Obama Out-Conserves Bush on wilderness, but lags on fuel economy, species

President Obama signed legislation today protecting about 2 million acres of wilderness, including 700,000 acres in California — a total that comes close to the amount of land George Bush conserved during his entire presidency. So the new administration is on course to far exceed the meager wildlands preservation of the last president, a most [...]

Leonardo Interrupts Slime Time with Eco Message

Ok, I confess. I watched Nickelodeon’s Kid’s Choice Awards last  night with my 10-year-old son last night. On tape. (Wherein I learned, in between the dousing of celebrities in green slime, that the Jonas Brothers Band is more popular than Linkin Park, and High School Musical 3 rules both Iron Man and the Dark Knight.)
The [...]

Climate Change: The argument

Do you think global warming is a crock, or far more urgent a problem than our leaders will admit? Think it’s a problem that man, in the space of a century, released such vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere that nature took half a billion years to sequester it under ground (that’s why the [...]

The Ranch at the End of the World

America’s response to global warming may be decided not in Washington, D.C., but in California,  in a place called Tejon Ranch. My op-ed at NPR.org will tell you all about it:

To stand on a windswept hill at Tejon Ranch is to be at once humbled, enthralled and saddened by vistas that in years past defined California and the [...]

Eco Barons school fundraiser tonight in Long Beach

Please join me tonight at Barnes & Noble in Marina Pacifica, Long Beach, CA, at 7 pm for a discussion and signing of Eco Barons, with a portion of sales generously donated by B&N to McGaugh Elementary School’s parent-run literacy program, Project SEEK. This is an opportunity to hear about some remarkable environmental initiatives, from [...]

Climate Change See-Saw

There has been a lot of chatter about Americans pulling back from their previously expressed desires for firm national action against climate change. Two recent snapshot polls seem to reveal a growing distrust of global warming science, and a belief that economic concerns must come first, even if that means further environmental damage. 
But not so [...]

Climate Crisis, Eco Barons on C-Span

C-Span will be covering my event at next month’s Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, “Climate in Crisis,” which is shaping up to be an an excellent panel. I’ll be talking about the Eco Barons‘ response to global warming, accompanied by William Kelly, co-author of Smogtown, Stephan Faris, author of Forecast, Dan Sperling, author of [...]

Tucson Book Festival

The first annual Tucson Festival of Books has been packed this weekend. People are still reading books, in droves it seems, and the crowd at my Eco Barons presentation yesterday was engaged and enthusiastic. People were particularly interested in the Doug Tompkins story, as well as Tucson’s own Eco Barons, the environmentalists at the Center [...]

Sacramento Book Review: From Ego and Econ to Eco Baron

The new Sacramento Book Review — that’s right, in this age of decline for newspaper book review sections, there’s a big, new book review publication out there — has this to say about Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers & Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet: 
With an inspiring message, Eco Barons is the type of book that makes [...]

When the Super Rich Go Green, They Do It Big

Time Magazine’s Bryan Walsh writes about some of the wealthiest of the Eco Barons and gives credit where credit is due: “At the very moment when the government began abdicating its responsibilities on the environment, the Eco Barons stepped in.”