Selected Essays
The Story of Carbon
This is a condensed version of my blog The Carbon Pilgrim which ran from early 2012 to the end of 2015 and highlighted the many essential roles that carbon plays in life on Earth. The essay version here is a primer about carbon in all its glory — with photos! Its sole purpose is educational. Please share.
Prologue to Age of Consequences
“This book was born on a sunny summer day in 2006 when I stepped out of a movie theater with my wife into the warm embrace of a lazy afternoon. Gen and I had finally found a convenient time to see former vice-president Al Gore’s inconvenient documentary on global warming with its dire warnings of environmental and social turmoil ahead if we maintained the Status Quo. Like millions of others, we were unnerved by what we saw. I was especially disturbed by the graphic images of rising sea water snaking through the streets of Manhattan, Shanghai and other low-lying cities around the globe. As we stepped off the curb into the parking lot, blinking in the bright sunlight after the movie, I quipped to Gen “We’d better see Venice, quick.””
Originally published by Counterpoint Press, January 2015
http://counterpointpress.com/products/the-age-of-consequences/
Prologue to Grass, Soil, Hope
“This is the story of how I came into Carbon Country. I’m a former archaeologist and Sierra Club activist who became a dues-paying member of the New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association as a producer of local, grass-fed beef. For a boy raised in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, during the heyday of sprawl, fast food, and disco music, this was a bewildering sequence of events.”
Originally published by Chelsea Green Press, June 2014
http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/grass_soil_hope.
An Introduction to The Indelible West: Photographs 1988-1998
“What we have in Courtney White’s book is a recording of one passing phase of that frontier. And what a pleasure it is to see the real Wests captured in their flow! What a reassurance it is to see the Wests recorded in their living reality, instead of getting another view of someone being cut off at the pass in the Alabama Hills of the Kanab Desert, shooting wildly with both hands from guns that never need re-loading.” – Wallace Stegner from his Foreword (1992)
The Fifth Wave: Agrarianism and the Conservation Response in the American West
“Social movements are like ocean waves…They gather strength, grow and become an effective agent of change for a while. At their height, they either succeed outright in their goals or else begin to fade as circumstances evolve and their effectiveness declines. In the American West, the conservation response to natural resource depletion and crisis has followed this pattern. There have been four distinct waves of conservation—federalism, environmentalism, scientism, and collaboratism. Each is now in a different stage of the “back-to-sea” cycle, making way for an emerging fifth wave—agrarianism.”
Originally published in the Quivira Coalition’s Journal, no. 37, January 2012
Reflections From a “Do” Tank
“Recently, an acquaintance asked me what I did for a living. After explaining that I ran a nonprofit that worked with ranchers and conservationists in the Southwest on land health and sustainability issues, he said summarily “Oh, you run a Think Tank.” Without pausing, I replied “No, Quivira is a ‘Do’ Tank,” which elicited a nod and smile.”
Originally published in the Quivira Coalition’s Journal, no. 37, January 2012
Four Farms…Down Under
“I had the pleasure recently of spending twelve days in Australia, visiting four amazing farms, giving a talk to a carbon farming conference, and having my brain saturated with a cavalcade of innovation. I also drank a boatload of instant coffee. I was impressed by Aussie inventiveness, by their open, upbeat, and nonconformist ways, and by their willingness to tackle topics that Americans shy away from…”
Originally published in the Farming Magazine, Winter 2011
Walking the Talk
“Talk of ecosystem services is all the rage today among academics, activists, agencies, and policy-makers. But for ranchers Tom and Mimi Sidwell, who produce grassfed beef in the high, dry plains of eastern New Mexico this talk is old news. That’s because they have been delivering ecosystem services for decades – they just didn’t know it had an official name until recently.”
Originally published in Acres (cover story), vol. 41, December 2011
Quivira Coalition and Conservation in the West
This entire edition of the Green Fire Times is focused on the Quivira Coalition, its programs, and effects. Articles include: New Agrarians: How the Next Generation of Leaders Tackle 21st Century Challenges; Kneeling in Mud: Conundrums of a Tree-Hugging, Cattle Ranching Human; Restoring Hozho: Building Bio-Cultural Resilience on the Navajo Nation; and The Agrarian Standard by Wendell Berry.
Originally published in the Green Fire Times vol. 3 no. 10, October 2011
The Carbon Ranch
This essay explores the possibility of large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere through plant photosynthesis and related land-based carbon sequestration activities.
Published in the Society for Range Management’s Rangelands magazine in April 2011
Originally published in the Quivira Coalition Journal No. 36, December 2010
The Gift
Originally published as Chapter Ten of Revolution on the Range, this excerpt appeared in the journal Ecological Restoration, June 2009.
Conservation in the Age of Consequences
An essay on how conservation might meet the challenges of the 21st century.
Originally published in the Natural Resources Journal (Vol. 48, No.1), published by the University of New Mexio School of Law, Winter 2008.
Land Health: A Common Language to Describe the Common Ground Beneath Our Feet
This essay examines the language of land health as a basis for collaboration.
Originally published as Chapter Ten in Conservation for a New Generation, edited by Richard L. Knight and Courtney White, Island Press, December 2008
Purchase this book at Island Press
On Normality
A rumination on our chaotic world and the ‘little normals’ that make life worthwhile.
Originally published in The Quivira Coalition Journal No. 33, October 2008
$7 Gas and the New West
What would happen to the West if the price of gasoline hit $7 a gallon? It may not be as far-fetched as it sounds.
Originally published in The Quivira Coalition Journal No. 32, April 2008
Prologue to Revolution on the Range: the Rise of the New Ranch in the American West
“In 1996, I had an anguished question on my mind: why didn’t environmentalists and ranchers get along better? In theory they shared many of the same hopes and fears – a love of wildlife, a deep respect for nature, an appreciation for a life lived outdoors, and a common concern for healthy water, food, fiber, and liberty. That was the theory anyway…”
Originally published by Island Press in May 2008
Purchase this book at Island Press
Grassbank 2.0
Building on what we have learned from the Valle Grande Grassbank.
By Courtney White and Craig Conley
Originally published in Rangelands, June 2007
A Corner Turned: The Chico Basin Ranch
An example of why the so-called ‘grazing wars’ faded away, thanks to ranchers like Duke Phillips.
Originally published in The Quivira Coalition’s Journal no. 29, October 2006
Mugido: Rethinking the Federal Commons
This essay explores a new vision for public lands based on collaboration and land health.
Originally published in The Quivira Coalition Newsletter (vol.7, no.4) April 2006
The New Ranch: a Definition
A brief definition of a term that I coined back in 1997.
Originally published in The Quivira Coalition Newsletter (vol.7, no.4) April 2006
The Working Wilderness: a call for a Land Health Movement
Rethinking the conservation movement from the ground up.
Originally published by Wendell Berry in his collection of essays The Way of Ignorance, in November 2005
An Invitation to Join the Radical Center
Twenty ranchers, scientists and conservationists wrote a declaration ending the grazing wars and inviting people to join the emerging radical center.
Originally read at The Quivira Coalition’s 2nd Annual Conference, January 2003.
The Quivira Coalition
Introducing our effort to build bridges between ranchers, environmentalists, scientists, and public land managers.
Originally published in Range magazine, Winter 1999.
The Quivira Coalition’s first newsletter
In which we explain the purpose of The Quivira Coalition, the idea of the New Ranch, and debut my column “The Far Horizon”.
Originally published in by The Quivira Coalition in June 1997