The High Winds, 8th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Castor): Not to sound like Debbie Downer, but the overdrawn, polluted, fragmented, and invaded freshwater ecosystems across the country are in crisis. Marine and terrestrial ecosystems are also degraded, with reduced biodiversity. An estimated 34 percent of our country's plant species and 40 percent of its animal species are at risk of extinction. Human pressures are diminishing the clean water, food, health, livelihoods, and protection from storms and fire that healthy natural systems can provide.  

So the National Nature Assessment was set to say in a first-of-its-kind assessment of the health of nature in the United States. The assessment had started on Earth Day, 2022, when President Biden signed an executive order authorizing the report, but in January 2025, weeks away from completion of a first full draft of the assessment, the Stable Genius disbanded the effort. However, the researchers went ahead and completed it on their own and released a 868-page draft last week as the Nature Record, a new name to reflect a new, independent effort. 

The draft will be reviewed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the same organization that would have reviewed the report had it remained under the auspices of the federal government.

The assessment was completed by about 125 researchers who were not federal employees, mostly working on a voluntary basis. The report primarily synthesizes existing research, so its individual findings are not new but rather a scientific consensus by which policymakers and the public can make informed decisions.

In addition to canceling the nature report, the Stable Genius has also taken aim at national climate assessments, which are mandated by Congress and have been published since 2000. He dismissed the authors and instead released a separate report by the Department of Energy that downplayed the threat of climate change. Scientists condemned that report, and in January, a judge ruled that the way the it had been commissioned by the government had violated the law.

Not reporting problems doesn't make them go away. If anything, willful ignorance of problems only allows them to fester and get worse. But I'm getting the distinct impression that the Stable Genius isn't interested in solving problems.