latest articles in Environment
Nepal’s Last Wild River
By:
Michael Buckley
The Karnali in western Nepal is the nation’s longest river. It flows gloriously free for now, to the benefit of rafting tourism and the people and wild animals that depend...
The Connection Between Environment, Conflict and Security
By:
W. Douglas Smith
There are two directions the connection between conflict and the environment can take that influence security. The degradation of the environment can cause conflict and a reduction in security; or...
Join the Rising Tide Summit at AltaSea
By:
Ocean Champions
There’s a big problem facing our planet today, and yet many aren’t talking about it. The beautiful little blue ball that we all live on is 71 percent ocean, but...
Transitioning to Renewables: A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Smaller-Scale Systems
By:
W. Douglas Smith
Mark Twain said, “It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.” Policy, politics and popular opinion sometimes have little relationship to scientific knowledge. Modern...
Straws Upon Request Makes Sense and Cents
By:
Lisa Kaas Boyle
New legislation (AB 1884) proposed by California Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon to decrease plastic pollution by requiring restaurants to offer plastic straws only upon request is facing pushback. And...
Biodiversity in the Greater Mekong Region
According to the WWF, 115 new species discovered in the Greater Mekong region. These include Three mammals, eleven amphibians, two fish, eleven reptiles and eighty-eight plants were...
DAnCiNG like a CRANE
By:
Michael Buckley
November 11 is Crane Festival Day at Gangtey Monastery in eastern Bhutan. The main performers are school kids who enact a special crane dance: this is hands-on environmental education. The Bhutanese...
America's National Park System: 'The Best Idea We Ever Had'
By:
Peter Banner
To quote Wallace Earle Stegner, winner of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, “National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at...
Jury Nullification -- If Not Now, When?
By:
Peter Banner
Jury nullification is a concept where …members of a trial jury can vote a defendant not guilty if they do not support a government's law, do not believe it is constitutional...
Extinction Before Our Eyes
By:
Tom Kimmerer
We rarely see plants or animals become extinct before our eyes. Extinction is often something far away and abstract - it happened long ago or far away. Yet right now...
RAN Investigation Exposes Illegal Palm-Oil Production
The Leuser Ecosystem is made up of some of the most important forests still standing today. Literally the last place on Earth where Sumatran orangutans, tigers, rhinos, sun bears and...
The Solution's in the Soil: Food for Thought
By:
Julia Jaye Posin
My first job, ten years old, 6:00 am, meticulously weaving row by row, the satisfying snap and crack sounds rolling one after another, as I loosen the roots from the...