The Climate Impacts of Stuff
The vacation promised to be high in enjoyment and low in carbon. Rather than flying somewhere and staying in a hotel, we would sail to a cabin powered by solar electricity. Our only fossil-fuel...
Make Way for Pollinators
Spreading like dandelion fluff, a “No Mow May” initiative to support bees and other pollinators is taking seed in Maine. It began when two Rockland residents sent City Councilor Nathan Davis a New York...
Countering the Culture of Convenience
We are consumers of convenience. Offer us a faster, easier, wrinkle-free, nonstick option, and we’re sold. We need no convincing that convenience is an inherent good; a lifetime of ads has done that...
Gardening Our Way to Community Resilience
Picture your community transformed. In place of drab lawns around houses, town buildings, schools and businesses, there is a colorful collage of fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, perennial vegetables and annual crops —...
The Need to Keep Compost Free of Chemical Contamination
Imagine giving soil the legal protections that air, water and marine ecosystems have. That’s the momentous step the European Union is taking to recognize healthy soil as critical for climate stability, ecological diversity and...
The Time Is Ripe for Food Recovery
During the growing season, I periodically join a crew of volunteers on a local farm, harvesting crates of vegetables headed for food banks. It lifts our spirits knowing that all this beautiful, wholesome produce...
‘Forever Chemicals’ on Farmland: A Slow-motion Disaster
Maine farmers are resourceful and resilient, but nothing could have prepared them for this invisible and insidious disaster. “We are… the human collateral of PFAS-contaminated biosolids,” observed organic farmer Nell Finnegan of Albion, casualties...
At the Cutting Edge: A New Drone Innovation
After five years enduring a rain of toxic hairs from browntail moth caterpillars, Sally Donelson is ready for a novel solution. She has to suit up at her family’s lakefront camp in Litchfield —...
