Last year’s record heat was fueled by a combination of the effects of global warming and one of the strongest El Niño events on record since at least 1950. (Photo: Project LM/flickr/cc) ‘The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle. They are playing out before us, in real time’ By Nadia Prupis / 08.02.2016[…]
Southern California’s years-long drought has resulted in one of the “most extreme” wildfires the region has ever seen. (Photo: Nick Ut/AP) As wildfire rages in California, flooding affects millions in India and China, and eggs are fried on sidewalks in Iraq, scientists say global climate catastrophe is surpassing predictions By Nika Knight / 07.27.2016 Record[…]
Tourists flock to Lower Yosemite Falls in Yosemite National Park on a spring afternoon. Photo by Eddie Hernandez Photography / iStock. By Heather J. Hansen / 06.03.2016 This year marks the centennial of the National Park Service, and record numbers of visitors are expected to celebrate by exploring the system’s incomparable natural, historical, and cultural resources. All[…]
Corals north of Cairns have been hit hardest by the recent bleaching. AAP Image/ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Kerry By Dr. Mia Hoogenboom Senior Lecturer, Marine Biology and Aquaculture James Cook University The problems caused by mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef have continued to deepen, with the latest estimates based[…]
Kudremukh National Park, India Valuing nature’s bounty and accounting for it on the balance sheets of companies and nations. CK Staff / 05/25/2016 New legislation approved in May by lawmakers in India’s lower house, the House of the People, would allocate $6.2 billion (U.S.) to building new forests across India. The Compensatory Afforestation Fund Bill[…]
City parks are prime real estate for community gardens, but more unique urban agriculture options are gaining popularity. / Mosman Council / flickr By Jennifer Brooks In 2014, Boise was chosen as one of 15 communities to receive the Darden Foundation/NRPA partnership’s Grow Your Garden grant, a $10,000 award for community garden development in existing city parks.[…]
An 1858 woodcut celebrating the laying of the transatlantic telegraph cable. (Library of Congress) By Ben Wilson / 05.22.2016 There is something wonderfully seductive about our gadgets. Sleek and futuristic, they seem not of this world – and certainly not of the toxic, noisy world of extractive rock mining. Few think of the ecological impact[…]
Photo © iStockphoto.com/Andrey Danilovich Marine governance favors consumption and commerce over conservation. Here’s what we can do about it. By Liza Gross / 05.23.2016 When New England fishers complained of working harder and harder to catch fewer and fewer fish, Spencer Baird assembled a scientific team to investigate. Though a fishery failure would once have[…]
Credit: NASA/Flickr It will take at least three decades to completely leave behind fossil fuels. But we can do it. The first step is to start with the easy stuff. By Richard Heinberg If our transition to renewable energy is successful, we will achieve savings in the ongoing energy expenditures needed for economic production. We[…]
Illustration by Kelsey King By Dr. Philip Loring Ecological Anthropologist University of Saskatchewan It goes without saying that humans are good at causing problems. Climate change, overfishing and widespread environmental contamination from chemical toxicants are all creations of our own making. But are we destined to create such problems? Many people believe so, and argue[…]
The Portland, Oregon school district’s commitment to rid itself of text materials that encourage students to doubt the severity of the climate crisis or its roots in human activity was prompted by the school district’s long use of materials that do just that. (Image: Patheos.com) Portland, Oregon schools call for climate justice and student activism[…]
Water trickles out of the Glen Canyon Dam into Glen Canyon in a scene from “Damnation”, a documentary film directed by Ben Knight and Travis Rommel. / Ben Knight, Patagonia Killing to Colorado – the truth behind the water crisis in the West. The water crisis in the West has renewed debate about the effectiveness[…]
Montreal gears up for battle over proposed bottled water ban CK Staff / 05.13.2016 Fresh off his successful push to ban plastic bags by 2018, Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre has expressed interest in a potential ban on bottled water. “We spoke about plastic bags and now we’re onto plastic bottles,” Coderre told reporters in March.[…]
Abebe Haregewoin (right) and his father in Ethiopia. Credit: Courtesy: Abebe Haregewoin An Ethiopian expat worries for his homeland as drought and climate change threaten to trigger another famine. By Joyce Hackel at Public Radio International The place where you grew up has a way of staying with you for the rest of your life.[…]
By Timothy McGrath We spend a lot of time worrying about endangered species, especially the cute and cool ones like foxes and bears and big cats. Well, where do you think all those cute and cool guys live? They live in places: glorious, complex, living, beautiful places. The species of the world couldn’t live without[…]
