Good reading

    If you need to stay indoors because it's cold, wet and windy outside, or because you worry about being mistaken for an elk if you go outdoors, here's some good reading.
 
    In the New Republic, Jackson Lears provides a thought-provoking essay that combines review of six environmental books, among them an anthology of American nature writing, a biography of John Muir, and a historic connection between conservation and eugenics.
 
    I couldn't help but keep reading after this opening: "In contemporary public discourse, concern for 'the environment' is a mile wide and an inch deep. Even free-market fundamentalists strain to display their ecological credentials, while corporations that sell fossil fuels genuflect at the altar of sustainability. Everyone has discovered how nice it is to be green. Will popular sentiment translate into public policy? There is reason to be skeptical."
 
    Another interesting piece I recently encountered looks at population trends across America, specifically death rates and immigration rates. There I discovered that my Chaffee County, Colorado, would be losing population if it were limited to natural increase and decrease; we and some neighbors are growing. The article notes that "The bulk of these [growing] counties are retirement amenity areas, mostly but not entirely in the Sunbelt, and mostly but not entirely in the south and west."
 
    It will come as no surprise that most farm counties on the Great Plains are losing population, both by natural decrease as an older population dies off without replacement births, and by out-migration because residents seek better economic opportunities. The author, Richard Morrill, predicts that we'll see more shrinking county populations in coming years.