I suggest making your pumpkin pie with a buttercup squash.

Unfortunately, sounds like the Tropical Forests Forever Facility might be dead on arrival? Also, someone should make a Dr. Evil meme of Portugal donating 1 million dollars to it. reddmonitor.substack.com/p/the-tropic...

This time of year, we hear alot about how we need carbon markets to raise finance for climate change. In its entire 30+ year history, the voluntary carbon market has raised about 12 billion dollars www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/publications...

Latest write-up about outrageous administrative over reach at IU. www.jta.org/2025/11/07/u...

If I'm understanding correctly, Musk's trillion dollar pay day is dependent on the performance of Tesla, a company that hasn't produced a marketable new product in the last 6 years and is rapidly losing market share to a variety of traditional car makers as well as new entrants in China?

I didn't really understand this NYT piece about the Sierra Club. First of all, they say that revenue has dropped, and include a chart that shows basically a rising long-term trend in revenue www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/u...

There seems to be more interest in other political news, but I'm suprised I haven't seen any coverage of the fact that St Paul MN apparently now has the first all woman elected city government in the US?

The Forests Forever Facility has officially been launched and I have SO many questions. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/c...

The 20th-century economist Robert Solow created the theory of infinite economic growth by substituting "technological innovation" for the productivity of land in his model, thereby decoupling the economy from any limits imposed by land or ecosystems. The world took his theory as gospel. 1/n

My son was fiddling around with chatgpt yesterday, and chatgpt *offered* to create a numberline that would demonstrate that 1+1=2, and this is what it produced. The new AI driven industrial revolution looks pretty grim to me.

I'm looking for other forestry/environment/natural resources programs (grad & undergrad) that have recently done surveys of alumni & potential employers to understand the job market conditions in the field. Bonus for published and/or willing to share your survey instruments with me.

Improved local democracy is a core environmental policy. In India, infrastructure development leads to species loss, "Yet the extent of species loss is more than halved when local institutions enable marginalized communities to mobilize..." www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

Humphrey School at Minnesota is hiring an associate professor in "water resources, sustainable agriculture, or the nexus of food-energy-water issues." Come join me in the frozen north! hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/370...

The most important and innovative paper I've read this year: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Its 12:45 pm on Sunday October 26th, and a family of trick or treaters just knocked on our door. I'm confused.

Job is open until Oct. 31 and still looking for strong applicants.

Can someone point me to a way to measure the total amount of money that went to forestry-related projects under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (or any kind of publication that already measured this)?

For friends in France (or maybe French speakers in other parts of Europe?) this is a new documentary about the perils of large-scale tree planting. I'm interviewed in it and French colleagues who've watched it say its quite good. www.arte.tv/fr/videos/11...

My department is hiring an assistant professor of forest regeneration. The University of Minnesota department of forest resources is a great place to work, I really really like it here, and hope we end up hiring someone I can collaborate with. hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/370...

"Independent studies consistently point to shortcomings in the rigor and credibility of crediting methodologies and other procedures, which market players have been slow or reluctant to address." onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Several colleagues and I are organizing a panel on "From global restoration goals to people's visions for the future: Capturing diverse imaginaries of ecosystem restoration" at the upcoming Pollen conference in Barcelona (June 29-July 3, 2026).

Carbon credits for not creating art (its a spoof, it made my day). reddmonitor.substack.com/p/cancelled-...

The University: We need to become leaders in climate and sustainability and there is an urgent need to develop climate science courses. Me: Our department has climate in the name and we already offer courses on climate science at every level. The University: Who invited you to this meeting?

And yet big NGOs (and plenty of big name ecology & forest scientists) are still promoting them, and arguing that little tweaks will fix them. At this point, If you think your little tweak is going to fix things, you need to show me really strong evidence.

A team I am a part of is hiring an India-based part time research assistant to help us with textual analysis of government forestry documents related to forest restoration and pastoral livelihoods in Himachal Pradesh. Information and application instructions here: forms.gle/4D6aVqtDU7FY...

I have a serious question: How do you teach botany or agriculture if you are required to say that only 2 genders exist and that individuals can't be both? I'm not trying to troll, I'm genuinely curious about this.

