My heart aches for the people of West, Texas, the tiny town where a fertilizer plant recently blew up. Many of the folks who perished in the blast were heroic volunteer firefighters who ran into danger instead of away from it. With 14 dead and 200 injured, and a nearby nursing …
As you may know, we’ve restarted our climate crisis writing here at La Maison, beginning with this piece, a global warming picture “from 10,000 feet”: The climate crisis in three easy charts There we took the long view and noticed that the big temperature spike in the early days of the Cambrian, some …
Thanks to humankind’s enormous consumption of fossil fuels over the last century and its refusal to bring down carbon emissions, a new study says that 50,000 of the world’s common plant and animals species are now at severe risk of losing their natural habitat in the coming decades. Scientists from Australia, the …
It’s not enough to point out that our political system is completely corrupted by money, including money from coal and oil and nukes and gas. Of course it is. And if we had direct democracy, polls suggest we would be investing in green energy. But saying the right thing to …
Many entrepreneurs claim that they care about sustainability, yet they make decisions that are harmful to the environment. Economic researchers from Germany and the USA have discovered that many bosses do indeed have firm convictions when it comes to the environment – but that they then unconsciously disengage their values …
Climate change and weather-related disasters forced over 31 million people to flee their homes in 2012, according to a new report, offering a grim look at what the future holds as climate-related disasters are set to rise. According to the assessment released Monday from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), disasters displaced 32.4 …
An environmentally friendly, healthy food source might be lurking in your backyard right now. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) issued a report on Monday, Edible insects: Future prospects for food and feed security, describing how insects are an untapped resource for food. They’re healthy, environmentally friendly—in contrast to greenhouse gas-emitting livestock …
UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 9 2013 (IPS) - Toxic waste sites in 31 countries are damaging the brains of nearly 800,000 children and impairing the health of millions of people in the developing world, two new studies have found. Toxins and pollutants in the environment are major sources of illness and reduced …
LONDON, May 6 (Reuters Point Carbon) – The world’s nations must scrap fossil fuel subsidies and put a price on emitting carbon dioxide if the planet is to avoid dangerous climate change, according to the president of the World Bank. The two measures are part of a five-point plan that …
A new study published in the current issue of Science suggests that an ice-free Arctic may very well become a reality in the near future. The research team set out to study Lake El’gygytgyn, “Lake E” for short, which was formed 3.6 million years ago when a meteorite hit earth. …
The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years. Scientific instruments showed that the gas had reached an average daily level above 400 parts per million …
Just over a week ago, my Twitter feed started getting bombarded with links to the latest — and quite possibly the scummiest — Planet Money/This American Life propaganda piece on NPR for the financial industry, disguised as highbrow progressive journalism. The piece was called “Unfit For Work: The Startling Rise of …
More than 70 years ago, a chemical attack was launched against Washington State and Nevada. It poisoned people, animals, everything that grew, breathed air, and drank water. The Marshall Islands were also struck. This formerly pristine Pacific atoll was branded “the most contaminated place in the world.” As their cancers …
Two-thirds of all forest inventory plots in the Northeast and Midwestern United States contain at least one non-native plant species, a new U.S. Forest Service study found. The study across two dozen states from North Dakota to Maine can help land managers pinpoint areas on the landscape where invasive plants …
Why do some of the largest environmental organizations still invest in fossil fuels? As outlined in my new piece,Time for Big Green to go Fossil Free, organizations such as The Nature Conservancy and the Wildlife Conservation Society aren’t taking the simple step of divesting their large endowments and publicly traded …