Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · Jul 15

This is one of the sharpest, most thoughtful adventure memoirs I’ve read in years. Reminded me of McPhee’s Coming Into The Country, but written in a time of melting glaciers and melting brains.

www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ben-w...

North to the Future

Hailed as a “worthy successor” to John McPhee (Kirkus Reviews), Ben Weissenbach —a digital native with little prior wilderness experience—embarks on ...

www.hachettebookgroup.com

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𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · Jun 19

‘Tis!

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Ferris Jabr @ferrisjabr.bsky.social · Jun 4

🧵 I see my book Becoming Earth as one part of a larger emerging movement: a resurgence of holistic, planetary-scale thinking; an evolving Gaia as a modern coevolutionary framework for understanding Earth; and a renewed recognition of the animacy, agency, and rights of more-than-human living systems

A collage of the covers of six recent books:
Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
Becoming Earth by Ferris Jabr
Living on Earth by Peter Godfrey-Smith
Eat, Poop, Die by Joe Roman
The Many Lives of James Lovelock by Jonathan Watts
Darwinizing Gaia by W. Ford Doolittle

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𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · Jun 6

This is the kind of review every good author dreams of one day receiving—deep, careful, tough, but ultimately geared not toward scoring cheap points but rather toward illuminating the dark spaces between the sentences and the author’s corpus as a whole. A real feat.

Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · Jun 5

I spent the spring reading through Robert Macfarlane's catalog to understand his remarkable new book, *Is a River Alive?* @literaryhub.bsky.social let me go long on the book that I think Macfarlane has spent his entire life writing toward. #nature #writing #booksky
lithub.com/the-world-is...

The World is Alive; or, How Robert Macfarlane Came to Trust His Senses

“While writing about landscape often begins in the aesthetic, it must always end in the ethical.” –Robert Macfarlane, Landmarks * There is a sentence 256 pages into Robert Macfarlane’s newest book,…

lithub.com

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𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · May 22

Also excited for this, in Vancouver, on June 18th.

writersfest.bc.ca/event/robert...

Books & Ideas: Robert Macfarlane – Is A River Alive? | Vancouver Writers Fest

Presented in partnership with Pacific Salmon Foundation. It’s been an unforgettable inaugural season of Books & Ideas—our pre-Festival literary and social series on Granville Island—and we’re honoured...

writersfest.bc.ca

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𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · May 22

I finished this book two weeks ago and have been thinking about it ever since—a brilliant, turbulent, troubling feat of planetary writing.

There are passages in here that will freeze the air in your chest, and ideas that will crack your dead, calcified heart right open.

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𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · May 21

a man wearing sunglasses stands in front of a shelf with golf magazines

ALT: a man wearing sunglasses stands in front of a shelf with golf magazines

media.tenor.com

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Jonathan Mingle @jmingle.bsky.social · May 6

A big deal. And if you want to understand how a bunch of Virginians re-engineered Dominion's incentives such that building the country's biggest offshore wind project made more sense than building Appalachia's biggest fossil gas pipeline, I've got a book for you...

Justin Gerdes @justingerdes.bsky.social · May 5

Dominion Energy's Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is “months away from first delivery of electricity to customers in early 2026” and on schedule for full completion by the end of next year, according to the utility's CEO: www.canarymedia.com/articles/off... via @fieseler.bsky.social 🔌💡

Massive Virginia offshore wind project presses on with construction

Dominion said its wind project, the largest under construction in the U.S, will be completed on time — a bright spot for an industry facing turbulence.

www.canarymedia.com

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𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · Apr 20

Thanks for this! Super helpful.

𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · Apr 15

Having trouble finding sources that break the data down this way. But (assuming I’m not misreading you) the idea that our cozy little woodstoves are, in the aggregate, emitting more CO2 each year than all our power plants is deeply disturbing.

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𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · Apr 15

@bsaxifrage.bsky.social Love your work. I have a quick q: when you write “the number one use of harvested wood in Canada is burning it for energy”—is this a reference to firewood to heat homes, or wood-pellet/biomass power plants? Or both combined? And of the two, which emits more net c02 annually?

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Torrance Coste @torrancecoste.bsky.social · Apr 15

When it comes to climate change, industrial logging in Canada is part of the problem, not the solution.

Wilderness Committee @wildernews.bsky.social · Apr 15

"Billions of tonnes of CO2 that were locked away in the forest have already drained back out on the backs of logging trucks and in the swirling smoke of ever more monstrous wildfires," Barry Saxifrage writes.

