Environmental Visionaries | New England’s Gifts

If the earth could speak, it might offer words of gratitude to New England for inspiring the most persuasive environmental voices the nation has ever known.  Perhaps, as some fear, the tipping point of the earth’s warming has already been reached—but that hasn’t silenced the indefatigable Bill McKibben, ardent environmentalist and lucid writer, who from his Vermont home in 2007 launched 350.org, a worldwide organizing effort to galvanize political action on climate change. He’s the latest in a lineage that began with Thoreau’s dictum that “in Wildness is the preservation of the world” (“Walking,” 1862), followed by George Perkins Marsh’s book, Man and Nature (1864), called “the fountainhead of the conservation movement.” And then there was Rachel Carson, lover of the Maine coast, who upon learning from a friend on Cape Cod about the death of many birds there, researched DDT and other insecticides and pushed through illness to write Silent Spring. Her courage and her words catalyzed the modern environmental movement. “There would be no future peace for me if I kept silent,” she wrote in a letter. The noise she started has never been more needed than today. 

Mel Allen

Now editor at large, Mel Allen's first byline in Yankee appeared in 1977 and he joined the staff in 1979 as a senior editor. Eventually he became executive editor and led the staff as editor from 2006 to 2025. During his career he has edited and written for every section of the magazine, including home, food, and travel, while his pursuit of long-form storytelling has always been vital to his mission as well. He has raced a sled dog team, crawled into the dens of black bears, fished with the legendary Ted Williams, profiled astronaut Alan Shephard, and stood beneath a battleship before it was launched. He also once helped author Stephen King round up his pigs for market, but that story is for another day. Mel is author of Here in New England: Unforgettable Stories of People, Places, and Memories That Connect Us All (Earth Sky + Water LLC, 2025).

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