For decades, the waters edging northern Queens, a borough in New York City where I’ve lived several times throughout my long history as a proud New Yorker, carried the forgotten weight of industrial disregard. Abandoned boats, half-sunken barges, rotting docks, and tangled metal debris choked Flushing Bay and Flushing Creek, turning a vital tidal waterway into an urban blight.
These vessels did far more than ruin the view. The boats leach motor oil, toxic antifouling paints, microplastics from decaying fiberglass, and heavy metals directly into the mud and water. They trap plastic waste, smother native marsh grasses, and block natural water flow, creating stagnant, low-oxygen conditions that choke out fish and marine life. For surrounding communities—largely working-class, immigrant-rich neighborhoods that have historically borne the brunt of environmental neglect—the shoreline became an obstacle as well as a health hazard.
Now, a major cleanup and removal effort spearheaded by local advocates and supported by federal funding led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is finally clearing this neglected waterway from the bottom up.
Removing the Ghosts of Industry
Hauling decades-old derelict vessels out of shallow tidal water is meticulous, physical work. It requires specialized cranes, marine salvagers, environmental containment booms, and coordinated stewardship across federal, state, and local agencies. This web of cooperation is difficult to assemble and even harder to manage, and it is through the incredible efforts of organizations such as the Guardians of Flushing Bay, Riverkeeper, and the DEC, along with elected officials and the residents, that this is happening. The physical salvage work on the ground is being run directly by NYC Parks through their newly launched Office of Marine Debris Disposal and Vessel Surrendering, funded in partnership with NOAA and bolstered by Representative Ocasio-Cortez.
Each extracted hull delivers an immediate win for the local ecosystem:
Unlocking the Natural Tidal Circulation: Removing massive obstructions allows natural currents and tides to flush sediment and oxygenate the water, reversing chronic stagnation and literally bringing the waters back to life.
Stopping Chemical Leaks: Lifting out old fuel tanks and the vessels that have peeling lead paint along with chemically treated lumber removes continuous sources of toxicity that are poisoning this waterway and those who live there.
Restoring Shoreline Habitats: Clear mudflats and shorelines give native plants, sea life, and foraging shorebirds space to return and anchor natural coastal resilience.
Restoring Community Access: Clearing navigational hazards opens the water safely to human-powered boats, youth rowing programs, community science projects, and vital environmental research.
Ecological Health is Community Justice
A waterfront cleanup is never just about aesthetics. In a city where water surrounds us every day, access to clean, thriving shorelines is a core issue of equity and public health. A healthy waterfront also provides joy, curiosity, wonder, and positive experiences with nature.
When we leave waterways in working-class neighborhoods clogged with industrial trash, we send a subtle message about whose neighborhood deserves beauty and care. Reclaiming Flushing Creek and Flushing Bay proves that urban ecological repair and community dignity walk hand-in-hand. When dedicated neighbors, grassroots advocates, and elected leaders refuse to accept neglect, even our most damaged waterways can breathe again.
The Togetherhood Takeaway
Restoring our shared natural spaces begins with noticing the neglected corners of our neighborhoods and demanding better for the ecosystems that sustain us.
Support Local Waterway Advocates: Follow and support grassroots groups on the frontlines of NYC waters, such as Guardians of Flushing Bay, Newtown Creek Alliance, and Bronx River Alliance. Their tireless monitoring and organizing drive large-scale cleanup efforts.
Join a Shoreline Cleanup: Hands-on community cleanup days give you a direct, intimate look at the health of your local waterfront while keeping plastics and debris out of marine food webs.
Advocate for Equal Waterfront Access: Speak up at community board meetings and civic forums, or write op-eds and letters to the editor, to demand that waterfront revitalization projects prioritize public park space, natural shorelines, and water access for frontline communities over private luxury development.
Our urban waters are not dumping grounds—they are the living network of our city. When we clean up the debris of the past, we make room for life to flourish.
One of John Rucker’s Boykin Spaniels delicately carrying an ornate box turtle to safety. Photo from Nature Conservancy
I’m hoping that this year I will be able to adopt a dog. My foster dogs have helped me heal from the loss of my soul dog, Phineas. I will never get over losing him, and I’m also ready to welcome another dog into my life for their whole life. One thing I’d love to do with my future dog is to train to be a therapy team in chemo units and for kids reading to dogs programs at the New York and Brooklyn Public Libraries. Today, I learned about another opportunity that I’d love to look into, merging my love of dogs with my love for nature.
