EcocentricUncategorized
Remember the Pakistan floods? The floods that killed nearly 2000 people this summer, left over seven million people —roughly the population of the greater San Francisco area—homeless, and destroyed nearly five million acres of agricultural land? The story has inevitably receded from the international spotlight, as natural disaster …
EcocentricWildlife
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is no one’s idea of an environmentalist. Putting aside his more general authoritarian tendencies, TIME’s 2007 Person of the Year has squeezed the space for civil society to operate, including in Russia’s nascent environmental movement. He’s favored the exploitation of Russia’s bountiful …
EcocentricGreen Products
Part of the challenge of the environmental movement in the developed world is to get people to look more deeply into their lifestyles and consumer choices: to see, for example, that cellophane-wrapped beef probably comes from a cow that fed on grain grown on land cleared of rain forest, which accelerates climate change.
But while …
EcocentricPsychology
Over on the mainpage, I have a Going Green column on a forthcoming psychology study that found that news articles and other messages that emphasize the scariest, most catastrophic possible impacts of global warming actually increase climate change skepticism, not the other way around. You can read about it here, and for more detail check …
EcocentricPolitics
I spent the first couple of days this week at the Governors Global Climate Summit at the University of California in Davis, where outgoing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger presided over his third gathering of regional and local leaders interested in action on global warming. (Full disclosure: I moderated two panels at the summit.) I …
EcocentricWildlife
The beleaguered bluefin was dealt another blow this week when the European Union, under pressure from France, Spain, Italy and Malta, all of which have a stake in the lucrative tuna fishery, backed down from lobbying for slashing quotas of the eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna at talks this week in Paris.
The EU fisheries commissioner …
EcocentricHealth
Family planning, an important but often overlooked idea in the expanding arsenal of policy needed to address global warming, is the subject of a new report released by the Worldwatch Institute this week. It’s not a new concept — the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change considers population growth to be one of …
EcocentricTransportation
When executives from General Motors visited the trading floors of JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley—the two firms handling the auto company’s initial public offering—they were given a standing ovation from the bankers. Maybe the rest of us should join in. Less than a year and a half after the company declared bankruptcy and …
EcocentricUncategorized
The NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles are developing a new source of energy—and it’s not just hooking up wires to red-hot quarterback Michael Vick. The team announced today that it will be installing 2,500 solar panels, 80 20-ft high wind turbines and a generator that runs on natural gas and biodiesel, making its home park Lincoln …
EcocentricOil
It’s only been seven months since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill began, but doesn’t it feel so much longer? Maybe it’s the accelerated pace of modern media, which I attribute to Politico, Twitter or too easy access to Monster energy drinks. The offshore drilling industry is still complaining about government attempts at …
