I woke up this morning and decided it was time for a little change for this Substack.

When I started Where Nature Meets Climate in mid-2023, I was focused on how to protect and restore nature and address climate change. But a few years and a lot of tinkering and deep learning from people far smarter than myself, I now believe the only way that we can achieve those goals, is if we address many of the other problems that challenge our society today. From selfishness and isolation, to affordability and economic opportunity, to fundamental human rights.

The environment is a fundamentally a public good, it requires collective stewardship and governance to keep it healthy, to keep us healthy. And the only way to deliver collective stewardship, is if we want to work together, at local, regional, national and planetary scale.

As you’ve likely noticed over the past few months, my curiosities, my thinking, and my writing has forayed beyond discussions of financial mechanisms to protect and restore nature and address climate change. My curiosity about what is needed to achieve the change I want to see in the world has expanded to many facets of the economic and governance systems. It delves into deep ecology and the boundaries of scientific knowledge. It is fascinated by social and cultural fabric and human behavior. It even wants to tap into religion and spirituality.

At the end of the day, I truly do believe the biggest force that will determine whether humans and nature thrive, is our shared humanity. The intersection of human nature and non-human nature.

So the time has come to update the title of this substack from “Where Nature Meets Climate”, to , “Where Humanity Meets Nature”.

I’ll continue to write about emerging strategies to internalize the value of nature into our economic and financial systems, to probe how we can get markets to value protection and restoration over destruction. But I’ll be expanding the scope of my writing to explore other shifts in society and the human predicament that might be needed in parallel to economic shifts or as precursors. For example, this past week I’ve been working on an article that highlights why the growing demand for affordable housing to could be a critical opportunity for system shifts in human connection and our relationship with non-human nature.

Everything is connected, so consider this next phase of writing as my attempt to begin to weave together the web that could ultimately deliver the future I yearn for, that I think others do as well.

P.S. I never imagined that I’d have 3300 people regularly reading the things I ponder on my evening walks and when I find myself unable to sleep at night.

Thank you for being a reader. And thank you for recommending the articles to others, over 90% of subscribers have come through recommendations and sharing articles with others.

Ff you are a paid subscriber, BIG thank you for giving me the gift of time. The extra funds go to getting take-out instead of spending an hour cooking for myself and my partner who is in medical residency. Those extra hours are when I do the thinking and the writing.

And a bit of news is that we are expecting our first child in May, so as you can imagine, the additional financial support will likely go to childcare will directly translate into more time for writing :).

Thank you.