Forest and Friends - September 19, 2024

​It is time again to come together among friends and talk about climate, forests, and startups.  If you are on the eastside on Thursday September 19th, join us from 4:30-7 at Cascadia Pizza (https://www.cascadiapizzaco.com/bellevue).  Looking ahead, we’re going to have great weather affording us one more chance to occupy the patio.  Come on out before the season turns and we start regularly getting weather colder than… August!

​In the last month I’ve been reading some forestry papers with suggestions on how to fix NEPA, a busy topic now with many folks chasing permitting reform as a silver bullet to enable the green transition (or vastly expand fossil fuel infrastructure depending on your hopes or fears).  This was a little different, in that the specific recommendations deal with changing the baseline of analysis under the law for NEPA, the Endangered Species Act, and the Clean Air Act.  That’s the big core of environmental law, that’s a big deal!  What’s up?  It turns out our hard-won regulations all share the myth of wilderness, the belief that a natural space is a space without humans.  The Forests of the American West are the way they are because of humans maintained those lands for thousands of years.  In order to square this circle the suggestion is that we must classify some human interventions and actions as in-human actions!  When your regulations miss basic assumptions things get weird!

​We’ll be talking more broadly about startups, @nick and I both went through some accelerators, interviews, and important demos over the last month, and generally have some good conversation fodder for anyone curious about early-stage startup life. 

​Please join us for pizza and a pint as we talk about climate! We’ll be geeking out, enjoying the taplist, menu, and friendship while we talk forests, carbon, environmental law here at the end of Summer 2024.  I’ll be wearing a hardhat and cruising vest – feel free to walk right up and join our table.