Upwards of 80% of people living in the United States are advocates for climate education, with “more than three out of every four Americans [wanting] schools to teach children about global warming.” However, according to the 2021 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) report, Cambodia ranks as the leading country in climate education, with the Dominican Republic […]
Tag: environment
Where Does “Where the Crawdads Sing” Come From?
——— History of Things ——— Any decent murder mystery should begin with a dead body in the woods. That’s how this one starts. In 1994, park scouts shot a man dead in the empty woodlands of North Luangwa National Park, a Zambian nature preserve about the size of Delaware. Squadrons wielded their rifles at the man and […]
CA Isn’t Ready to Close Its Last Nuclear Power Plant— But It Can’t Stay Open
On the first of February, 79 top energy experts signed an open letter to Governor Gavin Newsom, urging him to halt the decommission of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, California’s very last operational source of nuclear power. The group behind this letter includes dozens of prominent energy executives, professors from Berkeley, MIT, Stanford and more, […]
Guatemalan Maya Take the Country to Court
On February 9, Indigenous elder Rodrigo Tot testified before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) on behalf of Agua Caliente, a Q’eqchi’ Maya community. For the first time in history, in Maya Q´eqchi´ Indigenous Community of Agua Caliente v. Guatemala, Guatemala is facing judgment in international court for violating Indigenous collective land rights. The […]
What Lead’s Rise and Fall Can Teach Us About Microplastic Pollution
We have reached a point in our planet’s history where what we do will have effects that may outlast us entirely. In the relatively short amount of time humans have been catastrophically polluting, we have had several moments where we realized our harmful effects were too great and needed to be resolved. Those moments are […]
The Earth is Begging for a Carbon Border Tax
In 2015, the US signed on to the Paris Agreement, vowing to work towards a goal of reducing global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels, by 2100. Scientists argue that even this increase is too high, ideally it should be below 1 degree. But, as of right now, we are on […]
What Debt-for-Nature Could Mean For Developing Countries
In 1842, Charles Darwin referred to the Belize Barrier Reef as “the most remarkable reef in the West Indies.” With its gleaming turquoise waters, verdant clusters of mangroves and rainbow of brightly-colored coral rising from the seafloor, it is plain to see why. In addition to its aesthetic appeal, the site is home to multiple […]
Climate Change Fatalism: The Nail in the Coffin for a Dying Planet
“After 30 years of intensive climate science research, we have sufficient knowledge about our climate system and how it interacts with atmospheric emissions. But our knowledge about how people respond to climate science has been lagging behind.” – Per Espen Stoknes The planet is dying. Or more accurately, humanity’s chance at long-term survival on the […]
Sarah Edwards and Beyond: Building Cities That Are Safer For Women
3rd March 2021 was not a peculiar day for most living in South London. It was yet another day of lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic mandated by the Boris Johnson government. A woman was walking home at night from a friend’s house in Clapham Common. She went missing on the same night. Six days later, […]
The Lasting Harms of Toxic Exposure in Native American Communities
“They never told us uranium was dangerous. We washed our faces in it. We drank in it. We ate in it. It was sweet,” explained Cecilia Joe, an 85-year-old Navajo woman, in a recent interview. Joe’s experience illustrates the under-researched but extremely pervasive problem of environmental injustice on Native American reservations. Due to decades of […]