Muse Ecology Timothy Sexauer

Bugs are foundational to life on Earth, and their numbers are plummeting due to human activity.  In this conversation with Vicki Hird, author of Rebugging the Planet, we explore the wonders of bugs and how we can restore our relationship with them. You can find more information about rebugging, and purchase the book, at . Here's the two papers referenced in Vicki's book that came up in our discussion, on the potential effects of new higher frequency radiation on invertebrates: Arno Thielens et al., Exposure of Insects to Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Fields from 2 to 120 GHz, Science Reports 8, no. 3924 (2018), Arno Thielens et al., Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Field Exposure of Western Honey Bees, Science Reports 10, no. 461 (2020), Many thanks to for welcoming the use of her song The Old Ways Restored in the intro. The banjo bird jam in the outro was recorded in the woods by the talented nature artist Michael DiGiorgio.  If you'd like to order a CD of this album he says to email him at the contact on his website,   

"Water begets water, soil is the womb, and vegetation is the midwife." -Prof. Millan M. Millan This last episode, for now, in the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, was a great panel conversation with 6 people from 3 different organizations, each working from distinct approaches  to restore weather and climate through restoring natural processes.  It was a lovely example of the diversity of backgrounds that are beginning to come together around this idea. Juliette Kool and Ties van der Hoeven, Maya Dutta and Jim Laurie, Marcel de Berg and Pieter-Paul de Kluvier, Here is the Here is the And here again is the link to . And as always, many thanks to for the use of her song The Old Ways Restored in the introduction.        

The understanding that we can restore weather and climate systems by protecting and restoring the living surface of the Earth is an idea whose time has come.  In these final two episodes in this Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, we'll hear discussions of how this understanding is beginning to guide our response to climate change, from grassroots to international levels. In this first of the two panels, I met with three  friends from previous episodes who have had a big influence on how I think about our relation to water, life, and climate:  , mesometeorologist Li An Phoa, founder of , filmmaker and ecologist Here are the linked references for the three of Millan's papers that I said in the discussion I'd include here in the show notes.  

This episode is a diverse panel discussion on the implications of renewable energy supply chains on life, water, and local communities, and how we might address them. Saad Youssefi has a background in finance and economics and works in the renewable energy sector, consulting governments and international corporations on energy production projects.  He's also coauthored . Mary Gibson is Western Shoshone, and has experienced devastation of life, land, and culture by the mining industry and the colonizing process in general.  She is on the board of . Derrick Jensen is a long time activist and advocate for the living Earth, and has written dozens of books on the subject.  Most recently he coauthored a book called , about the negative effects of the renewables industry on the biosphere. Thanks again to for the use of her song The Old Ways Restored in the introduction to each episode. You can support the Muse Ecology Podcast at with a much appreciated donation .  Thanks for listening. Here's a link to the .  

In this episode in the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, we hear diverse voices from the resistance to the proposed lithium mine at Thacker Pass in northern Nevada, on Paiute and Shoshone ancestral lands. To learn more about and support the blockade camp at Thacker Pass, you can go to . To follow the legal process, you can visit the Great Basin Resource Watch's website at . In our next episode, we'll continue exploring the complexities involved in the renewables industry with a civil panel discussion including expert perspectives from both the renewable energy industry and it's opposition.

In this conversation with author Judith Schwartz and scientist Walter Jehne, we discuss the importance of the shift from seeing the Earth as a resource base to seeing ourselves as enmeshed in a web of life that both manages and depends on natural processes.  In particular, we focus on how this perspective shift affects how we understand and are empowered to address anthropogenic climate change. Judy:   Walter:   The banjo bird jam in the intro and outro was recorded in the woods by nature artist Michael DiGiorgio.  If you'd like to order a CD of this album he says to email him at the contact on his website,  , where you can also find his exquisite nature art.