In The News

A Syrian Lesson for India

Nayan Chanda September 11, 2013
The United Nations monitors global weather conditions, population growth, security and refugee populations, and the trends are interconnected in many complex ways. In Syria, severe drought between 2006 and 2010 turned more than half the land into desert, contributing to a vicious civil war: Drought and water shortages led to unemployment, forcing hundreds of thousands into Syria’s cities – many...

Botanical Bandits: Rampant Poaching Threatens Ginseng’s Survival

Jake Frankel September 9, 2013
The delicate plant with tiny red berries has drawn thousands of scavengers to Appalachia forests, digging up roots of the ginseng plant, wiping out entire groves, for sale to Asian markets. “[W]ith wild ginseng root fetching upward of $800 a pound, untold numbers of poachers have taken to local forests, overwhelming meager law enforcement resources and leaving the plant’s survival in doubt,”...

Shale Energy No Quick Solution

Deepak Gopinath September 3, 2013
Innovations in drilling and hydraulic fracture technologies have opened new supplies of shale oil and gas for the United States, and other countries are intrigued. The United States anticipates energy independence, but the “shale boom may be more short-lived than many had expected, and shale’s global potential may also be overstated,” writes Deepak Gopinath, an independent economist based in New...

The Day the Earth Ran Out

Carter Roberts August 23, 2013
Earth’s natural resources, whether water or precious metals, are limited. Global Footprint Network calculates the day each year when demand for resources exceeds the ability to renew them in one year. “Earth Overshoot Day is an approximation, but it is yet one more sign that humanity is consuming the planet’s finite resources at an unsustainable rate,” reports Carter Roberts, World Wildlife Fund...

The Decline of Renewable Energy

Bjørn Lomborg August 21, 2013
The world is stalled in developing renewable energy. Countries have invested more than $1 trillion over the last decade in developing renewable energies, which represent about 13 percent of all world energy in 2011 – about the same share as in 1971 – explains Bjørn Lomborg for Project Syndicate. “The vast majority comes from biomass, or wood and plant material – humanity’s oldest energy source,”...

Rise in Violence “Linked to Climate Change”

Rebecca Morelle August 5, 2013
Shifts in temperature or rainfall are correlated with a rise in assaults, rapes, murders and events of conflict or war, suggests researcher Marshall Burke of the University of California, Berkeley, in a study published in Science. Rebecca Morelle, BBC News, reports that the researchers reviewed 60 studies with data spanning hundreds of years: “Their examples include an increase in domestic...

Greenland Melting

Jeff Goodell August 5, 2013
Greenland’s ice sheets are melting more rapidly than once predicted, and abrupt changes in the Earth’s climate and landscape are contributing to a new sense of urgency among some researchers, including climatologist Jason Box who studies Greenland’s surface. “Box doesn’t shy away from bold strokes,” writes Jeff Goodell for Rolling Stone. “As he sees it, the general public has been betrayed by the...