There’s something seriously missing from this “we’re all doomed piece”
Raleigh Exhibition Shows How Thoreau Helped Map Climate Change
Henry David Thoreau was big on taking walks—or “sauntering,” the word he once used in a lecture on the subject. In that lecture, the writer and philosopher asserted that he couldn’t feel well unless he sauntered for at least four hours a day.
It was on those long walks around Concord, Massachusetts, that Thoreau collected hundreds of botanical specimens, which he then brought home to press, scribbling down notes about where and when each plant was collected. Now, 648 of those preserved specimens are housed and digitized in the Harvard University Herbaria.
But while those specimens from Concord made it to this century in preserved form, many of the actual plants didn’t survive: an estimated 30 percent of the species from Thoreau’s records have gone “locally extinct,” according to the museum, with another 35 percent “close to the same fate.”
In Search of Thoreau’s Flowers: An Exploration of Change and Loss, currently on view at NC State University’s Gregg Museum of Art & Design, draws on that digitized collection in a small but expansive-feeling exhibit that contends with the loss of biodiversity. Originally mounted at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, the exhibit represents the joint scholarship of Marsha Gordon, Robin Vuchnich, Leah Sobsey, and Emily Meineke, an effort that marries science, art, and the humanities. This iteration of the exhibit, which expands on the original by tying in North Carolina flora and fauna, opened in September and runs through January 31, 2026.
Here’s the thing: times change. Thoreau lived from 1817-1862, so, born in the midst of a Holocene cool period, died as a typical Holocene warm period was starting. Things change.
The story spends a lot of time on the exhibition, interesting to read. Then
Is it depressing to see renderings of species we’ve driven out with deforestation, pollution, pesticide use, and a hundred other facets of modern life? Absolutely. Global insect populations are in a free fall, with a 2019 study determining that 40 percent of insect species are in decline, with the rate of species decline topping out at 2.5 percent a year.
Now, that is real. Mankind have an ecological effect through the aforementioned issues. We can do better, and we do do better now. Not so good hundreds of years ago.
“This came together from four friends, really,” Gordon says. “We were trying to think through something we could do around questions of climate change and the environment—thinking about it in a way that is realistic about what is happening in our country and all over the world, but also not to be so doom and gloom that people shut off.”
So, they took Thoreau’s stuff and put their own little cult spin on it
Thanks to Thoreau and other area naturalists, the ecosystem of Concord—which author Henry James once called “the biggest little place in America,” due to its historical import—has been documented across centuries. That record formed a portrait of the biological impacts of climate change. In Walden Warming, the botanist Richard Primack observes that Thoreau’s archives helped scientists determine that local plants were now flowering weeks earlier than they were 160 years ago.
1860 was right near the start of the warming, so, yeah. And, perhaps if we did better environmentally and didn’t waste time on cult stuff we could do more.
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.” – Thoreau, Walden
Most species are destined for extinction. Even Homo sapiens will eventually disappear. Did the plants around Walden Pond disappear from global warming? Perhaps. Invasve species introduced by others? Likely. Agriculture? Yep.
The U.S. has been deforested, de-bisoned, un-wolfed, de-catamounted too – but has recovered much. Only about 1% of U.S. woodlands have never been logged.
Even earlier, climate change assisted the loss of megafauna – giant sloths, dire wolves, mammoths, mastodons, sable-toothed cats, early camels and native horses.
So does Teach have any alternative theories about why the Earth is warming, if you can’t give any alternative theories or explanation of observed phenonoma that are subject to robust examination than according to the scientific theory one must accept the best theory available which is that the climate is changing this rapidly because of the burning of fossil fuels..We simply have no better explanation. If a better explanation does be one available science will embrace it
Actually, since it is October, the Earth is cooling. It happens every year about this time. People should study that and see if there is some sort of scientifically verifiable correlation to account for it.
A snarky commenter typed: since it is October, the Earth is cooling
Yikes. Nope. The northern hemisphere is cooling, not the entire Earth. Dec, Jan and Feb are actually the coldest months in the southern hemisphere! January is the warmest month in Antarctica!
Crazy innent it?
Johnny-hairy-smith..nice memory..you’ve been given examples of alternate theories many times in this forum. Put down the pipe…
Alternate hypotheses, not theories. Put down the pipe.
Thoreau eas New England’s own Buddhist.
Going off to live alone in a $14 cabin like a hermit monk. I grew up only 25 miles away from Walden Pond
I believe he will be a subject of my Philosophy class in Nov.
Most definitely could be considered anti capitalist, against accumulation of capital/wealth and anti consumerism and the search for happiness through possessions
What would he think of his country today or it’s president that believes buying gold toilets will bring happiness
John,
Thoreau was an early Marxist, came along a few decades later. His $14 cabin was a luxury. He lived on one side of a lake with the city on the other side. He is worthless. I thought you were studying critical reading.
Thoreau was a transcendalist.
++++Transcendentalism was a 19th-century American philosophical and literary movement that emphasized intuition, individualism, and the divine in nature, leading to social reforms and a focus on self-reliance. Key figures included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and its core beliefs centered on the idea that all people are divine and can find truth through their own intuition rather than through established religion or reason alone. This belief in the superiority of intuitive feeling over intellect and the need to reject conformity were central to the movement.++++
In his essay Civil Disobedience Thoreau stated: I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out,
it finally amounts to this, which also I believe- “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.
Can NJ turn RED? You Won’t BELIEVE What’s Happening In New Jersey!!! Video
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2025/10/can-nj-turn-red-you-wont-believe-whats.html