In a world of increasing risk and uncertainty, you can only attempt to guide your life in the right direction. There will be times it gallops off another way. Do what you can. Enjoy what you can.

Some of the most dramatic human-induced changes to the nature of life on Earth occurred before the dawn of agriculture — damage that remains etched into ecosystems planet-wide.

I’ll be heading offline for a while…..back to the wilderness, where signal fades and perspective returns. Posts will keep running while I’m gone, but I won’t be around to reply. See you when I return.

Sure, it’ll kill people and wildlife for decades, but think of the happy shareholders, and the booming casket and funeral-home industries. A real win for growth. 🙄 apple.news/AYXz6QpC_Rq-...

“Planet is greening” has data behind it, but without context, it misleads. It’s become a lifeline for climate deniers who mistake leafier maps for recovery. That’s the illusion of green. open.substack.com/pub/lylel/p/...

Fish in Michigan are getting smaller. Warming water, agriculture runoff, microplastics, and chemical toxins now flow through every tributary, every gill, every egg. Climate change heats the surface. Pollution poisons the depths. Between them, the lakes are starving. apple.news/AhaipZbCLT5G...

Hawaiʻi has 18 plant species with only a single wild individual left. Dozens more around the world hang by the same thread. We count what’s visible but most extinctions happen before we even know the species exist, plants especially. #SixthMassExtinction www.hawaiipublicradio.org/local-news/2...

Really interesting article by Lyle Lewis, in the reasons why higher CO2 levels now are NOT good news, and will NOT cause more crops to grow etc. The history of the levels of atmospheric CO2 over millennia, pre-humanity, is fascinating. substack.com/inbox/post/1... @race2extinct.bsky.social

“Sustainable bear management” is the phrase we use when we want nature to conform to our whims and desires. The hunt didn’t end because grizzlies were overpopulated. It ended because they were struggling to stabilize after centuries of decline.🧵

Barred owls are an invasive species in western North America. Their westward spread was fueled by fire suppression, tree planting, and settlement, not by “natural expansion.” (Livezey 2009) 1/4

National Parks are a mirror of democracy — owned by the people, protected for all. Which is why, in an age of privatization and neglect, they’ve never been more imperiled.

Grist’s newer tone seems to be a deliberate pivot toward “solutions journalism” ….trying to stay upbeat to retain readership and ad revenue. It avoids the uncomfortable truth: we’re still accelerating extraction on every front.

97% of the planet’s land is already altered by humans. British Columbia is racing to finish the job of turning wilderness into wells, and calling it prosperity. apple.news/AYV6iEsr3Q5K...

Grist’s new “positive tipping points” story hails renewables and native gardens as proof we’re turning the corner. But we’re not swapping oil rigs for solar fields. We’re building both, accelerating destruction, and pretending it is progress. apple.news/AkJOdYHxNTO-...

All you need to know about AMOC! @climatecasino.net @davidho.bsky.social @drjeffmasters.bsky.social @jeffgoodell.bsky.social @race2extinct.bsky.social @drpauldorfman.bsky.social @paulhbeckwith.bsky.social @standupforscience.bsky.social youtu.be/HtLE44TP8LE?...

@grok insists technology can outgrow scarcity and that “managed forests” and “tech-engineered biospheres” can replace wild systems, treating Earth as a prototype to be upgraded. Simplification: life reduced to what can be managed. Collapse becomes a feature.

The planet isn’t “greening.” It’s photosynthetically busier but biologically poorer—more leaves, fewer living systems. New mini-essay with images: The Illusion of Greening ⤵︎ open.substack.com/pub/lylel/p/...

The bogus shell game of selling 'conservation credits' has moved to wildlife conservation in the West -- "If I create the false illusion of conservation over here, I can sell credits that will allow you to destroy intact and occupied habitat over there." 🌍

Forests, Fires, and Falsehoods: Exposing the Timber Industry’s Greenwashing Playbook This is for those who prefer citations/data over talking points. Evan Frost and I unpack how “sustainable forestry” has become a shield for carbon loss & habitat destruction. The full paper: 🔗 bit.ly/4qEjz1m

The new climate denial isn’t denial. It’s doubt dressed up as reason. “We don’t know everything” has replaced “it isn’t happening,” while ignoring what we do know: nature’s carbon sinks are collapsing, and so is our margin for error. normanjansen.substack.com/p/climate-ca...

I appreciate you all so much for the support. My small channel is growing because of your kind support. @race2extinct.bsky.social @climatecasino.net @ecowarriorss.bsky.social @jeffgoodell.bsky.social @danmiller999.bsky.social @drpauldorfman.bsky.social youtu.be/SWVZc1coiNQ?...

