In The News

4 Foods That Are Eating the World’s Forests and How to Choose Better

Kate Good March 11, 2015
Modern farming techniques, relied upon for a growing population that is also wealthier, can be hard on the environment. “Where traditional agriculture favors growing a diverse set of crops and rotating them according to soil needs, our current system of food production is centered around monoculture crops that rely on chemical fertilizers and pesticides to grow,” notes Kate Good writing in One...

Can Cities Change Earth's Evolution?

Adam Frank March 9, 2015
Organisms adapt slowly to changes in their environment, with new traits developing over the course of many years. Now researchers hope to speed the process, at least with urbanization, described as among the most extreme forms of an environment altered by its inhabitants. “Eco-evolutionary dynamics in a rapidly urbanizing world is the subject of a new paper by Marina Alberti, a professor at the...

Climate Change Driving Brutal Winter?

Kirk Moore February 25, 2015
Frigid temperatures delight those who deny climate change, but the long-term outlook is unnerving. “Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis and colleagues link that wavy jet stream to a warming Arctic, where climate changes near the top of the world are happening faster than in Earth’s middle latitudes,” reports Kirk Moore for Rutgers Today. The melting Arctic is forcing upper...

Mission Impossible

February 13, 2015
Cleanup of the Fukushima nuclear plant, after three of four reactors went into meltdown, following an earthquake, tsunami and flooding in March 2011 is posing unprecedented engineering challenges, reports the Economist. Decommissioning could take more than four decades as engineers scramble to invent new technology and methods for handling the massive cleanup: They constructed a frozen wall of...

Earth's Dashboard Is Flashing Red – Are Enough People Listening?

Dennis Dimick February 4, 2015
The year 2014 was the warmest on record, and evidence that human activity contributes to climate change is overwhelming. A Pew Research Center survey suggests only half of Americans accept evidence that carbon trapped in the atmosphere is putting the planet under stress, writes Dennis Dimick for National Geographic: “We are burning record levels of coal, oil, and natural gas to fuel modern...

European Union Tries Rebooting the Economy

Joergen Oerstroem Moeller January 27, 2015
The European Central Bank announced dramatic expansion of its monetary stimulus plan to purchase asset-backed securities and bonds through September 2016 for a total of at least €1 trillion On the surface, the move has similarities to US stimulus measures in play since late 2008, with the US Federal Reserve purchasing billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities, bank debt and treasury notes...

US Congress Blocks World Bank Move to Slash Safeguards

January 16, 2015
The US Congress has inserted a provision in an appropriations act that requires greater “protection for the environment or for human rights than the bank’s current safeguards,” reports Environment News Service. The United States is the largest contributor for World Bank operations, and the measure formalizes criticism about the World Bank’s 2014 proposal on environmental and social safeguards: “...