When we talk about climate adaptation and wildlife restoration, our minds usually jump to solutions that range from high-tech solutions like satellite tracking or automated drone monitoring to letting nature take her course and reclaim the land and seas. But across the world, some of the most effective conservation tools ever deployed run on four legs—or a quick game of fetch.
Conservation dogs are quietly transforming how we protect fragile ecosystems and wildlife. By training dogs to use their olfactory superpowers—which are tens of thousands of times more sensitive than ours—scientists and local communities are locating endangered species, tracking invasive pests, and stopping illegal wildlife trafficking in fractions of the time it takes human teams. (A mind-blowing fact about the sensitivity of a dog’s nose: Bloodhounds have an olfactory capability that can even reach up to10 million timesas sensitive as ours!)
My love for dogs runs as deep as my love for nature so learning how dogs can promote conservation has me wondering if this is a future career path for me, and a type of work I can do with my future dog. The talent of these pups is a powerful reminder that our smartest path forward often isn’t trying to out-engineer nature or just leaving nature to clean up our mess, but learning how to partner with her for the good of all species, including humans.
Precision Tracking in the Field
The real-world impacts of conservation canines span across oceans, prairies, and geographic borders:
Prairie Turtle Monitors: At The Nature Conservancy’s Nachusa Grasslands in Illinois, a famous squad of retired Boykin spaniels (trained by handler John Rucker, a retired high school English teacher from North Carolina) helped scientists track threatened ornate box turtles hidden deep in tallgrass prairie. Thanks to their soft mouths, the dogs gently picked up and retrieved the turtles without causing a single injury, locating more turtles in two hours than human researchers could find in a full week. Talk about efficiency!
Pangolin and Ivory Detection: Organizations like Working Dogs for Conservation (WD4C) deploy sniffer dogs to transit hubs and border checkpoints across Africa and Asia. These dogs detect hidden ivory, rhino horn, and pangolin scales with breathtaking accuracy, disrupting illegal poaching networks before products leave the region.
Saving the Right Whale: Off the coast of New England and Canada, specialized detection dogs ride on the bows of research boats to sniff out North Atlantic Right Whale scat from over a mile away. Finding these samples allows marine biologists to assess whale stress levels, pregnancy rates, and diet without ever disturbing these critically endangered and majestic ocean giants.
Invasive Species Eradication: In New Zealand and Hawaii, local conservation teams rely on dogs to hunt down invasive pests like rats, stoats, and Argentine ants that threaten native bird populations. What would take human teams weeks of destructive searching, a trained dog can pinpoint in a single afternoon. Give these dogs a raise!
Locating Invisible Plants: In the American West, dogs sniff out invasive weeds before they bloom above ground, allowing land managers to eradicate problem plants before they overtake native grasslands and fuel wildfire risks. How devastating can invasive plants be if left to run amok? Kudzu, a fast-growing climbing vine known is know as “the vine that ate the South” because it’s now so pervasive and seemingly unstoppable. It was brought to the U.S. from Japan in 1876. 150 years on, we’re still dealing with its destruction.
A Model for Local Agency
What makes working conservation dogs so compelling for community resilience is their low barrier to technology and high degree of local agency. You don’t need a multi-million-dollar lab or proprietary software to run a successful conservation dog program. You need dedicated handlers, strong local knowledge, a deep respect for animal behavior, and imagination.
It re-centers conservation work on human-animal partnerships, bringing local communities directly into the field as active custodians of their own ecosystems.
The Togetherhood Takeaway
True resilience means expanding our toolkit beyond human tech and recognizing the ecological allies already around us.
Reframe How We View Nature’s Capabilities: Technology is vital, but biological solutions are often faster, cheaper, and less invasive. Look for opportunities in your own community where natural processes (a community members of all species!) can solve structural problems.
Support Local Working Dog Programs: Look into organizations like Working Dogs for Conservation or Rogue Detection Teams. Supporting non-profits that train shelter dogs or rescue breeds for wildlife research gives animals a second life while protecting vital habitats.
Become an Active Observer: Dogs succeed because they pay hyper-detailed attention to their environment. Take a cue from our four-legged partners this week: practice active observation in your local parks or urban green spaces to better understand the biodiversity right outside your doorstep.
We can’t tackle the ecological crisis alone. One of our best partners in building a sustainable future is sitting right at our feet, tail wagging and ready to help.
“Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.” ~John Muir
I grew up in the dirt, literally. There was (and still is) a tractor crossing sign across the street from the house where I grew up. My rural hometown fostered a childhood that involved climbing trees and making mud pies. When I was little, I was convinced that there was a dinosaur skeleton hiding under the ground in my backyard. I enlisted my sister, Weez, to help me dig and dig and dig. All we found was a small mouse skeleton, but I thought it was clearly a prehistoric mouse!
Nature and science have been sources of healing for me on this journey and throughout my life. Other kids wanted to be doctors, firefighters, or teachers. I wanted to be a paleontologist. I still do. Whenever I get to see my dear friend, mentor, and science hero, Dr. Ken Lacovara, I get to soak in all his paleontology wisdom. (More in a separate post later about his beautiful science museum, the Edelman Fossil Park, that I just visited with my wonderful friends, Wayne and Ernie.
My childhood was far from idyllic, but there were some very positive things about growing up in the sticks. I got my hands dirty in the process of making things. I grew up in a farming community. Animals were my friends and companions, as much as people. Maybe even more than people. I learned to appreciate the Earth, her majesty and her power. Weather was a way of life, and I still watch it with fascination and wonder. I also thought long and hard about being a meteorologist, and that dream led me to study environmental sustainability at University of Cambridge.
More people today talk about being eager to get into mud. There’s a trend of younger people returning to the land and regenerative farming. I completely understand that calling. It lives in my bones.
There’s something to be said for the slow life, the life we build rather than the life we buy shrink-wrapped and delivered right to our doorstep. Creation builds confidence and bolsters the imagination. It makes us self-sufficient. I’m all for it, for all of us. There’s a lot of beauty and authenticity down there in the mud.
In late August, I’m taking a trip north to get into the dirt, sand, and water. I just finalized those plans today. Adventure awaits. I can’t wait to take you with me.
This is me after acupuncture today. It was my 10th session with the incredible Dr. Degenhardt at NYU Langone Health. My body’s responded so well to the treatments that I have no more blocks in my body. Now we are moving on to strength building in my core, left hip, and left leg. This is a huge milestone and we got here much faster than expected.
Tomorrow marks my 28 day countdown to my medication switch. Over the weekend, I opened my last bottle of letrozole – a medication I’ve taken for 5 years to prevent cancer recurrence. The side effects it’s caused, along with the side effects from my other treatments, are what brought me to Dr. Degenhardt. The medication did its job, and also took its toll. The hope is that this new medication will be easier on my body.
To mark this turning point, I made a special dinner: zaalouk, a Moroccan dish that is synonymous with celebration. It’s meant to be scooped up and savored with our hands – a tactile experience to nourish ourselves. I made these za’atar flatbreads by combining greek yogurt, flour, salt, baking powder, and olive oil. It’s all topped with toasted harissa chickpeas – a symbol of prosperity, continuity, the cycle of life, feminine health, the sustaining power of nature, and the desire for a good life. All fitting for this day.
When I was a kid, I loved making paper chains that countdown to Christmas. When I was going through radiation (another treatment that precipitated side effects Dr. Degenhardt is clearing!), I made a paper chain with inspiring quotes to count down the days of that treatment. I’m going to do that this month as well, but rather than a paper chain, I’m going to count down the days by sharing my thoughts about these past 5 years via writing.
Thank you to everyone who has played a part in this journey in so many ways. I’m so grateful. I’m the luckiest, and I know it.
Yesterday, a new chapter in my life began. I got my last Lupron shot. This is a photo of me outside Perlmutter Cancer Center right after I got my shot. I couldn’t stop smiling, and right after this photo I cried many happy tears.
By the end of August, it will be out of my system and I’ll transition to a new medication regimen to keep cancer recurrence at bay now that I’m approaching the five-year mark since the end of active treatment. For a few weeks the old and new meds will mingle in my body — orchestrating the hand-off as one recedes into my past and the other ramps up to carry me into the future for the next 5 years. The hope is that this new medication will cause less chronic pain and fewer, less severe side effects than what I’ve been taking for 5 years while also protecting me from having a recurrence.
These past 5 years have required me to break down and rebuild every area of my life several times over. It’s felt like a constant dance of doing and undoing. Just as I started healing and getting my bearings, something else would send me back to square one. To get through, I reminded myself that this is exactly the process that also strengthens muscles. I’m very strong physically and mentally. I’m also very tired.