Oh, the irony! NASA’s building an Earth shield to protect us from space rocks. Forests, oceans, and the atmosphere are the real shields…protecting us from more immediate threats and we’re wrecking them. www.eldiario24.com/en/nasa-eart...

This beautiful #Porcupine crossed between parked cars, grass, a bike path, & eventually a road this morning in front of me. Thankfully, s/he has street smarts, & turned away from the road a few times at the lights of oncoming traffic. Plz watch for #urbanwildlife, especially as days get shorter!

The link provided doesn’t say that megafauna disappeared before the boreal forest formed. Fossil records show overlap: mammoths, bison, musk ox, & caribou all survived into early boreal conditions. Ecosystems don’t flip like switches; the transition from steppe to forest played out over millennia.

Counting only the stumps misses the roads, rigs, lines, and lost wildlife. The boreal is heavily fragmented, which is exactly what those intactness studies measure.

“..Pesticides like DDT reached Antarctica primarily through long-range atmospheric transport and are now being released from melting glaciers”

“Nothing dollarable [in the environment] is safe.” ~John Muir~

South Carolina’s life expectancy is 4 years below the U.S. average. Air pollution, chemical toxins, legacy contamination, and poor environmental health pile on top of poverty and healthcare gaps. The body keeps the score, but so does the land. www.earth.com/news/life-ex...

A new study says only 3% of Earth’s land remains “untouched.” We’ve been editing the planet for millennia as a result of pushing animals/plants to extinction….reshaping entire continents. www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/h...

Historically, wolverines reached as far south as northern New Mexico and ranged into the Great Lakes, but trapping, predator control, and now shrinking spring snow have contracted their range into the far north. apple.news/AXbZ6dF9ZR9q...

Thanks to @lightsoutforbirds.bsky.social for pulling together this segment from last weekend’s discussion. We covered a lot: carnivores, Ancient CO₂, Later Is Now, The Illusion of Green, wild horses, the ESA, and the hardest topic of all: accepting who we are.

Conservation isn’t just about numbers—it’s about connection. Wildlife corridors keep tigers, lions, cheetahs & leopards roaming, breeding & surviving. Isolation turns parks into islands of extinction. www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

President Trump — the environmental president. 🥴 Turns out tariffs might do more for slowing oil and gas projects than Congress ever has. oilprice.com/Latest-Energ...

Happy Halloween from a forest cemetery! 🎃👻😖

Invasive species are driving more extinctions than climate change though the two are becoming harder to separate. A warming world often makes invaders stronger, natives weaker, and the lines blur.

👻 happy halloween 🦇 please keep cats inside for their own safety from the cruelty of humans & cars, but also to protect smaller wildlife cats kill billions of birds, amphibians, reptiles & small mammals annually please do not use fake spider web, it is deadly to wildlife & environment 👣⌛️💀

Modern society depends on a prehistoric biosphere whose future is in peril. www.earth.com/news/modern-...

We keep hearing “CO₂ was higher before.” Yes — and recovery took millions of years. Earth can heal. Humanity just doesn’t live long enough to wait. open.substack.com/pub/lylel/p/...

Lack of clean water is pushing Homo sapiens toward an ecological cliff. It dwarfs the fiscal cliff, but remains invisible to a species blinded by consumerism. apple.news/ARQrX6AsBThC...

They call it the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), but it looks more like a Wall Street land grab. Turning forests into profit machines won’t save them, it just hands power to the same banks that helped destroy them! #COP30 #Brazil globalwitness.org/en/campaigns...

Human exceptionalism assumes we can out-engineer a finite planet and dodge limits. We can’t.

Bleach, WD-40, Borax, fungicides, ammonia, and insecticides—these are all common methods to preserve pumpkins until #Halloween. ☠️ If you care about #wildlife then please don't feed them your leftover pumpkins! Compost pumpkins instead. 🎃 #NationalPumpkinDay

“Good enough” got us here. Every step toward collapse was justified as practical, political, or economically necessary. We’re gerbils on the wheel….perfecting the problem.

The Sixth Mass Extinction began long before us…..and will end with us. The timeline never stopped. The Future is Now. substack.com/@lylelewis1/...

Gates’s argument mirrors modern society….a false separation between human welfare and ecological stability. Poverty and disease only grow on a dying planet. apnews.com/article/bill...

I’m not arguing against energy. I’m arguing against self-destruction disguised as progress. There’s a difference between power and wisdom.

Most “solutions” fail because they start with denial — the belief that we can fix collapse while pretending the planet is infinite. I’m not against action. I’m against pretending that any action, no matter how misguided, equals progress. Honesty is where responsibility begins.

The footprint isn’t 21 square miles — it’s the mines, smelters, roads, power lines, and waste that feed it. Every panel is the endpoint of a global extraction chain that starts in deserts, forests, and rivers half a world away.