by Bill Schlesinger You don’t have to look far to see where plastic is discarded to the environment. Roadsides harbor a plethora of plastic bottles; seashores are littered with plastic…
by Bill Schlesinger Motivated by a similar comparison in the Washington Post, here are my choices for what’s out and what’s in (mostly environmental) during the coming year. Cover the…
by Bill Schlesinger Humans extract minerals from the Earth’s crust to enhance the availability of these materials in our economy and often in the environment. For many metals, the mobilization…
by Bill Schlesinger The past week brought a mixed bag of news to my mailbox. The world’s population was estimated to have passed 8 billion folks, each with the desire…
by Bill Schlesinger (Title from Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, circa 1385 Most of the human body that is not bone is composed of protein, each built with an array of…
by Bill Schlesinger It is widely acknowledged that consumption of meat, particularly beef, has major negative impacts to the environment. On the other side of the grocery aisle, fruits and…
Bill and mansion by Bill Schlesinger America is the land of the big—Big Houses, Big Cars, Big Macs, and Big Dreams. The average new house in the U.S. has 1000…
by Bill Schlesinger Extractive industries, such as mining, are inherently unsustainable, because the crust of the Earth contains only a finite supply of metals. In my younger days of field…
by Bill Schlesinger As early as the 1960s, when we saw a proliferation of plastic waste in landfills and unsightly plastic cups along the roadside, we realized that some of…
Emerald ash borer by Bill Schlesinger Even a century ago, the arrival of pests and pathogens from Europe wreaked havoc on American elm and chestnut trees, leading to their near…