#deforestation #climatechange

Canada is opening the floodgates on one of Earth’s greatest living reservoirs of CO2

Canada’s forest is in trouble – and so are we. Chainsaws and fossil fuel burning are draining billions of tonnes of CO2 out of our managed forest and pouring it back into the atmosphere. And the…

www.nationalobserver.com

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𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · Mar 27

“If this had been our tradition all along….those forests would now cover roughly one million acres, an area larger than Yosemite. A burial would cost less, it would feel better, and people would develop a deeper emotional relationship with wild land."

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𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · Mar 27

People all over the world—in Japan, Germany, Australia, and the US—have begun asking a simple question:

Why be buried in a traditional cemetery, when your body can be placed in a forest instead?

My latest, for @outsidemag.bsky.social

www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adve...

How to Be Reborn as a Tree

By choosing to be laid to rest beneath a tree, families create living memorials that honor their loved ones and the planet.

www.outsideonline.com

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Jason Mark @jasondovemark.bsky.social · Mar 22

I was searching for the Thoreau passage when he lost his marbles on Mt Katahdin, and look what I found! This old gem from @robertmoor.bsky.social, which evidently I republished ages ago. I feel like an ouroboros ...
www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2016-...

When Thoreau Went Nuts on Maine’s Mt. Katahdin

An excerpt from the new book, On Trails.

www.sierraclub.org

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Mara Wilson @marawilson.bsky.social · Mar 21

I think most of who have worked in writing or entertainment know that piracy is a fact of life, and has been for a long time now.

But there’s a difference between a broke student downloading a PDF of your book, and a multibillion dollar company stealing your work for its own bullshit purposes.

The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · Mar 20

Search the LibGen database here, and peer inside a pirated library of millions of books and research papers used by Meta and others:

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI

Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

www.theatlantic.com

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Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · Mar 20

This is an abysmal, brutally reverse-engineered instance of mega-corp fossil-fuel lawfare waged against Greenpeace.
It’s a strategic takedown of a deep-rooted, rare-growing force for good on Earth.
A(nother) desperate day for justice and the planet.

Brad Johnson @climatebrad.hillheat.com · Mar 19

Absolute destruction of the First Amendment to enable absolute destruction of a habitable planet.

Greenpeace ordered to pay Dakota Access Pipeline operator $667 million in case that could destroy the group

A North Dakota jury awarded $667 million in damages to Energy Transfer, the company that runs the Dakota Access Pipeline, after finding Greenpeace liable in a high-stakes defamation case.

www.washingtonpost.com

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𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · Mar 2

Have you ever run across this essay by Greif? Covers similar ground—what is the point of this lifelong pursuit of shiny experiences, often far from home?—but it goes a few steps deeper. (I re-read it once every few years.)

www.nplusonemag.com/issue-2/essa...

www.nplusonemag.com/issue-5/essa...

www.nplusonemag.com

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Susie Dent @susiedent.com · Feb 17

Word of the day is ‘cumber-world’ (14th century): a person or thing that encumbers the planet.

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𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · Feb 4

I put together a list of outdoor/enviro writers when I first migrated here. Might be of some use…

go.bsky.app/5Z65eat

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Larry Neufeld @larryneufeldsk.bsky.social · Jan 21

If activist Zain Haq is deported to Pakistan on Saturday, Canada would become the first country in the world to deport a non-violent climate protester, says federal Green Party Leader Elizabeth May #ClimateActivism #Canada #InternationalJustice #ZainHaq www.nationalobserver.com/2025/01/20/n...

Green Party Leader asks federal ministers to delay climate activist's looming deportation

If activist Zain Haq is deported to Pakistan on Saturday, Canada would become the first country in the world to deport a non-violent climate protester, says federal Green Party Leader Elizabeth May.

www.nationalobserver.com

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𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · Jan 20

Great little thread. Some may have missed the odd fact that a black pastor at DJT’s inauguration just passingly referenced one of the most strikingly racist monuments in the US: Stone Mountain, Georgia.

There are layers of history and irony hidden within this one phrase, which Cotlar unpeels.

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𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · Jan 20

It’s worse than most folks realize. Since last Sept, journos in Canada haven’t been able to post *any* links to their own work on FB, bc the gov passed a (sensible) law that Meta must share some of the profit it makes off those links, & Zuck threw a tantrum.

Corporate greed, strangling journalism.

Alexander Chee @alexanderchee.bsky.social · Jan 19

If you’re a writer, it is just ridiculous to deal with any platform engaging in link throttling.

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𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · Jan 17

Makes me wonder what kind of book McPhee would have produced had he spent months with Newashish, rather than Vaillancourt, in writing Survival of the Birch Bark Canoe.

One can only imagine what else he had to teach….

𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor.com · Jan 17

Too bad he never got a chance to read your moon book. That would have been one hell of a blurb…

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