A former student of mine was laid off earlier this year from a major carbon market company. Apparently it had been hemoraging money for years, because carbon markets, especially those based on forests, have been contracting.

When I see scientists promoting carbon credits as a key policy tool, I can immediately tell that they are not well informed because the current role of carbon credits in actual forest policy is essentially zero

America could simply repeal an old GOP law & build more housing right now. But the Abundance Guys are instead selling a complex theory of zoning reforms - which have enriched developers but spectacularly failed to systematically transform housing markets where they've happened.

It's been a while since I left, but I thought the world of my Texas A&M undergrads, who were curious, intelligent, and diverse. Its so sad to see this happening to them.

In which we, again, point out, that environmental analysis and planning doesn't cause wildfires and reducing environmental analysis and planning will not solve the problem not theconversation.com/boosting-tim...

And here's my post about the Steve Ballmer / Clippers / Kawhi Leonard connection: reddmonitor.substack.com/p/billionair...

I've been saying this for years, glad to see a paper demonstrating it.

Big news in tree planting/carbon credit world. Apparently tree planting carbon credits are a great way to illegally circumvent sports league salary rules www.nytimes.com/athletic/659...

I really like the idea of giving farmers trees that they want to plant, but otherwise, this article about tree planting in Karnataka raises a lot of questions, and we really don't need more mindless promotion of tree planting www.nytimes.com/card/2025/09...

I still don't really understand why pediatric doctors offer appointments primarily during school hours in the US. This is not the case in other countries I've lived in.

This makes me really sad. I didn't know Dr. Sinno well, but he was a respected junior faculty member at IU when I was working on my PhD there, and has had an excellent career there.

California communities can reduce wildfire damage by half. Here’s how: Our new study "Fire risk to structures in California’s Wildland-Urban Interface" was published in Nature Communications today! www.nature.com/articles/s41... news.berkeley.edu/2025/08/28/c...

I just want to live in a society where the freedom of children to go to school safely is valued over other so-called "freedoms." Is that too much to ask?

If someone claims to be scared of the subway but isn’t scared of being in a car on the highway—which is exponentially more dangerous + deadly—they are not a serious person

I genuinely don't understand why it's SO hard to log in to journals to submit a peer review. Every time, I end up having to reset my password 3-4 times, and it's a frustrating 20+ minute process. I don't have these kinds of issues with *any* other sites requiring login info, only journals.

To be sure, fires in Spain are partially caused by climate change, but as in other parts of the world, I wish there was more coverage of how fires in Spain are the result of past land management decisions - in this case an overemphasis on planting trees. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/w...

The answer to the many, many stories of shady carbon credits has been verification. Surely if these credits are audited, we can trust them, right? A new study says nope, conflict of interest abounds. @rishpardikar.bsky.social has the story for @drilledmedia.bsky.social drilled.media/news/carbon-...

Today I spoke with a retired govt official in India whose first posting in the 1980s was in the Himalayas. He had to hike 3 days to reach his office, and they got 3 meters of snow every winter. Now every village in that district has a motorable road and they get 1/2 a meter of snow per winter.

"if we plan restoration targets to match future climatic conditions and consider state transitions of currently natural ecosystems due to climate change, the potential for natural climate solutions related to ecosystem restoration is close to zero." www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This is very bad. Although entirely predictable. Once more the humanities are being cut back to prop up STEM and, increasingly, AI investment (including at the expense of bench science). In the past, cuts to humanities were promoted on two separate logic streams that do not hold true: /1

Drawing on data from over 400 forest plantations in Himachal Pradesh, India, we show that improved forest outcomes (increasing forest cover, improved forest-based livelihoods) are strongly associated with long-term participation by local people in decision-making. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Huge: An internal Interior Department memo that I’ve reviewed shows the agency may soon subject *any* activities related to wind and solar to heightened levels of political review. It threatens to delay renewables projects across the country, including those not on federal lands. #greensky

We're missing the trees by focusing on the forest!

Some countries understand soft power (photo from a newly built highway in Malawi)