All I can do is what I’ve been doing. Living each day, one day at a time, as best I can. It’s all any of us can do.
After my June 18th storytelling show at the AKC Museum of the Dog, I’ll be taking it easy this summer, mostly because I need to start this new chapter as healthy as possible. As I bid farewell to these medications that massively impacted my body and mind, I’m grateful for their service and everything they taught me. I’m grateful that they worked as hoped, even though they made daily life difficult every day. I’m still here and that’s what matters.
A Gulf Coast storm followed by snowmelt in January 2025 temporarily increased the Mississippi River’s outflow, sending a surge of sediment through the delta and into gulf waters. NASA.
We often talk about climate change in the future tense, but the physical reorganization of our world is already happening in real-time. It is a story of where we can stay, where we must leave, and how we might restore the land and waterways that connect all species that share this planet. For more than a century, people have built rigid concrete defenses against rising sea levels and in an attempt to dam and direct rivers to suit our immediate needs. But the physical reality of our planet is now demanding a total reorganization of where—and how—we live together as part of an ecosystem that is far bigger and more powerful than us rather basing our construction on the belief that people can dominate nature.
As we face this transition in mindset and practical living, we are guided by a fundamental climate choice first formulated by physicist and former presidential science advisor Dr. John Holdren:
We basically have three choices when it comes to our changing climate: mitigation, adaptation and suffering. Holdren acknowledges that we’re going to do some of each. The question he asks us is what the mix is going to be. Increase one of the three, and we will do less of the second and third. To many minds, this is the goal: the more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required and the less suffering there will be.
Following on from his framework of these three pie pieces, I’ve been thinking about three distinct pieces of research that point us toward where the climate transition is leading us.
1. The Physics of Departure: The Sinking Gulf
A new study recently published in Nature Sustainability brings the urgency of Dr. John Holdren’s triad into sharp focus for the American South. In the Gulf Coast, specifically around New Orleans and the surrounding delta, researchers have identified a compounding crisis: the land is physically sinking (subsidence) at the same time the ocean is rising. This is a perfect storm that threatens one of the most culturally rich cities in the U.S.
The Acceleration of Relative Sea-Level Rise
Using high-resolution satellite data and GPS monitoring, the study reveals that the land in this region is moving downward at a rate significantly higher than previously estimated. This creates a Relative Sea-Level Rise that is often double or triple the global average. While the world discusses centimeters of rise over decades, communities in the Gulf are dealing with inches of lost elevation in just a few years.
This subsidence is driven by a combination of natural sediment compaction and human activity, including the extraction of groundwater and fossil fuel. Because we have dammed the Mississippi River (as discussed in our next section), the natural delivery of new sediment that used to replenish the delta has been cut off. The land is starving for the very silt that used to keep it above water.
The Limits of Adaptation
When the land physically disappears, the limits of adaptation are breached. We reach a point where holding the line with higher levees and stronger pumps becomes a mechanical impossibility. We cannot prevent a flood with a tablespoon while the tap is turned up to full blast. This is rapidly shutting down the option mitigation. Therefore, it forces the zero-sum choice Holdren warned us about: New Orleans must choose between managed retreat—a proactive, planned relocation—or unavoidable suffering for those left behind.
Relocation in this context is not just a logistical move; it is a cultural crisis. To avoid mass suffering, we need a framework for place-making that moves entire community networks together. If we don’t plan for the transfer of the community—the music, food, heritage, and social bonds—we risk losing the soul of the Gulf to the rising water.
2. Working With the Water: America Undammed
While the coast sinks, our inland arteries are being liberated through a radical shift in infrastructure policy. As reported by theNew York Times, the United States is currently undergoing a massive effort to dismantle thousands of obsolete dams—many of which have outlived their 50-year lifespans and now pose significant safety risks to downstream communities.
This is proactive adaptation in its purest form. For over a century, we treated rivers as plumbing—static pipes to be redirected, blocked, and controlled. Now, we are learning that a free-flowing river is a far superior neighbor than one trapped behind aging concrete.
The Multi-Species Dividend of Restoration
When a dam is removed, the results are often instantaneous and transformative. By restoring the natural flow, we allow for the return of sediment—the literal building blocks of the land—which has been trapped in reservoirs for decades. This sediment is what naturally replenishes deltas and keeps coastal lands from sinking, directly impacting the crisis seen in and around New Orleans.
