Carbon is the core structural element and “food” for plants, a product of animal respiration, the predominant greenhouse gas, and fundamental to buzz words such as “net-zero”, “carbon off-sets”, and “Payments for Ecosystem Services”.
Running Wild in a City
What I’ve come to accept living and working in the Denver metropolitan area is how much these semi-wild spaces matter, not only to us humans, but to the surrounding ecosystems. Whether recognized or not, there is an innate part of us that needs to connect to nature and plants that proliferate on their own; wild spaces calm us and allow us to touch something beyond ourselves.
Food Labels and Certifications: Eating in the 21st Century
Today we rely on a label to tell us that the food we are consuming is fresh and natural, and that when we buy ground beef at the store, that the animal that was treated humanely. In most cases, our connection to the food that we consume is through a smattering of labels, certifications, and nutritional facts. How have we, as a species, become so detached from our food, something so deeply fundamental to what it means to be a human?