Join me at Eco-Logic
By environmental scientist and journalist Dr. Melanie Lenart
I approach environmental problems—some wicked, some more easily solved—with ecological logic. So nature-based solutions will be a recurring topic. I’ll also challenge proposals to combat climate change using methods that ignore or even harm natural systems.
Ideal readers include environmentalists, scientists, Indigenous knowledge holders, activists, nature lovers and anybody interested in learning more about how our resilient planet and its people handle changing times.
The good news: There’s surprisingly positive evidence Earth can adapt to climate change, especially if we’d stop adding more stress. Even in the face of mounting stress, our planet’s natural systems do an impressive job of not only adapting to but also moderating climate change and its effects.
The bad news: People in the United States and around the world continue to add stress. The exploding power needs for AI don’t help. We’re already facing many of the climate dangers I described in my 2010 University of Arizona Press book, Life in the Hothouse: How a Living Planet Survives Climate Change, such as hotter heat waves, stronger hurricane, and more intense wildfires.
Climate change exacerbates these problems, yes. But how we respond to them will make a difference in how society fares in coming years and decades. I aim to share a positive message when possible, drawing upon my experience in water harvesting, organic agriculture and forest ecology.
As a journalist, I believe in the power of shining a light on the truth, wherever form it takes. I won’t shy away from exposing problems, but I will aim to provide nuggets of positivity in the pieces I share. There’s a lot we can do as individuals in addition to as a society.
The trained scientist in me similarly pursues the truth, seeking it in studies that actually observe nature or non-destructive experiments in the real world rather than overly relying on “results” from numerical computer models. That said, I have done some climate modeling research, so I will sometimes inspect modeled findings for flaws or wisdom, especially when they appear to influence policy.
This Substack column will post Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Eco-Logic reclaims the name of a weekly column I had back in the 1990s while working as a copy editor for Puerto Rico’s English-language newspaper, The San Juan Star. I left the paper, a Pulitzer-prize-winning daily, before it folded in 2008 to pursue graduate studies in paleoclimate—past climates—based at the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.
My work through the 2000s and beyond emphasized the interactions between climate and forests. My projects as a postdoctoral researcher with the UA’s Climate Assessment for the Southwest included science communication and forest management applications to defuse catastrophic wildfires. After writing my 2010 book Life in the Hothouse, I became an adjunct professor in the university’s Environmental Science department, teaching courses in environmental writing and water harvesting.
I shifted into teaching science and agriculture at Tohono O’odham Community College in southern Arizona in 2015. I’m grateful for having the chance to work for years as a scientist and, later, journalist embedded in Indigenous cultures.
My five years at the tribal college and subsequent years writing for Native Science Report opened my eyes to how Indigenous worldviews serve our world so much better than our western capitalistic approach. Indigenous knowledge has much to teach all of us about working with instead of against the planet.
Even as I recognize similarities in the big-picture worldviews found among so many of the world’s Indigenous cultures, any Indigenous knowledge I include here will be courtesy of particular knowledge holders or tribal nations, based on our interviews or their presentations.
These pages will include some of my own experiences and observations from living in the Sonoran Desert, in the homelands of the Tohono O’odham and Yaqui peoples. We occasionally hear a cow bleating from the other side of the barbed wire fence from the overgrazed, formerly state-owned, land we’re stewarding. The fence still allows in coyotes, javelinas, packrats, great horned owls or rattlesnakes. So I may share a few tales of our efforts here or of plant or wildlife encounters.
I’ll share ideas and examples from living in Tucson, Chicago, Puerto Rico, France, China as well as other lands I’ve visited and experiences of people I interview. Along the way, I’ll encourage readers to observe the nature around them to consider for themselves some of the ideas they will find in these digital pages.
I hope you’ll join me on this adventure!
As a reward for those who made it this far, here’s a video of my dogs playing at the park. My website, https://www.melanielenart.com, has more information about me.