Putting Out the Planetary Fire: An Introduction to Climate Action and Advocacy (Big Toad Books, 2023) provides a factual introduction to many of the issues central to climate debate: Renewable Energy, Environmental Justice, Reparations, False Climate Solutions (nuclear, carbon capture), Real Life Barriers, carbon pricing, Green New Deal, crypto mining, plastics, and military. The second half serves as an organizing guide to the basics of advocacy, from lobbying to litigation to direct action. [Read more…] about New Climate Change Book: Putting Out the Planetary Fire
Environmental History
New York State DEC Releases First Sustainability Plan
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has released its first-ever sustainability plan, which includes commitments to decarbonize operations and help ensure DEC reduces its impact on the environment. [Read more…] about New York State DEC Releases First Sustainability Plan
New Book On Seneca Ray Stoddard Published
The new book Seneca Ray Stoddard; and Intimate Portrait of an Adirondack Legend (Warren County Historical Society, 2023) by Daniel Way, MD is a complete biography of Seneca Ray Stoddard, including unique photographs and a virtual tour of Stoddard’s house, which no longer exists. [Read more…] about New Book On Seneca Ray Stoddard Published
Politics of Trash: Corruption & Clean Cities, 1890–1929
The Politics of Trash: How Governments Used Corruption to Clean Cities, 1890–1929 (Cornell Univ. Press, 2023) by Patricia Strach of the University of Albany and Kathleen Sullivan of Ohio University explains how municipal trash collection solved odorous urban problems using nongovernmental and often unseemly means. [Read more…] about Politics of Trash: Corruption & Clean Cities, 1890–1929
DEC Privatizes Management Planning for Popular Areas of Adirondack, Catskill Parks
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has announced the award of a Visitor Use Management (VUM) planning contract to help develop recreation plans for two highly visited regions of the New York State Forest Preserve — a high-use portion of the High Peaks in the Adirondack Park and the Kaaterskill Clove area in the Catskill Park. [Read more…] about DEC Privatizes Management Planning for Popular Areas of Adirondack, Catskill Parks
Incompetence? Adk Park Agency Loses 2nd Lawsuit Within A Week
Last April, Adirondack organizations wrote to the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) asking to rediscover their discretionary power to hold adjudicatory public hearings on particularly complex, controversial Adirondack land use projects.
There was no response to our joint letter, but a rather resounding response has just come from a member of our state’s judicial branch. [Read more…] about Incompetence? Adk Park Agency Loses 2nd Lawsuit Within A Week
Janeway Stepping Down as Adk Council Executive Director
Adirondack Council Executive Director William C. “Willie” Janeway will step aside at the end of the summer, after 10 years as leader of the Adirondack Park’s largest environmental advocacy organization, the Council confirmed Tuesday. [Read more…] about Janeway Stepping Down as Adk Council Executive Director
After Icebergs: A NY Artist’s 1859 Arctic Adventure
The new edition of After Icebergs with a Painter A Summer Voyage to Labrador and around Newfoundland (Black Dome Press, 2022), by Louis Legrand Noble with an introduction by William L. Coleman, looks at an internationally renowned American artist of fame and fortune at the very peak of his powers.
A pastor and lauded writer with a sharp eye for revealing and humorous detail, Noble describes a journey fraught with danger and drama aboard the schooner Integrity to the latitudes where icebergs dwell with Hudson River School painter Frederic Church. [Read more…] about After Icebergs: A NY Artist’s 1859 Arctic Adventure
New York Pork: A Porcine History of the Big Apple
In 1895 New York City’s newly appointed reformist Mayor William Lafayette Strong nominated engineer and Civil War veteran Colonel George Waring to take on the demanding post of Sanitation Commissioner.
A native of Pound Ridge in Westchester County, Waring had fine-tuned his skills as a landscape and drainage (sewage) engineer having been involved with the construction of Manhattan’s Central Park. [Read more…] about New York Pork: A Porcine History of the Big Apple
The Adirondack Park Agency At 50: State Leaders Are Missing The Point
Well, it’s happened again. Another state budget is proposed by the Executive, wherein the Adirondack Park Agency’s legislated job is mischaracterized by this Governor’s (and former governors’) budget divisions as working “to achieve a balance between strong environmental protection and sustainable economic development opportunities for the residents of the Adirondack Park” (2023 Executive Budget Briefing Book).
Balance is an important goal to strive for in our individual lives. However, nothing in the Adirondack Park Agency law, now reaching 50 years old in May, calls for “a balance between strong environmental protection and sustainable economic development.” [Read more…] about The Adirondack Park Agency At 50: State Leaders Are Missing The Point