Articles are sorted by date with the most recently published first.
Prairie Dreaming
by Hal Herring
To remake a prairie you need time, money, and a historic collision of events.
Winged Mercury and the Golden Calf
by Rebecca Solnit
The mythology of gold didn't end with the ancient Greeks, and the popular version of this element's story in America leaves out a glittering nemesis.
The Tears of Trees
by Victoria Finlay
Following a gemstone back to its source reveals a whole spectrum of curiosities.
Of Mites and Men
by Bill McKibben
The work of bees has become a global market commodity, as have mite infestation of hives, its cures, and the cures for the cures. McKibben follows the cycle of cause and consequence.
Chores
by Debra Marquart
Growing up on a North Dakota farm, chores are always plural. But so are the joys of learning things not available to most people today.
Cactus Chronicles
by Edward Abbey
The iconoclastic author left behind a stew of epistolary indiscretions filled with wit and wisdom. Published here for the first time.
Breadbasket of Democracy
by Ted Nace
Can we trust the future of food production to giant biotech corporations and their lobbyists?
Beyond Hope
by Derrick Jensen
Hope is the antithesis of action. Hope expects that someone else will do the hard work of change, that things will just...get better.
Poison
by Gary Wockner
Memories of Malathion: A chain-smoking, speed-mad father and a wind that tasted like death.
The Right Side of the Law
Photos by Chris LaMarca; Text by Kathleen Dean Moore
In an unconscionable world, civil disobedience on behalf of the land we love is the new patriotism.
Love Song of the Agave
text and photograph by Douglas Menuez
In the northern Mexican town of Tequila, an unwavering tradition yields a fruit in perfect harmony with its culture.
Slum Ecology
by Mike Davis
The international economic policies that decimated rural infrastructures worldwide have driven hundreds of millions of the poor to already teeming cities.
Learning to Surf
by David Gessner
David Gessner's artful essay on what pelicans have to teach him about trying something new has won the 2006 John Burroughs Essay Award.
National Defense
by Kathleen Dean Moore
"Maybe civil disobedience isn't about justice and obligation. Maybe it's about love."
The Nature of Violence
text by Jeffrey A. Lockwood
This thoughtful essay about violence was included in Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007.
Looking Cheap Electricity in the Face
photos by Antrim Caskey
Leaving Appalachia Right Side Up ... At a Profit
by Amory B. Lovins
Mountaintop removal, smokestack pollution, and global warming aren't inevitable; they're artifacts of using electricity in ways that waste money.
The Long Emergency
A five-part video exploration with author. lecturer, and de facto cultural historian James Howard Kunstler
Moving Mountains
by Erik Reece
The battle for justice come to the coal fields of Appalachia. Trapped in an avalanche of collusion, Appalachians suffer poverty, sickness, and death at the hands of soulless coal corporations.
The Present Future
Bill McKibben on the Paintings of Alexis Rockman
Glimpsing the predicament of our moment, "a human world newly and suddenly vulnerable to the forces of a changed planet."
Progress Hits Home
Melissa Holbrook Pierson
Did we really trade our birthright for a wider selection of bathmats? A sprawling lament.
Conservation Refugees
by Mark Dowie
Large conservation groups too often overlook a messy byproduct of wildland protection: People. What do you do with them?
Flower of the Fringe
by Seth Kantner and Bob Uhl
No Two Alike
by Barbara L. Baer
The strange power of a Soviet-era scientist and his ancient, vanishing fruits
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