At the Frontlines of the Global Transition
The United States has entered an era of political insurgency with grave consequences for the economy, the environment, our safety, and our way of life.
BENZONIA — With less than a month from Election Day, we’ve come to the Greg Fogle moment of the 2020 presidential election campaign. Fogle was a big, bullying energy industry executive who unwittingly served as an ally in a grassroots campaign I helped organize in Michigan in the mid-1990s. Donald Trump is now playing the same role in the 2020 campaign. Let me explain. Back in the mid-1990s, when the natural gas industry was clearing …
BILLINGS, Montana – About 1,000 people a day make their way off Interstate 90 and head a few miles north to the Little Bighorn Battlefield, a national monument in eastern Montana. Established in 1878 , the memorial’s mission has evolved. Initially it was meant to honor the 210 American cavalry troopers, including their commander George Armstrong Custer, who died on June 25, 1876 in a “last stand” against a much larger mounted war party of …
Here’s a question for Trump’s silent majority, that self-described swarm of acolytes poised to storm out of hiding to re-elect the president. Why does Donald Trump look like such a loser? He tried scaring the suburbs. It was a weak, ill-informed, poorly-timed message that did not work. Especially with the women it was intended to impress. He tried attacking Biden as a tool of the ‘socialist, radical left intent on wrecking America.’ That did not …
Seven weeks to the election. The choice for the country is ever more clear. Will Donald Trump’s dishonesty, malice, and incompetence become the reigning constructs of American governance? Or will the country trust Joe Biden to manage crises, restore order, and respond effectively to the century’s rapidly evolving ecological, social, and economic conditions? The 2020 election is a test of the character of our country. The winner, as I’ve said for weeks, is obvious. Americans will …
Supporters of the president convened by the hundreds in a parking lot outside Portland, Oregon on Saturday. At dusk they formed a convoy and drove into the city to confront Black Lives Matter demonstrators. Before the rolling protest concluded clashes occurred in several parts of the cities. One Trump supporter was shot and killed. The death in Portland followed just five days after Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter demonstrators confronted each other in Kenosha, …
BENZONIA — Earlier in my life, I lived in Charleston, S.C. and spent almost four years roaming the South as a journalist. Later I did the same thing as a national correspondent for the New York Times. In the 1980s and 1990s, the South was emerging from the dangerous era of segregation that had allowed — by state authority — white people to abuse black people in virtually any way that whites thought was necessary …
Not very long after a wildfire’s flames and heat rip through a western forest — in some places a week, in others a bit more — oak seedlings break through the ashes in tight clusters of green. Seeds of golden daisies, Indian paintbrush and scarlet larkspur, stirred by bright light, fresh air and open spaces, appear as little gardens of color on scarred hillsides of fallen trees and blackened soil. The emerging foliage after a …
In 1905, a year before he died, Nathaniel Southgate Shaler published a highly regarded book that advocated “a change in the point of view from which we commonly regard the resources of the earth.” In Man and Earth the famed Harvard scientist described the sun, clouds, soil, and water as a kind of life-giving membrane, a placenta, from which Mother Earth sustains all living creatures. Mindful of the coal dug out of the Appalachians, timber …
“LIBERATE MICHIGAN!””LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” “LIBERATE VIRGINIA!” Are we in this together, as the nation’s governors insist? Forget about it. Yesterday President Trump signaled — to supporters toting AR-15s — his blanket approval for acts of violence in pursuit of their economic security, particularly in states led by Democrats. The call to arms, such a characteristically Trumpian contradiction, was issued the day after the president made comments at the White House in support of governors who were …
One of the really creative and effective men I’ve known in my life is J. Carl Ganter. A native of Traverse City and a skilled photographer, journalist, and filmmaker who trained at Northwestern, Carl and I have done a few very cool things together. We partnered on New York Times assignments in the 1990s. He and his wife, Eileen Ganter, built MLUI.org, the first Web site for the Michigan Land Use Institute that went live …
