Former Endangered Species Branch Chief with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and writer focusing on the Sixth Mass Extinction, human behavior, and deep time.
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Some ecological changes are easy to see.
Wolves returned to Yellowstone and became an international story.
Lake trout arrived in Yellowstone Lake and quietly reorganized an ecosystem.
One became a symbol. The other remained largely invisible.
My latest for Mongabay:
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We may finally have a comprehensive framework for solving climate change, biodiversity loss, and social instability.
The only remaining challenge is figuring out what any of the words mean. Check out my new Substack essay in the morning.
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Lyle Lewis retweeted
"Each step can be made to appear rational within its own frame. The cumulative trajectory is harder to justify because no single institution, discipline, corporation, government, or generation can see the whole thing."
The distance between satire, science fiction, and technological reality is disappearing faster than our ability to understand the consequences.
New essay: When Satire Becomes Reality
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Our ability to create technologies has lapped our ability to understand their consequences. We have zero idea what will happen when we begin modifying darkness itself.
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Large, widely distributed populations can absorb ecological “perfect storms” that remnant populations cannot.
The catastrophe may look sudden. The vulnerability was created long before.
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Lyle Lewis retweeted
Flowing water in Mine Creek in the Oregon McDermitt Caldera - greatly threatened by Jindalee HiTech lithium maniacal mega-drilling project. BLMs flawed EA has no water monitoring here. Instead it’s at dry road crossings & the like. 1/2
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Lyle Lewis retweeted
Agreed. In Abu Dhabi the pattern is even clearer: new solar capacity serves incremental load from AI data centers and desalination, so hydrocarbons shift toward export rather than retirement. Addition and substitution are different events.
Most people will read this as solar replacing fossil fuels. It isn’t. Globally, fossil-fuel consumption is still growing.
We are adding renewables to a growing energy system.
The statistic is true. The inference it invites is not.
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Most people will read this as solar replacing fossil fuels. It isn’t. Globally, fossil-fuel consumption is still growing.
We are adding renewables to a growing energy system.
The statistic is true. The inference it invites is not.
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We aren’t replacing one energy system with another. We are building a second one on top of the first—while converting more land to satisfy ever-growing energy demand.
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We aren’t replacing one energy system with another. We are building a second one on top of the first—while converting more land to satisfy ever-growing energy demand.
apple.news/A1CXI4-DNQ4qwHc8J…
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Hunters have mistaken people for deer.
Other hunters for deer.
Cows for deer.
Horses for elk.
Moose for elk.
And, apparently, a llama named Snicker Doodle Silk for a doe.
Perhaps “be sure of your target” is not quite as self-explanatory as I had assumed.
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Lyle Lewis retweeted
"Human beings don't think about multiple interacting threats simultaneously. We simplify. We isolate. We ask whether climate change, artificial intelligence, biotech,biodiversity loss are dangerous,then debate which matters most. But the world does not experience them separately"
The distance between satire, science fiction, and technological reality is disappearing faster than our ability to understand the consequences.
New essay: When Satire Becomes Reality
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Satire works by pushing reality just beyond plausibility.
The problem now is that reality keeps catching up.
New Substack essay later today: When Satire Becomes Reality
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Forests stored carbon, regulated water, moderated climate, built soils, and supported biodiversity.
The forest economy didn’t collapse when pulpwood prices fell. It collapsed when forests became timber.
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The pet trade has become an ecological wrecking ball in south Florida.
Burmese pythons. Spectacled caimans. Tegus. Nile monitors. Iguanas. Now Asian swamp eels.
The Everglades isn’t facing one invasive species. It is absorbing the cumulative consequences of an industry.
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“Can be recycled” is doing a lot of work there. Only about 22% of small electronics are formally collected and recycled globally. Mining is only the first bill. Manufacturing, transport, replacement and recycling all have environmental costs too.
Fair concern, but I'd flip the metaphor: lithium pays its cost once and can be recycled. Fossil fuels charge us interest forever through our lungs. I'll take recyclable lithium. #CleanEnergy
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Lyle Lewis retweeted
"To wildlife, the difference between hostility and indifference is meaningless. A forest converted to agriculture disappears whether anyone hated the animals living there or not."
lylel.substack.com/p/the-rea…
We fear a more powerful intelligence taking our resources, reshaping our world, and eliminating us when we become inconvenient.
Wildlife has been living with that intelligence for a very long time.
New Substack Essay: The Real Fear: AI Is Like Humans
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