Furthermore, removing these barriers restores migratory paths for fish and wildlife that have been blocked for generations. It is an act of biological reconciliation that allows species to move toward cooler waters as temperatures rise, a key component of the Deep Adaptation required in a changing climate.
The Safety and Financial Calculus
Beyond ecology, the Undammed movement is a response to the mechanical failure of the 20th-century model. Aging dams are increasingly unable to handle the 1,000-year flood events that are becoming more frequent. Removing them is a strategic choice to avoid the catastrophic suffering of a dam failure. By restoring natural floodplains, we create massive, landscape-scale sponges that can absorb and slow down water surges, protecting human infrastructure by working with the water’s energy rather than trying to stifle it. We’ve made water a foe when we’re much better off giving it the room it needs to be our friend.
3. The Nomad Century: The Infrastructure of Global Movement
If the sinking Gulf represents the limits of adaptation and the undammed rivers represent the liberation of nature, then Gaia Vince’s book Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World represents the inevitable human response: The Great (Human) Migration. We are moving toward a reality where the map of human habitation must become as fluid as the climate itself.
To manage this transition without catastrophic suffering, we must move away from the 20th-century model of fixed borders and toward a 21st-century model of managed movement. Given our current geopolitics, this is getting more complicated (and contentious) by the day. There’s no doubt that this requires a radical rethink of our global systems across three specific pillars:
The Digital State and Portable Identity
In a world of mass movement, your identity cannot be tied to a physical piece of paper in a desk drawer that might be lost to a flood or a fire. We need a global framework for Digital Identity—portable, secure, and internationally recognized credentials that allow migrants to carry their medical records, professional certifications, and legal standing with them. This ensures that a doctor from a submerged coast can become a doctor in a receiver city on day one, rather than being trapped in a cycle of structural suffering and economic, intellectual, and talent waste.
The Rise of Receiver Cities
The green zones—latitudes in the north that will remain temperate—must proactively prepare to become Receiver Cities. This is the ultimate test of Holdren’s triad: by investing in massive adaptation now (housing, high-speed transit, and sustainable food systems), these regions can prevent the mass suffering of unplanned, chaotic arrivals. These cities must be designed as expandable machines, utilizing modular architecture and circular resource loops to integrate millions of new residents while maintaining ecological balance and social structures.
Deep Adaptation and the Preservation of Culture
Scholars like Jem Bendell have expanded on this reality through the framework of Deep Adaptation. It acknowledges that because global mitigation failed to prevent significant warming, we must now pivot toward valuing what we want to keep. As communities move, we must build systems to archive and carry forward the culture of humanity—languages, traditions, and social structures—so that when we relinquish the land, we do not lose the soul and the history of the people who lived there.
The Togetherhood Takeaway
We cannot command the planet to stay still. Our survival depends on our ability to move with the land and the water, rather than against them.
Audit the Mix: Look at your local climate initiatives. Are they focused on mitigation (reducing the cause), adaptation (living with the effect), or is your community opting for future suffering by ignoring the problem?
Audit the Choice: Demand that your leaders explain their Holdren Mix. Are they spending on adaptation now, or are they effectively budgeting for future suffering?
Map Your Resilience: Research the topography of your own region. Understanding whether your land is rising or sinking changes every conversation about long-term infrastructure and property.
Map Your Role: Research your own local geography. Is your community positioned to be a receiver of migration or a sender? This changes every conversation you have about local infrastructure and zoning.
Advocate for the Flow: Support local river restoration projects. Undamming a waterway is an act of long-term climate insurance for your entire watershed.
Practice Fluidity: In a Nomad Century, the most valuable skill is the ability to form deep community connections quickly.
Redefine Home: In a Nomad Century, home must shift from a static point on a map to a commitment to community resilience, wherever that community ends up.
The map is changing. To honor the planet and each other, we must have the courage to move with it. Will we each find it within ourselves to do the mitigation and adaptation needed to limit suffering? That remains the most potent question on the table today for every country, policy maker, and person. Eventually, nature will demand an answer.
Just after graduating from my Master’s program at University of Cambridge / Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) last summer, I went to Stockholm, Sweden for vacation. While I was there, I stayed in a beautiful neighborhood that was a perfect melding of nature and city infrastructure.
Thanks to a very serendipitous bowl of soup, I learned from a waiter that this neighborhood had a secret – it had been transformed from a toxic, industrial wasteland into a living lab for climate action.
