Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Coronavirus has put the kibosh on frivolous travel for the moment, but we might want to do some reflecting before returning to business as usual. Prior to the outbreak, you were constantly told to put on your traveling shoes, cue up some good music for a journey (no, not the band Journey), and pack your bags. But maybe this is the perfect time to start a new conversation about travel and begin aligning our actions with our values.
Replenishing and protecting the world’s soil carbon stores could help to offset up to 5.5bn tonnes of greenhouse gases every year, a study finds.
This is just under the current annual emissions of the US, the world’s second largest polluter after China.
Around 40% of this carbon offsetting potential would come from protecting existing soil carbon stores in the world’s existing forests, peatlands and wetlands, the authors say.
Artists are enlisted to help ‘deliver the message’ and ‘raise awareness’, as though art were a sophisticated extension of the PR department or a cheap alternative to an advertising agency. This is not only a misconception of what art is and what it’s good at, it’s also a misconception of the knowledge work that remains, when the scientists reach the end of their road.
The critical question is one the with which I began: OK, young’uns–is Joe Biden’s position on climate change good enough? Good enough that is for progressive Democrats and their supporters to endorse him and work actively between now and November to defeat Donald John Trump?
For the sake of the environment, I hope it is.
Is there any difference between the accidental but inevitable mass killing of dolphins by the fishing industry, and the deliberate annual massacre in Japan, that rightly causes such public outrage? If something is morally wrong, no amount of money can make it morally right. The slaughter of dolphins and other magnificent wildlife is, on any measure, morally wrong.
If you agree, there’s a simple answer. Stop buying fish.
You may have read that there are just eight, or 10, or 12 years to save the world from the climate crisis. There are not. It is already here, gaining strength every day as carbon emissions pour into the atmosphere. It is a slow-motion disaster. Action to avert the worst should have started last week, last year, last decade.
The tropical savannas of northern Australia are among the most fire-prone regions in the world. On average, they account for 70% of the area affected by fire each year in Australia.
But effective fire management over the past 20 years has reduced the annual average area burned – an area larger than Tasmania. The extent of this achievement is staggering, almost incomprehensible in a southern Australia context after the summer’s devastating bushfires.
Kunstler’s latest book is a welcome nonfiction follow-up to The Long Emergency titled Living in the Long Emergency. It profiles a handful of remarkable people from across America whose lifestyles embody what Kunstler refers to as “heroic adaptation.”
“Forty-eight billion trees may seem like a high number to reach but there’s a simple way to get there: just take the first step and keep going,” she writes in her most recent book To Speak for the Trees.
But planting native trees won’t do much good if we don’t stop current rates of deforestation in the Amazon and Boreal forests or reduce fossil fuel consumption at the same time.
Trump’s narcissism and lack of understanding of what has kept America great for over 240 years is possibly an even greater threat to the nation than climate change. In his three years in office, Trump and his administration have been sued hundreds of times—more than any other administration in history.
The biggest challenge with all these cases is the lack of high-quality habitat in the first place. Neither Gordon nor Young were particularly optimistic about using animal soundscapes as a panacea for an enormous, multifaceted problem.
For the first time in a very long time, a significant energy bill will be debated in the Senate during the week of March 1st. The legislation, The American Energy Innovation Act (AEIA, S. 2657), is the product of a collaboration between Senators Murkowski (R-AK) and Joe Manchin (D-WV).
