Back in October, I wrote about how the British government plans to sell off a large chunk of the country’s public forests. But like Birnim Wood rising up against Macbeth, the British public has so savagely attacked the plans that it now looks like the government might back down.
Why the Food Movement Is Becoming an Environmental Force
Over on the Time.com mainpage, I have my weekly Going Green column, this time on the rise of the food movement. It was inspired by the TEDx Manhattan conference on sustainable food that I attended over the weekend, and specifically by something said by Brian Halweil—a senior fellow at the Worldwatch Institute and the publisher and …
Food in China: Weather, Wheat and Worry
China is a nation of superlatives, and its role in weather manipulation is no exception. Beijing runs the world’s largest program in cloud seeding – the process of imbuing clouds with silver iodide to generate precipitation, usually in times of drought. China rolled out its cloud seeding technology to clear the skies of dust and …
Politics: Obama’s Budget Giveth and Taketh from Energy and the Environment
It’s Budget Day in Washington, when policy wonks break out the calculators that have the “trillions” button and decide whether we’ll have six more weeks of winter, or six decades more of crippling budget deficits. Actually, today is the day President Obama released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2012, which you can explore in …
Wolverines Besieged by a Warming Climate
The University of Michigan’s mascot is the wolverine—a pretty good symbol for teams that want to terrify their foes. Real wolverines are the largest members of the weasel family, about as big as a medium-size dog, with a reputation for strength and ferocity.
But there aren’t any wolverines left in the Wolverine State. The last …
Energy: Why Biofuels Help Push Up Food Prices
Over on the Time.com mainpage, I have a piece about the connection between biofuels and rising global food prices, which hit a record level in January. The math is pretty simple—with 40% of the country’s corn crop going to ethanol, and palm oil plantations around the world displacing farms for biodiesel production, biofuels do exert an …
Politics: It’s Not Just Republicans Who Anger Greens. Obama Can Do It Too
I’ve written more than a few posts recently highlighting Republican opposition to action on climate change and the party’s efforts to dismantle environmental regulations. But while the GOP has been out front targeting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Obama Administration hasn’t escaped blame from environmentalists for …
Climate: A New Study Finds That Global Warming Could Dry Out the Southwest
It’s not the heat that might get us with climate change—it’s the humidity, so to speak. The risk of sea level rise due to melting land ice is one of the most recognized—if controversial and hard to predict—threats posed by global warming. Other potential impacts from global warming include increasingly powerful storms and …
Washington Will at Last Regulate Fish Farms
Chances are pretty good that the last fish you ate never saw a river or the open ocean. That’s because the U.S. imports 84% of the 5 billion lbs. of seafood we consume each year and more than half of that is raised on fish farms and other aquaculture operations. The U.S., however, has not gotten invested in the aquaculture game as …
Bangladesh Climate Migration Happening — Now
I’m in Dhaka this week, where I have been doing some work between my long hours becoming intimate with the Bangladeshi capital’s epic traffic. The traffic here — an unholy tangle of rickshaws, auto-rickshaws, buses, trucks, cars and motorbikes — puts everything I have seen in Jakarta, India, Bangkok and Los Angeles (please!) to …