Carbon farming techniques, including compost amending, are helping California ranchers turn their pastures into carbon sinks. Photo courtesy Michael Woolsey/Marin Agricultural Land Trust. By Sally Neas / 04.29.2016 For many climate change activists, the latest rallying cry has been, “Keep it in the ground,” a call to slow and stop drilling for fossil fuels. But[…]
“Loss of oxygen in the oceans is one of the serious side effects of a warming atmosphere, and a major threat to marine life,” said NCAR scientist Matthew Long. (Photo: Jon Wiley/flickr/cc) Widespread deoxygenation is possible between 2030 and 2040, study finds By Deirdre Fulton / 04.28.2016 Imperiling fish, crabs, squid, sea stars, and myriad[…]
Nature Conservancy of Tennessee’s William B. Clark, Sr., Nature Preserve on the Wolf River at Rossville, Tennessee. What’s the best way to conserve wild places? By Marc Gunther / 04.22.2016 Several years ago, at Brainstorm Green, a conference on business and the environment that I co-chaired for Fortune magazine, Rick Ridgeway of Patagonia (the company)[…]
This Earth Day, NASA is giving the world an insider’s look into the myriad activities the space agency conducts in a typical day to study and protect our home planet. And — we’re asking the world to share your Earth Day with us. On April 22, NASA will post about 200 images across nearly 100[…]
“High temperatures are also accompanied by weak winds, causing the atmosphere to stagnate. So the air just cooks and ozone levels can build up,” said Loretta J. Mickley, a co-author of the study. Pictured is the smog that sometimes blankets Los Angeles. Photo by Rovert S. Donovan/Flickr Unhealthy ozone days could increase by more than[…]
By Cristina Silva / 04.21.2016 Billionaire businessmen Charles and David Koch are reportedly funneling money toward a special-interest group trying to defeat an effort to ban uranium mining around the Grand Canyon, the Phoenix New Times reported this week. The uranium mining ban that would grant federal protection to 1.7 million acres of land in the Grand Canyon[…]
Winnemem Wintu Chief Caleen Sisk leads a sunrise prayer ceremony at Mt. Shasta in California. All photos by Christopher McLeod. All around the world, sites sacred to indigenous people are besieged by mining, tourism, and other threats. Meet the groups safeguarding and restoring them. By Christopher “Toby” McCleod Sacred Land Film Project Director Back in the[…]
Bleaching occurs when overly warm ocean waters cause coral to expel the algae living inside of it, which turns the coral white and erodes its structures. (Photo: XL Catlin Seaview Survey) By Nadia Prupis / 04.20.2016 More than 90 percent of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is suffering some level of coral bleaching and will[…]
Illustration © iStockphoto.com/traffic_analyzer Instead of engineering nature into standardized systems of production, we should look for ways to integrate our lifestyles within the cycles of the world around us. By Dr. Philip Loring Assistant Professor School of Environment and Sustainability University of Saskatchewan Limits to growth are a fundamental and widely accepted principle of sustainability.[…]
HVAC ventilation exhaust for a 12-story building Building healthier structures for their occupants is a cornerstone of green building design, but isn’t talked about much. By Kerry Freek / 04.14.2016 Green buildings are attractive to owners for a few reasons. They’re great for reducing one’s carbon footprint and improving public relations, but they also offer[…]
By K. Jan Oosthoek Associate Member, Centre for Environmental History Australian National University First Published on Environment History Resources Introduction The Environment has been a prominent part of the political agenda since the 1960s. The expansion of the consumer society after the Second World War in North America and Europe increased the pressure on the environment[…]
A coffee farmer works with tree seedlings in Chiapas, Mexico. Starting on National Coffee Day (September 29), Starbucks will donate 70 cents (the cost of a tree) to Conservation International for every bag of coffee sold at participating stores in the U.S. and Canada — funds that will provide trees directly to coffee farmers in[…]
Jeffrey Brewer, screening soil from the depression for lithic, ceramic or faunal (bone) material. By Dawn Fuller University of Cincinnati University of Cincinnati research at the ancient Maya site of Medicinal Trail in northwestern Belize is revealing how populations in more remote areas – the hinterland societies – built reservoirs to conserve water and turned[…]
By Juan Lopez / 04.05.2016 This may sound like the rant of a half-crazed street-corner preacher prophesying the end of the world, but a takeover of the presidency by the Republicans in November and their retention of a majority in Congress could set our nation and the globe on a potentially catastrophic course. Right now,[…]
Photo by Kjetil Alsvik / Statoil ASA Elizabeth Finkel Belinda Smith Editor’s note: This feature was adapted and reprinted with permission from Cosmos magazine. View the original here. Mention “carbon capture and storage” — the process of trapping carbon dioxide produced in fossil-fuel burning or other industrial processes and burying it underground — in polite[…]