Despite near-unanimous global scientific and governmental consensus that global warming is accelerating due to human activity, debating this fact is still a favorite political pastime in the United States. Governments around the world acknowledge the science that connects industrialization, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and their detrimental impact on the climate, and are currently acting upon solutions. Yet the US, one of the largest greenhouse gas … Read More
SALON– In our globalized world, old-fashioned geography is not supposed to count for much: mountain ranges, deep-water ports, railroad grades — those seem so nineteenth century. The earth is flat, or so I remember somebody saying. But those nostalgic for an earlier day, take heart. The Obama administration is making its biggest decisions yet on our energy future and those … Read More
AL JAZEERA– As climate change negotiations come to a close in Cancun, Birginia Suarez-Pinlac is seeing red. The environmental lawyer from the Philippines is worried that a plan for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) constitutes a land grab, transferring natural wealth from the poor to the rich under the auspices of saving the planet. Last year, she says, an Australian coal company … Read More
GUARDIAN– It is generally acknowledged that a warming world will harm the world’s forests. Higher temperatures mean water becomes more scarce, spelling death for plants – or perhaps not always. According to a study of ancient rainforests, trees may be hardier than previously thought. Carlos Jaramillo, a scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), examined pollen from ancient plants … Read More
NEW YORK TIMES– Hollywood has a thing for Al Gore and his three-alarm film on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which won an Academy Award for best documentary. So do many environmentalists, who praise him as a visionary, and many scientists, who laud him for raising public awareness of climate change. But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In … Read More
