Category: Uncategorized

Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist, yesterday described the confrontation between population growth and water in China, arguing that a nation developing as fast as that one is bound to hit big economic and ecological impediments. For readers of Circle of Blue, where I serve as senior editor and a global correspondent, this is not a new thought. In fact, in recent months we’re seeing lots of fresh evidence that the groundbreaking reporting we’ve …

Joel Bleth, a lawyer and engineer who co-founded Solar Bee, a very successful Dickinson, N.D.-based manufacturer of solar-powered equipment to circulate wastewater at treatment plants, sent a message here today asking how long the oil and gas boom in his state would persist. Dickinson, a prairie city of 18,000, has grown more than 10 percent since the turn of the century and for several years has experienced swelling markets for retail and office buildings, hotels …

Near the last days of fall color in Michigan’s northwest corner, where I live, squirrels were especially active. They darted across the two-lane roads in front of my bicycle. On one ride to Glen Arbor (that’s Glen Lake in pix above) you could hear their quickening steps on the forest’s dry leaves, like the brushed strokes on a tight snare drum. Foraging and darting, they prepared for a cold winter. We are told that people …

On a hike in the Upper Peninsula this week observed this sign: Nature Trail to Parking Lot. It struck me as either the most apt description of Michigan I’ve seen or the shortest history of the United States ever written. — Keith Schneider

More than two years ago in Circle of Blue’s The Biggest Dry, I was part of a Michigan-based multi-media reporting team that documented how hard Australia’s primary food-growing region was getting hammered by climate change. The Murray-Darling Basin of southeast Australia, named for the region defined by two of the nation’s longest rivers, was in the throes of a 12-year drought that was crippling grain production sectors, especially the $1 billion rice industry. I called …