Lapis Magazine

Photo Essay on These United States

Photo Essay by Ingrid A. Marcroft
On a cross-country drive, these vistas large and small invited contemplation of the natural world.
Place your cursor on the photo; click on bottom left to start the slideshow, bottom right for full screen, Esc to return to home page.
In order of appearance: Redwood Forest, CA; Pacific Coast [...]

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Hemp for Victory? by Peter Brady

Over the years, the wild swings in US government policy towards hemp seem more like a smoker’s disturbed fantasy than a rational assessment of the facts.

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You Are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring by Paul Hawken

Paul Hawken’s commencement speech at the University of Portland, Oregon, on May 3, 2009, is one for the record books.

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Beyond Organic Foods: Moving from Industrialized Fantasy to Ecological Sanity by Andrew Kimbrell

Our increasingly technologized relationship to food is causing terrible damage to our farmers and to our health. In the current retrograde political climate, how can we move from passive consumers to creators of a sane agricultural future?
Andrew Kimbrell (www.icta.org), a public interest attorney and author, is one of the world’s leading thinkers on the relationship [...]

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Our New Challenge by Carl Frankel

An enormous personal tragedy heightens the author's awareness of the unique intellectual and spiritual questions faced by each generation in modern society. If liberalism, reason,and generosity of spirit were the antidotes to mid-20th Century totalitarianism, what values do we need now in the face of a world slipping ever deeper into a labyrinth of increasingly [...]

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Time for an Energy Revolution by Simon Retallack

At long last, the day may be dawning for solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources as the world wakes up to high oil prices and the reality of global warming.
Simon Retallack is managing editor of special issues for The Ecologist magazine, and co-director of the Climate Initiatives Fund.

Climate Change
There have been enough horror stories [...]

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The Precautionary Principle: Golden Rule for the New Millennium by Carolyn Raffensperger

The concept of the precautionary principle, "to care into the future," is laid out in relation to science, agriculture, medicine, and law. How best can this principle be implemented to ensure an essential transformation in the way we relate both to the earth and to the things we invent, and meet the goal of a [...]

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Global Warming and the Climate Crisis by Ross Gelbspan

One of the leading authorities on Global Warming and a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism discusses the climate crisis in its natural, energy, and economic dimensions, its implications for the future, and a plan for renewal. In this adept, must-read analysis, he puts forth the argument that the systematic whitewashing of global warming [...]

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Creating a Sustainable Industrial Civilization by William McDonough

The time has come to develop an industrial civilization that is non-toxic and ecologically sustainable. This is no longer sheer fantasy as big countries and corporations start to recognize the necessity of a profound change in direction. No-one has done more to think innovatively about how this can be achieved than William McDonough. A true [...]

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Design, Ecology, Ethics, and the Making of Things by William McDonough

Industrial idioms of design violate the principles of nature and produce massive waste and harm. New forms of ecological architecture are however creating buildings of both beauty and natural harmony, and they are beginning to spread worldwide.
It is humbling to be an architect in a cathedral because it is a magnificent representation of humankind's [...]

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