Rachel Carson's Legacy
When Rachel Carson testified before the Senate in 1963 she was roundly hailed, as Harriet Beecher Stowe had been by Abraham Lincoln, as "the little lady who started it all." Carson's huge 1962...
View ArticleCan There Be a Positive Prognosis for Climate Negotiations?
I'm writing this brief essay on board my flight to the USA from Europe (where I participated in a workshop at the Center for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim, Germany). It was an...
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Climate Change Damages Are Happening Now & More Severe Impacts Are Coming if...
The climate science community released its second new consensus report documenting the impacts of climate change in communities around the world, both now and in the future. This report follows on the...
View ArticleThe Costs of Carbon Pollution Are Clear
The new report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the world's preeminent group of climate scientists -- represents even more definitive evidence of the growing urgency to...
View ArticleThe Oso Mudlside: Why Do We Live in Harm's Way?
More than 20 people are dead and at least 30 are missing and presumed dead after a huge hillside of mud and clay and rock collapsed and slid down into their little village of Oso in western Washington....
View ArticleDown a Desolate Hallway, Eddie's Ghost Lingers Still
The Copenhagen Zoo shotgunned to death a young giraffe named Marius a couple of weeks ago, cut it up and allowed children to watch as the zoo's big cats ate the creature. It was a real teaching moment....
View ArticleStrategic Oil
The post-World War II global industrial expansion has been based primarily on technology and the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels and other natural resources. These two forces have driven our...
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Beautiful Sunsets (and Sunrises) in Art
Many people have, over the years, told me that I shouldn't judge a book by its cover. But no one ever told me that I shouldn't judge a sunset (or sunrise) by its beauty. After all these years, a group...
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What YOU Can Do About Climate Change : Divest, Invest, Talk and VOTE (DITV)
I'm guessing that you and the average people who glance at the headlines about the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (this is a good recap) are going to react at some level with,...
View ArticleThe Gift of the Forest: Jane Goodall at 80
Jane Goodall's vision for her life began to form at the age of five when she hid in a chicken coop to see if she could discover "where on a chicken was there an opening big enough for an egg to come...
View Article5 Things to Know About How Climate Change Impacts the World
Today leading science experts released the latest United Nations report on the impacts of climate change around the world. As the Associated Press reported: "The big risks and overall effects of global...
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Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Lab Opens in Mozambique (PHOTOS)
Professor Edward O. Wilson, a man heralded by the National Geographic Society as 'the greatest naturalist of our time', has lent his name and vision to a premier biodiversity research facility in...
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Why Do We Write About Cities?
When we write about cities, sometimes we do best when we take the metrics away. In 2011, amid a visit to San Francisco and just back from Africa, I offered some thoughts about why we write about...
View ArticleLatinos Benefit From Green Jobs: Dirty Energy Industry Looks Green With Envy
We are in the midst of an epidemic of devastating oil and coal spills. In recent weeks, we have witnessed oil spills in the Mississippi River, on the Galveston, TX, coast and in Lake Michigan, among...
View ArticleClimate Risks and Opportunities
Do people really "wake up" to warnings as a result of other people telling them to? Does hearing about the threat of a catastrophic future inspire us to do something about it? For the most part, the...
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Foul Air in the Frack Zone: Touring the Fayetteville Shale, Arkansas
The couple, married for decades, looked out along a rural dirt road that was home to no fewer than 27 fracked natural gas wells. Shaking their heads, they said they suffer from headaches, nosebleeds,...
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Hundreds Walk Out for Climate Justice, Call for Leadership From Massachusetts...
image credit: JP Lowenthal On Monday, several hundred students and adults walked out of class and work to call for climate leadership from Governor Deval Patrick. The action was organized primarily by...
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I Thought the World Would Stop Turning When I Left Home to Go Travel
As I bushwhacked my bicycle over shards of glass alongside train tracks over a Tasmanian bridge, I cursed my cousin, best friend and former roommate's dog. My cousin is graduating from law school next...
View ArticleCalifornia Can Save Orca Whales
Monday, the International Marine Mammal Project of Earth Island Institute, the Free Willy Keiko Foundation and I announced our support for Assemblymember Richard Bloom's AB 2140, the Orca Welfare and...
View ArticleThe Heat Is On!
There are two things everyone talks about: politics and the weather. Unfortunately, neither of them have very good news these days. People have probably heard more than enough about global warming --...
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