If you're concerned for folks on the ground in Texas, the best way you can help is to donate to a local abortion fund. There are people on the ground doing the work already who know what folks need most, and big-name, national-level organizations get plenty of money.
This is also a really good time to support independent abortion providers, especially in states facing harsh restrictions like Texas. These organizations are often doing grassroots advocacy work as well as providing essential care. Find one here: abortioncarenetwork.org/abortion-care-…
I've learned a lot about abortion in my time on the board of @MabelWadsworth, and I chair our advocacy committee. Your local independent abortion providers are often looking for volunteers, which can be a great way to pitch in and connect if you're feeling frustrated or helpless.
You can also contact your elected representatives here in the US and urge them to support the Equality Act and the EACH act (to end the Hyde Amendment), which are coming up for a vote soon: allaboveall.org/abortion-cover…
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I'm looking for folks who work in natural history museums/collections to Zoom in to my class for 10 minutes on Thursdays (9:30 ET) this semester. I want to showcase the diversity of work you can do behind-the-scenes in herbaria, museums, and other collections. Can you help?
I'm happy to reciprocate with a visit with your students or lab group, or I can send you something yummy from Maine!
Currently seeking: mammals, rocks, herbaria/plants/seeds, mollusks/inverts, herpetofauna, taxidermy, fish
The new IPCC report comes out today. You may feel any number of things: anxiety, fear, anger, numbness, grief, determination, hope. If you’re overwhelmed, it’s okay to not read the headlines. But whatever you feel, use this to feed the fire in your belly. Don’t let it go out.
Earth is our home. And as @MaryHeglar writes, “I’m willing to fight for it, with everything I have, because it is everything I have. I don’t need a guarantee of success before I risk everything to save the things, the people, the places that I love.”
I wrote this a few years ago, and it feels more true than ever. What can we learn from musk ox? 1) When things are tough, stand firm. 2) Protect the vulnerable. 3) We are more powerful together.
There’s a plethora of stories coming out that are framing climate change as something no one was talking about until recently. Pardon my language, but that’s some fucked up revisionism.
Maybe folks in power want to absolve themselves from their inaction, or media outlets feel guilty for not giving climate change the coverage it deserved for decades, but somehow we blew right past “this is what we’ve been warning about” to “if only we’d been warned!?”
Setting aside the fact that we’ve known about the physics of CO2 warming the planet since > Eunice Foote (1865), Arrhenius (1896) et al, a US presidents’ advisory council raised concerns about the greenhouse effect in 1965. Wally Broecker used the term “global warming” in 1975.
Apparently I'm an "overpopulation denier" for pointing out the fact that consumption is the real problem, and that population anxiety is deeply rooted in racism and can lead to ecofascism. It's amazing how much people will cling to harmful ideas even when the data say otherwise.
For folk who would like to learn more, some links to help:
I really liked @EricHolthaus newsletter today, which connected me with this important essay I missed: "How can we make sure that climate anxiety is harnessed for climate justice?" scientificamerican.com/article/the-un…
I'm excited to share our new paper, led by @erleellis. By combining global maps of human populations and land use, we found that ~75% of terrestrial nature has been shaped by people for at least 12,000.
Our main take-home points: 1) "With rare exceptions, current biodiversity losses are caused not by human conversion or degradation of untouched ecosystems, but rather by the appropriation, colonization, and intensification of use in lands inhabited and used by prior societies."
2) "Global land use history confirms that empowering the environmental stewardship of Indigenous peoples and local communities will be critical to conserving biodiversity across the planet."