I had the opportunity to interview incredible people for this piece including the former finance minister of Sweden, the lead architect, energy and climate researchers, and the team members of ElectriCITY, the collective leading the district’s sustainability efforts. Their inspiring blueprint can be adapted and applied in every city, including my hometown of NYC.
This week, four astronauts aboard the Artemis II Orion spacecraft achieved something humanity has not done in over fifty years. They flew around the far side of the moon, traveling farther from Earth than any humans in history – 252,760 miles. As they passed behind the lunar surface, they turned their cameras back toward home and captured a breathtaking Earthset, watching our bright blue planet sink behind the desolate, cratered edge of the moon. Looking at all of the media coming from the mission gives me chills in the best way.
The Cognitive Shift When astronauts view our planet from this immense distance, they often experience a profound cognitive shift known as the Overview Effect. From 250,000 miles away, they can’t see political borders, neighborhood disputes, or ideological divides. They see a single, fragile ecosystem. They realize that every being, be they a person, animal, or plant, shares the same life support system and collectively, the same destiny. We all only have one home and it belongs to all of us.
A Floating Laboratory for a Sustainable Earth People frequently wonder why we invest in space exploration when we face so many massive challenges right here on Earth. The answer is that a deep space capsule is the ultimate testbed for our future. We do not explore space to abandon our home planet; we explore space to discover the exact tools necessary to protect it.
To survive a lunar mission, astronauts cannot waste a single resource and a vast group of people with different talents and experiences must work together as a cohesive team with a singular shared mission – bring them all home safely. They must operate a circular economy. NASA engineers design advanced filters to scrub carbon dioxide directly out of the cabin air—technology that now forms the foundation of direct air capture facilities fighting global warming today. They develop systems to recover and purify every drop of moisture, translating directly to water filtration for drought-stricken communities. They conduct experiments on high-yield indoor agriculture to feed the crew without the benefits of direct sunlight or nutrient-rich soil, helping us understand how we can grow food in harsh environments. Staging this mission also requires the development of stronger, lighter materials that translates into the conservation of valuable resources.
Alongside this climate engineering, the Artemis II crew is conducting experiments that directly advance medical science. They carry microchips containing living human bone marrow tissue to study exactly how deep-space radiation and microgravity affects human cells. They monitor their own biological responses to understand why and how extreme stress alters the human immune system. Solving these medical challenges in space paves the way for individualized cancer treatments, tools to predict and treat chronic conditions, and advanced healthcare innovations that test drugs and vaccines. All of this research means that the astronauts are both scientists and test subjects. What we learn from these missions directly translates to helping all of us build a better healthcare system.
Orchestration on a Massive Scale The mission also represents the ultimate example of community orchestration. Sending a crew around the moon and safely bringing them back is never the work of one isolated visionary. It requires a massive, synchronized ecosystem of engineers, technicians, and scientists across the globe. Thousands of people must set aside their individual egos and operate with absolute trust in one another to navigate the unknown.
The Takeaway We do not need to launch into orbit to apply the Overview Effect to our daily lives. When we get stuck in the weeds of local disputes or feel overwhelmed by the friction of community building, we simply need to change our vantage point.
We can actively choose to step back and look at our neighborhoods as unified ecosystems.
Change your altitude to change your attitude: When a conflict arises in your community, intentionally zoom out. Ask yourself how this specific disagreement affects the overall health of the neighborhood ecosystem rather than just your immediate block. Then help other people zoom out as well to gain the same benefits of perspective.
Acknowledge the shared ship and the shared journey: Remind yourself and your neighbors that you all rely on the same local infrastructure and green spaces, and that collectively you are building your local economy to benefit everyone. You succeed or fail together.
Orchestrate across borders: Look for ways to connect your local initiatives with efforts in neighboring communities. A thriving garden in your neighborhood benefits the pollinators across your city and beyond.
Translate the research: Take inspiration from the Artemis crew. Look for ways to do small experiments and use the solutions you develop through those experiments to help your community and share with adjacent communities.
Nature requires us to act as a unified whole. We just need the right perspective to see it. Luckily for us, the crew of Artemis II is helping all of us to keep looking up.
If you’ve been watching the Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina this week, you’ve likely seen the mascots: two adorable, ferret-like creatures named Tina and Milo.
They are stoats (also known as ermines when they have their winter white coats!), and they were chosen to represent the games because of their liveliness and resilience. But biologically speaking, the stoat isn’t just cute. They are engineering marvels that have been refining their technology for over 5 million years.
