it’s likely some acorns will survive the onslaught of hungry consumers. This is called “predator satiation” and is exactly what we find in our northeastern forests.