There are a lot of perks that come with being a primate. You get to be smart. You get to be social. You get to have opposable thumbs — which are very handy things to have. Most of all, you get to keep living even during hard times. If the history of humans indicates anything, it’s that we’re survivors, and a new study is showing just …
Conservation
The End of Cheap Coal?
As early as the mid-1990s energy forecasters warned about the demise of cheap oil. But was the world overlooking a potentially larger problem: the end of cheap coal?
Last Chance To Save The Wild Tiger
Later this month, heads of state and diplomats from 11 countries will meet in St. Petersburg, Russia for a “tiger summit” to discuss how to stop tigers from going extinct.
It’s the first time heads of state have gathered for a meeting about a single species. But to many conservationists, the meeting shouldn’t have been needed at all.
Tuna on Trial: The Dark Side of the Bluefin Tuna Market
All along the northern coast of Sicily there is evidence of organized crime: empty tonnaros, or tuna canneries, that went out of business last century when the massive blue fin tunas they hauled from the Mediterranean for generations finally disappeared. Sicily’s ghostly tonnaros may not have much to do with the Corleones or the
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The Green Cost of The New Great Game
In 2007, James Graff wrote a cover story for TIME that looked at the new “great game” developing in the arctic. Global warming is melting the arctic ice cap, opening a scramble for control of a short passage between Asia and Europe. But now a new study has underlined how the new great game may come with a high ecological cost.
Will Britain sell off its public forests?
One of the major environmental challenges today is the task of convincing many developing economies in the tropics to protect their forests. But some countries up north in the developed world may soon understand how difficult it can be to strike a balance between economic pressures and arboreal conservation, at least according to a …
Wildlife: Putting a (Very High) Price on Nature
Can you put a price on a tree? How about a babbling brook? Or an unspoiled mountain vista?
It turns out you can—and this is not a Mastercard commercial. Early this morning at the Nagoya meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the United Nations released The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study, one …
Wildlife: Swapping Debt for Nature in Costa Rica
It’s an undeniable fact—the most complete rainforests and the richest biodiversity on the planet tends to be concentrated in some of the poorest countries. Madagascar, Suriname, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Micronesia, Belize, Costa Rica—all tropical nations that are gifted with astounding natural beauty, but which also …
Hundreds Die of Lead Poisoning in Nigeria
These days, environmentalism has become synonymous with the fight against climate change. But good green campaigners know that more immediate environmental challenges still exist.
That reality hit home yesterday when the United Nations said it will send an emergency team to Nigeria, after 200 children died in an outbreak of lead …
Chocolate Potentially Made Safe From Climate Change:YIPEEE!!!!
An environmental breakthrough has never sounded so….delicious. Today, candy giant Mars Inc, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and IBM announced that they have mapped a preliminary genome sequence for the cacao plant, which produces the crucial ingredient for making chocolate, and placed it in the public domain.