While athletes are pushing the limits of human performance on the slopes, the stoat offers a masterclass in biomimicry—inspiring everything from search-and-rescue robots to “smart” clothing.
Here are three ways this little creature is shaping the future of technology:
1. The Soft Robotics Revolution
The stoat’s superpower is their shape. They’re elongated, highly flexible body allow them to navigate complex, burrow-like environments that other predators can’t touch.
Engineers are now studying this slender agility to design soft, maneuverable robots. Unlike rigid machines, these stoat-inspired bots can twist and flex to navigate narrow, restricted spaces—making them perfect for search-and-rescue operations in collapsed buildings or inspecting intricate pipeline infrastructure.
2. Adaptive Camouflage (Smart Materials)
We know the stoat changes their coat from rusty brown to snowy white in the winter. But biomimicry looks deeper than just the color change.
Researchers are studying the ermine transformation to develop adaptive materials that can change their properties based on environmental cues. Imagine stealth technologies or outdoor gear that doesn’t just insulate, but actively responds to temperature shifts and visual surroundings, mimicking the stoat’s ability to blend seamlessly into a snowy landscape.
3. Algorithms of Efficiency
Stoats are specialized hunters. Their movement is fast, fluid, and incredibly efficient.
Computer scientists are now analyzing their hunting dynamics and even their playful behavior to write better code. The way a stoat moves—making split-second decisions to navigate obstacles while maintaining speed—is informing movement algorithms for autonomous vehicles and drones.
The Togetherhood Takeaway
It is easy to look at nature as sweet and poetic. Nature’s that, and so much more. When we look at a stoat, we are looking at 5–7 million years of R&D and adaptation through experimentation.
As we cheer on the athletes this week, let’s give a little applause to Tina and Milo, too. They aren’t just mascots; they are blueprints for the next generation of adaptive, resilient technology.
Nature doesn’t just survive the winter. She engineers her way through it.
In a recent episode of The Common Good from the Garrison Institute, science writer and Biomimicry Institute co-founder Janine Benyus joined host Jonathan F.P. Rose for an illuminating conversation. The topic was profound yet elegantly simple: uncovering “nature’s universals” — the deep, time-tested design patterns that silently guide all living systems, and how we can apply them to the human world.
Benyus, the pioneer behind the biomimicry movement, anchors her work on a single, powerful biological truth: Life creates conditions conducive to life.
This isn’t a romantic notion; it’s a design principle. Over billions of years, successful natural systems — from the vastness of a forest canopy to the complexity of a coral reef — have learned to thrive not through competition and extraction, but through cooperation, self-organization, and elegant networked intelligence. These are the strategies that generate abundance without consuming the system that supports them. When we look at nature, we are looking at a master class in sustainability, efficiency, and resilience.
The Blueprint for Human Innovation
The conversation moved beyond mere observation to practical application, identifying core natural principles that can and must guide human industry and ethics. Two standout concepts for redesigning our civilization are:
Right-Sizing: In nature, nothing is over-engineered. Organisms do what is necessary, but no more, often using modularity and local resources to solve problems. Benyus challenges us to abandon the modern human impulse for massive, centralized, and often brittle systems. Instead, we should mimic nature’s local, tailored, and efficient solutions.
Distributed Abundance: Nature’s design is fundamentally anti-monopoly. Resources and solutions are distributed — sunlight, nutrients, and water flow through a network, ensuring that the health of the whole system supports the success of individual parts. Applying this principle to economic and social systems means designing for local self-sufficiency and ensuring resources are abundant and regenerative for all, rather than concentrated at the top.
A Call for Biological Literacy
Ultimately, the episode serves as a powerful call to re-embrace our own biological literacy. For too long, Benyus contends, Western culture has viewed the world — and our place in it — as a collection of separate parts to be managed and exploited. This mindset has dictated our industrial processes, our economic models, and even our spiritual disconnection from the living planet.
The discussion highlights that re-embracing these universal patterns is not just about engineering better products; it’s about reshaping our culture and spirituality. By learning from life’s inherent genius, we move toward a worldview where we recognize the world as a single, living, interdependent whole. The greatest innovation of the next century will be applying nature’s wisdom to create human systems that are as beautiful, cooperative, and conducive to life as a thriving ecosystem.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on how we can all embrace nature’s principles to live our best lives and also care for the planet. What do you think?
Christa Avampato 