Profile
Subscribe
1. Tell us about yourself.
“I’m a husband and father of two with more interests than a single vocation can contain. Despite having developed a certain degree of expertise along the way - including a strong practical knowledge of both natural and human history and a facility with words - I’m something of a poster child for the benefits of being a good generalist. I know enough about the ways that natural systems and human institutions work to ask the right questions and provide strategic leadership to conservation organizations in a professional capacity, but even doing work that is meaningful and allows me to draw on a range of skills and experiences leaves other ideas rattling around in my head without an obvious outlet. Which rather nicely provides a segue to the matter of why I blog.”
2. Why the blog?
“I started to blog during a professional plateau. I was feeling the need for a creative outlet, to get back in the habit of regular writing, and for the opportunities I sensed were there to make connections - even friendships - with those I met along the way. It is this last benefit, particularly across ideological lines, that has been a source of particular satisfaction for me. I write about what interests me and that makes for a rather yeasty brew of topics, but I also respond to what draws others to my blog and why they stay.”
3. What do you want to bring to the blogsphere?
“Wit, humor, something different and unexpected on any given day, and perhaps the craft to weave it all together into a coherent whole with multiple entry points for readers of different persuasions. I am relatively open about who I am and what I care about, but am not interested in polemics or even being overtly partisan about politics. I’ll generally take on an issue with an eye toward demonstrating common interest in a solution. I like to think my blog manages to explore “the intersection of history and the environment from a (fairly) non-partisan perspective” as Tigerhawk kindly describes Walking the Berkshires. I hope it manages to be engaging as well, and if ‘occasionally nettlesome‘ that this is not merely an irritant but considered and thought-provoking. That doesn’t mean I am apolitical, however, or indifferent to the role that politics play in the issues confronting the environment and our collective memory of the past. If I valued my marriage less highly, I might seriously have contemplated a dark horse run for the US Senate one of these days (having first done my adversaries a favor by compiling my dirty laundry in one neat package in this corner of the blogosphere). That, or perhaps become a trial attorney - not that there’s anything wrong with that. Luckily, it does all come down to values, and there is little danger of either eventuality coming to pass. Joe Lieberman can rest easier at night knowing I won’t be coming after him in 2012.”
4. Name the 3 most important ecological issues that your unique perspective enables you to see (you can focus on things evident or important to you).
“Much as I am attracted to wilderness and wild places and believe we should do all that is in our power to ensure that they persist over time, I am convinced that we treat ecological and human needs as distinct and separate at our mutual peril. That doesn’t mean that every ecosystem service must be quantified for it to have value. Nor does it mean that humans have to have direct and tangible benefits from every place and species we decide to spare. It does, however, mean that there is hardly a square inch of space on our planet where our impact is not felt and what we do not value, either intrinsically or because of a perceived benefit - we do not work to conserve.
I believe that the ecological challenges we face are all about values, and whether they will be used to unite or divide us. In America and perhaps elsewhere this divisiveness can manifest as class resentment of the moralizing of cultural elites and the disenfranchisement of those who live on the land and are most deeply effected by natural resource management decisions made outside their communities and reinforced by more numerous suburban and urban voters. It is about private property and shared resources that everyone uses but nobody owns. It is about the proper role of government, of private enterprise, and most of all about whose behavior should change, and how, and why.
The greatest single ecological challenge we face is deciding whether and how to modify our individual and collective behaviors to adapt to a changing climate. This means getting beyond the question of whether our resource consumption patterns are contributing to climate change and deciding what meaningful steps we are willing to take in a timely fashion to respond to its impacts.”
“In conservation as in many human enterprises there is a strong trend toward responding to a threat long after the opportunity for a timely and reasonably effective intervention has passed. This is particularly true of invasive species prevention and control, where early detection and rapid response is the ideal solution but rarely are the systems and behaviors in place to facilitate this at the scale of the threat. It is also true of open space protection, as communities tend to invest in saving their resources when they are imperiled and not well before. James Fenimore Cooper noted this tendency in the human character when he observed that ‘men always prize that most which is least enjoyed. Thus, in a new country, the woods and other objects, which in an old country would be maintained at great cost, are got rid of, simply with a view of improving, as it is called.’ We need to shift forward the interval between recognition of a problem and developing an effective and appropriate response, yet in doing so are working against thousands of years of evolutionary human behavior.”
5. Name the best ways or policies to cope with each of the issues.
“I am a strong proponent of local solutions to regional problems where possible and appropriate. These cannot be developed in a vacuum, nor do they spring a priori from the local community. Good information and better facilitation is critical. I also believe that since any meaningful response to environmental problems involves changing patterns of human behavior, both as individuals and institutions, we need to deploy an integrated suite of strategies that rely on combinations of voluntary, incentivized and legally coercive action. Too much reliance on any one strategy (a default to the regulatory or an insistence on voluntary change at every turn) will assuredly fail and very likely alienate those whose support - indeed, whose behavior is most problematic - is critical to success.”
6. What are your predictions as to the developments on the ecological frontier in the foreseeable future for the US and for the world.
“The Northeastern US, particularly New England, will find that its relatively abundant water resources become increasingly valuable with climate change. Look for more “western style” water rights being bought and sold separately from fee ownership of the underlying land in this region. The trend toward simplification of natural communities due to invasive species, introduced pests and pathogens, and changing environmental conditions will continue and accelerate.
More and more rural communities will become essentially nonviable in the United States with the cost of fuel and lack of affordability and decent employment driving people to urban areas. Property taxes will go up because volunteer services (Fire, EMT) will no longer be able to draw on the local community for membership in extremely expensive rural communities.
In communities that are nearing full build out, open space condemnation to provide new municipal infrastructure will start to threaten lands meant to be permanently protected under conservation easements.”
Tim Abbott of the blog Walking the Berkshires http://greensleeves.typepad.com/berkshires
