Forrest Fleischman
@forrestf.bsky.social
Associate professor of environmental policy at the University of Minnesota. Forest governance, Restoration Social Science, South Asia, Central America, Environmental justice, urban ecosystems, NEPA, homegardens, etc.
I found this great quote from Rebecca Lave in a review of Daniel Suarez's new book which sums up my view of many of the faddish concepts we are promoting for solving environmental problems:
Biologists Unite: The Rise and Fall of Ecosystem Services
Published in The AAG Review of Books (Ahead of Print, 2026)
tandfonline.com
I have been studying tree planting programs in India for 20 years this fall. In this new article, Pooja Choksi and I explain what we've learned. In brief: thewire.in/environment/...
Beyond Tree Planting, Why India's Ecological Restoration Drives Need Revamping
India’s tree-planting drives often focus on numbers and green cover, but research has shown that successful restoration must also account for biodiversity, livelihoods and local ecosystems.
thewire.in
Once I was talking to a Nepali guy who had lived in Salt Lake City for a time. He told me he liked it there, they had some nice small hills.
Kris Lorischild@direkris.itch.io · 3w agoIt's so cute when people on the east coast talk about mountains
Its kind of weird that national media is focusing on polls being off in Wisconsin, where a Progressive underperformed their polls, and not on the polling miss in Minnesota, which was nearly even in the polls and the progressive won by about +20?
This is a great article, and could apply to many situations.
ashley fairbanks@ziibiing.com · last mo.well, I never expected to be published in a Stanford journal, but the McKnight Foundation asked me write my thesis to the philanthropic world after the MN ICE surge: when there is an emergency, just... give money to people on the ground doing the actual work. as fast as possible. radical, I know.
This is your periodic reminder that many of the largest and most destructive (to human lives and property) wildfires in US history occurred in the upper midwest. Fires, including large fires, are part of our history and our biome.
A really interesting piece on reducing AI cheating in the classroom from a Professor of English and former Dean of Humanities at University of Utah. The solutions? Smaller classes, lower teaching loads for faculty, and in-person classes.
How to limit unauthorized AI use in the classroom
A handy rule
hollisrobbinsanecdotal.substack.com
What a great article not only on faculty workloads, but how little our salaries actually factor in to most university budgets. A few highlights. First, our salaries are falling:
If we build enough clean power and grid capacity to accommodate winter peaks from electrification of space heat in colder climates (like most of Europe and North America), we'll have more than enough capacity for carbon-free air conditioning for all. If we win heat, we get AC pretty much for free.
Costa Samaras@costasamaras.com · 2mo agoHere’s what the air conditioning discourse illuminates: to deal with climate change we need to electrify & we need zero carbon electricity, we also need more electricity- like double or triple what we have. And we need more cooling & cooling equity. There will be folks fighting against all of that.
I installed a heat pump system on our old non-AC Minnesota house. Summers are increasingly intolerable here (tomorrow the heat index is expected to exceed 40 C), so its nice to get the AC, but we also are using far less fossil energy to heat our home in the winter because the heat pump.
Costa Samaras@costasamaras.com · 2mo agoHere’s what the air conditioning discourse illuminates: to deal with climate change we need to electrify & we need zero carbon electricity, we also need more electricity- like double or triple what we have. And we need more cooling & cooling equity. There will be folks fighting against all of that.
Here’s what the air conditioning discourse illuminates: to deal with climate change we need to electrify & we need zero carbon electricity, we also need more electricity- like double or triple what we have. And we need more cooling & cooling equity. There will be folks fighting against all of that.
There isn't alot of scholarship or critical thinking about the politics of restoration, and this is unfortunate. A new paper finds that UN designated "restoration flagships" are disproportionately located in undemocratic contexts, as are the largest restoration pledges (doi.org/10.1162/GLEP...).
Ecosystem Restoration Across Political Regimes: Why Are So Many ‘Successes’ Located in Undemocratic Contexts?
Abstract. International bodies like the United Nations increasingly champion ecosystem restoration as a key tool to combat environmental degradation. Democratic governance is often positioned as a key...
doi.org
To chime in as a Minneapolitan: whistles made a huge difference (and still do, ICE is still kidnapping people here, just at a slower pace). But what really helped was the pre-existing neighborhood groups from the summer of 2020, so get yourself whistle kits and start talking to your neighbors *now*
Courtney Milan@courtneymilan.com · 3mo agoReminder: as ICE just got $70 billion more (fuck ICE), we are still sending out whistles to anyone who wants them. linktr.ee/3Dwhistles
Another in the long series of unintended consequences of poorly thought out tree planting initiatives.
