How Crop Circles Saved the Great Plains

In the 1940s, Farmer Frank Zybach Invented Center Pivot Irrigation and Brought the Dust Bowl Back to Life

If you live in the Great Plains, sooner or later you’ll get a question about those “crop circles” that can be observed from airplane windows during flights over the region. The answer is contained in the question: Put simply, they are circles of cropland.

The circular pattern, however, is different from the regular patchwork many people imagine traditional farm fields to be. The shape is the result of the center pivot irrigation, a development of the post-World War II era that profoundly changed the course of American food production. In …

by Joe Anderson | September 10, 2018

The Ancient Maya Cosmology of Conservation

In Their Worldview, Humans Were Not Superior to Nature. They Were But One Element Needed to Maintain Universal Balance.

by Lisa J. Lucero | August 7, 2018

In the middle of the jungle in central Belize excavating an ancient Maya water temple, I’m at the edge of a sacred pool, praying to Chahk, the Maya rain god, …

How Hawai‘i Forces Us to Redefine the Meaning of ‘Native’

An Environmental Historian Argues That Being Indigenous Is More Alchemy Than Fact

by Daniel Lewis | July 11, 2018

I was born in the Territory of Hawai‘i, three weeks before statehood. As a kid I played in its dirt, ran around in the rain (my hometown of Hilo is …

Want to Save the Environment? Give Consumers More Benefits for Going Green

The Green Bundle: Pairing the Market With the Planet

by Magali Delmas | July 5, 2018

In the process of confronting pollution and climate change, environmentalists have had to grapple with the demands of capitalism. Some see markets and corporations as obstacles to saving the planet, …

L.A. Is Drowning in Its Own Water Pretensions

Civic Leaders' Fantastical Claims of Water Self-Sufficiency May Endanger Southern California's Real Water Supplies

By Joe Mathews | April 2, 2018

This time, “Chinatown” is fooling itself.

Los Angeles has a long history of water deceptions, a point made famously by Roman Polanski’s 1974 neo-noir film. But the massive self-sabotage of the …

How the Chesapeake Bay Formed American Identity

It's Been an Artery Through Which Democracy and Capitalism Flowed

By Tom Pelton | March 23, 2018

When Captain Christopher Newport sailed into the Chesapeake Bay in 1607 to establish the first permanent English colony in North America, his goal was not freedom.

In that way, Newport, the …

California Needs an Agricultural Revolution

From the Ojai Valley, I Can See the State’s Post-Carbon Future—And It Looks Like the Ancient Past

The California Drought Crisis Is Everyone’s Fault

It’s Easy to Place the Blame on L.A. and Agriculture, But the State’s Water Deficit Goes Back to the 1950s

Will We Ever Get Sane About Water?

We Have the Means To Keep Ourselves Peaceably Hydrated. The Will, For Now, Is Another Story.

In L.A., Brown Is Beautiful Again

For 100 Years, Humans Made Southern California Green. Now, the Drought Is Returning Our Landscape to Its Rightful Color Palette.

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