Treehugger Blog

What Would You Do—Really Do—If You Meant All You Said About Saving The World?

So I found this cool internet music service. For a small monthly fee I can play just about any song I want—a very useful feature when trying to work at the office. No matter what my mood, or whatever my task, I can find a song through which I can focus.

For example, as I sat down to write this blog entry I could not quite put into words what I was thinking until I pulled up the Dave Matthews Band version of the Bob Dylan song, “All Along the Watchtower.” Fortunately for me (as is usually happens while listening to music) my ideas became unstuck. — more

Earthwatching: Seen Any Good Green Movies Lately?

Earlier this week I joined a number of Earthwatch colleagues and other interested filmgoers at a screening of the documentary Flow, an emotionally powerful (but narratively flawed) examination and indictment of the privatization of fresh water supplies throughout the world. When the lights came up, I was struck by two main ideas: 1) Never, ever drink two mugs of tea before going into a movie about water; 2) water privatization and the collapse of worldwide freshwater supplies are parallel, heretofore invisible crises that have already happened, not things that will or might happen if left unchecked. – more

Handcuffs, Butts, And Citizen Science

Imagine a shout-out-loud freakin’ gorgeous blue Saturday at the ocean, powdery soft sand dunes, gentle shushing waves…and 6 million tons of garbage. See the blonde babe in tight jeans strolling along the beach with her elegant Italian greyhound, lugging an enormous, yellow trash bag and jotting down figures on a data sheet. Imagine hundreds of thousands of volunteers on coastlines all over the globe doing the same thing.

International Coastal Cleanup Day. Third Saturday in September, every single year since 1986. - From Trinidad to Russia, Ecuador to Egypt, people are falling in love with their beaches all over again. — more

How Do You Make Ethics Sexy?

Ethics. Don’t know about you, but I hear that word and I see overly-serious, thin-lipped, pasty-white people wielding heavy legal texts and getting all judgmental on me. Heavy word, that one! In the professional dance of life, if your nametag reads “ethics”, you can end up as a terminal wallflower, or worse, on the patrol committee: everyone else is doing the fun stuff while you’re over there being Ms. Goody-Two-Shoes. Yikes.

So when I got myself elected to an ethics task force, then an ethics committee, while leading an effort here at Earthwatch to make ethics more prominent — more

Pimping my Pod

My pod? The Jeanine corner of the Earthwatch world involves itty-bitty blinking blue lights, a jungle of plants, traditional weavings in screamin’ neon. Camel-hair Persian rug stretched out on the floor. Mirror ball hanging in one corner of the ceiling, gen-u-ine crystal in the other. Cheeky West African doll lounging in front of books with too-long titles. “Wag more, bark less;” and “be the change you wish to see in the world” (Gandhi) tacked onto the shelves. Plus more assorted bling.

Such are the decorative solutions of a displaced (Northern) California gal — more

Ce n'est pas Réchauffement Global (This Is Not Global Warming)--With Apologies To Magritte

Treehuggers no doubt remember Knut. He’s the polar bear cub who would likely have died after being rejected by his mother, save that he became a media sensation when his Berlin zookeepers decided not to let Nature take its course. While some animal activists objected, the public at large seems to have responded in unison: “How could anyone let anything this cute die?”

You’ve no doubt also seen equally captivating pictures of many of Knut’s’ wild cousins—images that distill all of the scientific complexities of global warming and melting sea ice into a single powerful concept: — more

The Importance of Not Always Being So Damn Earnest

In my last blog, I confessed my antipathy for camping. Today, I've got something a little hotter: two weeks ago, two Earthwatch colleagues and I took off our pants together behind the catering tent at a swanky cocktail party on the Charles River in Boston.

(Let me take this opportunity to issue our deepest apologies to the wait staff and to those unfortunate families touring the river on the famed Duck Boat tour that evening.)

What made the scene truly hot, I confess, wasn't our suite of Adonis-like attributes, but rather that we were doffing our trousers as part of — more

If an Environmentalist Makes a Confession in the Forest, Does It Make Him Less Green?

After more than ten years of working in the environmental field, I thought I'd kick off my posts here from Earthwatch by coming out of the green closet:

I hate camping in the woods. Admitting this to greenies feels deliberately transgressive. But I have my reasons: Not enough air conditioning, too many bugs. Not enough friendly wait staff, too much cold water of questionable potability. Not enough cushy microfiber furniture, too much taking a shit over a muddy patch of leaves. — more

Earthwatch Institute Sends Volunteers on Conservation Missions

In 1971, we opened our doors to scientists of all disciplines and nationalities who needed support to understand the conditions of life on Earth. We studied rocks and stars, plants and animals, ancient peoples and their ruins, their relationships and interdependencies. Earthwatch is the world's largest environmental volunteer nonprofit that engages everyday people in real science research and education. Our primary goal: to build a sustainable future.

Today it would be called social venture capital. In the beginning, it was all about mission. — more