David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 3mo agoJapan reforested with Japanese cedar (sugi) and cypress (hinoki) in the 1950s to rebuild post-war forests. Now the pollen gives 40%+ of its population hay fever. Climate change extends pollen seasons further. Today’s decisions shape tomorrow’s reality. Short-term fixes can become long-term crises.
This is not a good look for the "independent" standards board. Industries should not write their own regulations.
Danny Cullenward@ghgpolicy.org · 3mo agoI have resigned from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol's Independent Standards Board. The Protocol is openly violating its own rules and has effectively delegated forest carbon accounting standards to a secret, industry-led working group. ghgpolicy.org/s/2026-06-08...
I have resigned from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol's Independent Standards Board. The Protocol is openly violating its own rules and has effectively delegated forest carbon accounting standards to a secret, industry-led working group. ghgpolicy.org/s/2026-06-08...
Great coverage of some of our recent research in Mongabay. We found that some programs seem to increase tree cover, and some don't. Great template for improving things! Unfortunately, the programs that aren't working are big and the one that works well is small. india.mongabay.com/2026/06/why-...
Why India's tree-planting programmes are falling short
A new study examined eight major government schemes and programmes aimed at increasing tree cover, and their impact.
india.mongabay.com
I think some of this is based on a misreading/compression of the fall of German research universities and the rise of American ones. In the fantasy, lots of German academics fled the nazis and moved to the US to build great universities here.
Alex Wild@alexwild.bsky.social · 3mo agoThere's a persistent fantasy that maybe some other nice countries will start mass-hiring US scientists. That's not going to happen. A few high-profile, big name researchers will get poached, sure. But most countries, including some very nice ones, are underemploying their own scientists already.
Land back and collaboration for the future. I'm super proud to be part of the group of people who made this happen, even if my own role was essentially to clap from the sidelines and watch my colleagues work this out: twin-cities.umn.edu/news-events/...
University of Minnesota, Fond du Lac Band move forward together on historic Cloquet Forestry Center land return
In a milestone moment for collaboration and reconciliation, the University of Minnesota and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa are moving forward with the return of the Cloquet Forestry Ce...
twin-cities.umn.edu
Its always puzzling to me that well-off people in areas with widespread mosquito born illnesses don't see window screens as totally essential. I get that poor people might not be able to afford them.
Faine Greenwood@faineg.bsky.social · 3mo agoI do find it baffling that the U.S. seems to be one of the only places on earth that has really, really figured out the wonders of “screens to keep the bugs out.”
If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to measure, report, and verify it, does the carbon still accumulate in the forest floor?
Think of CO₂ removal like a time machine. How far back does planting 100 million trees take us? One mature tree takes up ~25 kg of CO₂/year, so 100 million trees will take up 2.5 MtCO₂. That's a time machine that takes us back ~33 minutes in a year. Nature will not save us from fossil fuel CO₂.
DeLorean Time Travel: Back To The Future
Alt: DeLorean Time Travel: Back To The Future
static.klipy.com
NYT: "no one has ever thought of teaching ranching at university" Every ag school: um, would you like to meet our cows NYT: "No, not like that. More romantic. More dilletante. Ugh, we're not /farmers/."
Drew McKevitt@drewmckevitt.bsky.social · 3mo agoMy public research university literally has a cattle ranch
Apparently what Ivy League colleges don't do is have students work real jobs while studying, something that the vast majority of college students in this country, including nearly all at the state flagship I work at, do.
The New York Times@nytimes.com · 3mo agoIn @nytopinion.nytimes.com The problem on college campuses is not just that students lack civility, Michal Leibowitz writes, but that “our college education does almost nothing to develop the sense that what we do in our day-to-day lives resonates with people beyond ourselves.”
I've lost it now: but someone on here said the solution to the AI problem in academic publishing is simple: editors just have to insist that all articles are handwritten in blue books under exam conditions. And I thought that perfectly skewered two forms of 'it's here to stay, adapt' commentary.
My view is that if only 20% of your students in an extremely selective university demonstrate the "extraordinary distinction" needed to earn an A, you probably aren't a very good teacher. This of course fits quite well with Harvard's reputation. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/21/o...
Opinion | 60 Percent of Grades at Harvard Were A’s. Enough Is Enough.
nytimes.com
A surprise for me on sabbatical in Europe was faculty discussing their votes in the election for the university's rector. I've only ever voted for an essentially powerless university senate.
Jameel Jaffer@jameeljaffer.bsky.social · 3mo agoWhy do faculty and students have so little say in the governance of American universities? This terrific new paper by Daniel Hemel and David Pozen asks why American universities are liberal autocracies rather than stakeholder democracies. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
