PuBlIshEr: M.G.H. Gilliam
EDI TOr-IN-ChIEf: H. Emerson Blake
EDI TOr: Jennifer Sahn
PICTurE EDITOr: Jason Houston
MANAGING EDITOr: Andrew D. Blechman
sENIOr EDITOr: George K. Russell
AssOCIATE EDITOr: Hannah Fries
EDITOrIAl AssIs TANT: Kristen Hewitt
sPECIAl PrOJECTs AssIs TANT: Scott Gast
CONTrIBu TING EDITOrs: Wendell Berry,
Mark Dowie, David James Duncan,
Barbara Kingsolver, William L. Fox,
Barry Lopez, Erik Reece, Scott Russell
Sanders, Rebecca Solnit, Sandra
Steingraber, Ginger Strand, Terry
Tempest Williams
DEs IGN: Hans Teensma and Pamela Glaven,
Impress, Northampton, MA
MANAGING DIrECTOr: Madeline B. Cantwell
DIrECTOr Of DIGITAl MEDIA: Scott Walker
DEvElOPMENT OffICEr: Christopher Nye
Ou TrEACh COOrDINATOr: Erik Ho=ner
OffICE MANAGEr: Karen Gagne
CIr Cul ATION: Greylock Media, Inc.
ADv Is Ors: Wendell Berry, Alison Hawthorne
Deming, Camille Dungy, John Elder, Jane
Goodall, Jane Hirshfield, Linda Hogan,
Pramila Jayapal, Van Jones, Winona
LaDuke, Barry Lopez, Rubén Martínez,
Peter Matthiessen, Bill McKibben, W. S.
Merwin, Gary Paul Nabhan, David W. Orr,
Michael Pollan, Scott Russell Sanders,
Gary Snyder, Sandra Steingraber, Mitchell
Thomashow, Mary Evelyn Tucker, Luis
Alberto Urrea, Terry Tempest Williams,
Edward O. Wilson
BOArD Of DIrECTOrs: Peter P. Blanchard III,
Robin Morris Collin, Marc Fasteau, M.G.H.
Gilliam (Chairman and President), Wendy
Tarlow Kaplan, Robin Wall Kimmerer,
Kathleen Dean Moore, Christopher Nye,
Jonathan Prince, Scott Slovic, Julia Harte
Widdowson
ExECu TIvE DIrEC TOr / TrEAsurEr:
H. Emerson Blake
for an argument, it is not so helpful or
engaging when it pervades an argument
to the end; and when the f-word is the
penultimate word in the piece, it simply
overwhelms. Likewise, the use of abstract
metaphors as descriptions of complex
physical and biological processes— such
as “murder of the planet” — is at the root
of much collective folly in human history.
JOHN BREASTED
Great Barrington, Massachusetts
I was glad to see Charles C. Mann’s
“The Dawn of the Homogenocene” (May/
June 2011) echo recent work in the Annals
of the Association of American Geographers.
There, Dr. Robert Dull and others argue
that the regrowth of neotropical forests
following the Columbian encounter led
to terrestrial carbon sequestration on the
order of two to five pentagrams—and
contributed to the decrease in atmospheric
carbon from about 1500 through 1750
ad, as documented in Antarctic ice cores.
Dr. Dull gives us hard numbers for what
Mann demonstrates—that we don’t give
mankind nearly enough credit for creating
our biosphere.
ERICH J. KNIGHT
McGaheysville, Virginia
While reading Sandra Steingraber’s col-
umn in the May/June 2011 issue (“When
Cowboys Cry”), I thought of a recent visit
to my father’s ranch in Montana, where
I confronted the aftermath of hydro-
fracturing. The land had an alkali sheen
to it; little pipe installations were every-
where, and the ranch and road had ob-
viously been flooded many times. I had
seen this place once before—when it
was a retreat for the coal company that
owned it — and it was beautiful. Now, my
father would cry to see it.
sandra steingraber is right to point
out the threat hydrofracturing poses
to groundwater. The implications are
especially worrying in the Upper Peninsula of my state, Michigan, which
is crisscrossed by spring-fed waterways from west to east. All through the
state—along roadsides and deep in the
woods, where people stop to collect water in containers—an amazing number
of these clear, drinkable, fountains erupt
from hillsides. Others babble forth from
smaller openings in the earth and join
together to make drinkable creeks and
tannin-colored rivers—all of which end
up in the Great Lakes, which hold almost
one quarter of all the fresh water on the
planet. In the midst of this network are
hundreds of old farms whose owners
and families straddle poverty, and whose
acreage is targeted by energy companies
for fracking. What dispossessed farmer
could resist the cash?
I was out recently at my favorite hillside water fountain, lively with frogs and
trillium and jack-in-the-pulpit. The beech
trees, too, are still there, along with their
store of nuts that feeds nearly everything
in that forest. I approached the water, and
I drank. I still can — but for how long?
BOB VANCE
Petoskey, Michigan
The tyranny of energy corporations described by Sandra Steingraber has also
visited my community in rural Ohio.
The township where I live has more
signed leases for hydrofracturing than
any other in the state, and local politicians and lease signers are happy to believe the claim that fracking has been
going on harmlessly for decades. Nothing seems to matter except quick cash.
