Students in ENVS 220 recently learned how to georeference historical air photography in ArcMap; well, here are some other ways to do it with maps for eventual input into GoogleEarth!

On Tuesday, our ENVS 490 class (Culture and Environmental Conflict) will be touring Bonneville Dam, site of a major conflict over how to remove federally listed California sea lions, who have found the site a handy spot to dine on the endangered spring Chinook run (and others). The use of lethal force was approved, then court-retracted; what will happen to these pinnipeds come this spring?

This Nick Kristof op-ed on Occupy Wall Street is good in that he recommends three key policies protestors could advocate to clean up our major financial institutions, and all have been clearly specified by certain experts. What it left me wondering, however, was: what would a comparable enviro protest look like? Where would it occupy, and what exactly would it demand? Our ENVS 220 class will be discussing the recent ELF documentary soon, and I just saw a few flyers on campus of an old-growth logging campaign, yet my students who've visited Douglas County learn that these issues are much more complicated than they appear in Multnomah County. Is there anything today in contemporary environmentalism that's as clear an injustice as Wall Street wealth?

Our ENVS 490 class will be camping Saturday night right above the dam featured in the picture of this story, one of four slated to be removed for the sake of salmon runs, a plan bitterly opposed by some farmers in the area.

In ENVS 220, students discuss/debate the relative contribution to environmental studies of the sciences vs. the humanities; here is one position, dubbed naturalism, in which science is viewed as the only path to knowledge. As the author summarizes, naturalism "doesn't mean anyone should stop doing literary criticism any more than foregoing fiction. Naturalism treats both as fun, but neither as knowledge." To some, naturalism is just another word for scientism, but it's worth us asking: What would a naturalist environmental studies be like? In what ways would it be better/worse/different?

Good green behaviors get us nowhere?  This economist has some provocative arguments, albeit getting a bit mainstream toward the end.

We all have heard the phrase "job-killing" applied to environmental regulations, and many may roll their eyes. But how exactly does one assess benefits and costs of regulations, and what sort of time/space frame will various interests allow in calculating benefits/costs? This takeoff on recent Obama decisions suggests some complexities.

How's this for a forceful justification of the role of equity in triple-bottom-line sustainability?

Another reminder that anything like a global fisheries assessment is a complex matter, based on all sorts of assumptions and models.  The upshot: either things are terrible, or they're just not great (e.g., 70 vs. 33 percent of all stocks estimated to be declining). One of the challenges: how extrapolate known longitudinal data on fish stocks to the many others that are less well monitored?

Portland: where sustainability = green = white?

Do we buy this upbeat take on localizing not just the service-sector economy but the manufacturing sector as well?  What sorts of goods, and what sorts of consumers, would/would not it encompass?  What sorts of ecological benefits may/may not be obtained?

Many of you have read my historian colleague Bill Cronon's work on wilderness, narrative, and other topics in environmental studies; now he's the target of political demands given his public stance on the labor situation in Wisconsin.  What does this suggest as to the appropriate bounds of engagement among scholars in political disputes, and when do we cross the line in serving our citizen role as advocates? (I don't think it's as simple as whether or not we use our work emails in doing so, as his assailants chillingly demand.)

What sounds like an alarmist heading on nuclear power post-Japan scare is actually a rather nuanced discussion of how nuclear power could be safer.

One provocative article on the Japan nuclear scare, arguing that its impacts on the global nuclear industry will be minimal.

An interesting article on the development side of "sustainable development." Perhaps economic measures are indeed overrated?

So, is the era of freeway utopias finally over?  Well, not everywhere, but in some cases indeed they are coming down in a number of US cities. So, what seems to be the pattern connecting these once-icons of freedom that are now (or soon to be) gone, vs. those that are remaining (or expanding)?

Here you go: a battle between House Demos and Republicans over something that really matters!

Shellenberger and Nordhaus update their classic tirade, now over six years following its original release.

So, where exactly do we draw the line on what we can morally eat if all life strives to live?  The author raises good questions regarding our tidy categories.

Check out this conference, titled "Resilience, Innovation, and Sustainability: Navigating the Complexities of Global Change," for some interesting interdisciplinary work.