My June 11 commentary, "Losing Ground: The Fight to Save the Soil that Feeds Us," focused on the rapid depletion of arable soil, the foundation of our food security.
That’s just one of many environmental issues that have concerned me over the years and about which I’ve wanted to raise awareness through these pages.
But the story doesn’t end with dirt. I’ve also worried about the extinction of species and what that means for our human sustainability and the health of the planet.
I see the health of soil as bound to the insects that till it, the plants that root in it, the animals that feed on those plants and the humans who depend on it all. The extinction crisis is not an isolated phenomenon, but a collection of interconnected threads in a collapsing web of life.
Read the entire commentary on Substack In The Center Lane With Herb Paine →
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Commentator Herb Paine asked: What happens if democracy's ordinary remedies fail? He received quite a range of responses from readers. -
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We spend a lot of time asking what AI can do. We spend far less time asking who is accountable when it acts. That question sits at the heart of Pope Leo XIV's new encyclical — and it is the focus of Herb Paine's latest commentary. -
Commentator Herb Paine says King Charles III's address to Congress last month was remarkable as an example of civic intelligence and an exhortation to defend democracy. -
Commentator Herb Paine on the troubling revival of capital punishment in the United States and Israel.
