Most of our public arguments about land, about water, about what we are allowed to build and where, run aground precisely because we cannot tell these two apart. From data centers to mono-crop agriculture to Amazon warehouses to ubiquitous carwashes and dollar stores, we treat a living watershed as though it were a grid we surveyed, a set of measured parts we may re-survey at will, and we are surprised, every time, when it does not behave like a drawing. A creek is a survol. It surveys itself. You can route it, culvert it, and write it down, and it will go on being what it is beneath your numbers, and it will hold you to account for the difference (eventually). The Surveyor and the Survey open.substack.com/pub/caroli…

In Marion County, a $2.4 billion data center was approved in secret during a winter storm, then abandoned for reasons unrelated to the questions residents were asking... carolinaecology.substack.com…

We don't agree on much as fellow Sandlappers, but this is a good one from Nancy.

A “shade” tree is the rare gift whose whole point is that the giver will be gone before it is fully given. You put a small thing in the ground knowing the deep shade belongs to a stranger forty years out, a child not yet born who will one day cross a soft line on the grass and feel the sun lift off the back of his neck and call it, without thinking, relief. That’s the work. We arrived at the ethics by way of the body (which is the only way I trust to arrive at it), and the body’s verdict isn’t complicated. Everyone deserves a place to stand where the sun cannot punish. The shade should fall on all of us, and where it does not yet fall, we know how to make it. Where The Shade Falls open.substack.com/pub/caroli…

My home… was fortunate to grow up in such a beautiful, mystical, historic, and wonderful place with the nicest people in the US. Lots of challenges for the region in the present and future, but the Pee Dee will pull through.

Pull for the Pee Dee or pull the hell out! Baccer country. Swamp fox country. Where independence was won. The birthplace of American bbq. One of Earth’s last great places.

1 year of Carolina Ecology! open.substack.com/pub/caroli…

Soldat de la Résistance, militant et affranchi, écrivain et penseur du siècle, défenseur de la nature et des peuples, Edgar Morin était l’humanisme fait personne. Avec sa bienveillance, sa curiosité, il ne cessait de nous éclairer. Pensée complexe, vie féconde, esprit universel. J’adresse à ses proches les condoléances de la Nation.

Rest in peace, Edgar Morin, and know that you changed the world. Those of us who have studied his works under Prof. Kelly at @CIIS_SF will always be thankful and carry the flame he lit. nytimes.com/2026/05/30/world…

“The task is not to force metaphysics onto the beach. The task is to let the beach correct our metaphysics.” The Beach as Potency: Edith Stein, Children, and a Carolina Shore open.substack.com/pub/caroli…

“The Pee Dee is not a forgotten place. It’s a place many people have often chosen not to remember or perceive carefully.” New at Carolina Ecology: carolinaecology.com/p/an-eco…

""So maybe the practical question is not simply, “Did it rain?” Maybe the better question is, “Where did the rain go?” Did it run off a roof into a gutter and into a storm drain? Did it soak into the compacted lawn? Did it reach the roots of a tree? Did it enter Lawson’s Fork, the Pacolet, the Tyger, the Enoree, the Broad? Did it recharge groundwater? Did it carry oil, fertilizer, sediment, or trash? Did it fall too quickly to be received? Did it lower demand on a reservoir for a day while leaving the long deficit in place?"" When the Rain Comes open.substack.com/pub/caroli…

Comprehensive Exams Begin samharrelson.com/2026/05/21/…

The US Department of Energy just mapped every data center in America. This is what the AI power grid looks like. The dots are data centers. Yellow = operating. Orange = under construction. White = planned. The lines are high-voltage transmission 735kV, 500kV, 345kV the arteries that move electrons from generators to compute loads. Look at the density along the East Coast, Northern Virginia to the Carolinas. Then look at Texas. Then Northern California. The largest circles on this map represent facilities demanding over 5,000 MW of power. Single campuses pulling more electricity than mid-sized cities. Northern Virginia is so dense the dots overlap. Data centers cluster on transmission corridors. Not because land is cheap because power is available. When the line is full, the next data center goes somewhere else. The grid is the bottleneck. Every orange dot is a power purchase agreement being negotiated right now. Every white dot is a utility commission filing, a gas plant approval, a pipeline capacity booking. The $66.8 bn NextEra-Dominion deal, Meta's 10 new gas plants in Louisiana, the Alaska LNG FID push they all trace back to maps that look like this. AI infrastructure is built in substations, on transmission corridors, and at the end of gas pipelines. Link in the comments, to see my stocks 👇

The proposed @nexteraenergy - @DominionEnergy merger may become one of the largest utility deals in history. But its meaning will not be found only in market capitalization or shareholder ratios. Rather, that meaning will be found in how it reshapes the conditions of life and ecology across actual places. Including this one. When the Grid Becomes the Landscape open.substack.com/pub/caroli…

Another brick in the AI data center wall for our counties in South Carolina… NextEra Energy to Acquire Dominion, Creating a Utility Giant nytimes.com/2026/05/17/busin…

Displaced Forms: Assyrian Reliefs, Ecological Intentionality, and the Ethics of Perception samharrelson.com/2026/05/15/…

Amazon is asking permission to destroy 5 acres of wetlands and nearly 1 mile of streams as part of its resubmitted proposal to add 14 data center buildings at a third site at its sprawling New Carlisle, IN campus. Public comment is due June 12.

"The living world doesn’t move from scarcity to abundance in a straight line. It moves through entanglement. Moisture returns, and with it come both healing and vulnerability. We could learn something from that." carolinaecology.com/p/the-gr…