carbon

Large-scale tree planting projects aimed at sequestering carbon are oversimplifying the many values of forests, researchers reported Tuesday. In a peer-reviewed opinion paper published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, University of Oxford researchers point out that, although carbon sequestration is a valuable tool for climate action, large-scale tree planting projects often lack biodiversity, which […]

Seaweed is having a moment. I’ve been working on seaweed for 40 years, and I’ve never seen so many headlines about how seaweed can save the planet.  I can understand why. The need to save the planet is more pressing than ever. We must now dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, at the same time, […]

Chances are, if you live in North America, you’ve eaten corn from the Corn Belt, a region in the United States Midwest that produces 75% of U.S. corn. Scientists have found that around 35% of the region has lost its most fertile A-horizon soil, more commonly known as topsoil, since European colonization in the 1800s, […]

When it comes to slowing the warming of our planet, there is no substitute for immediate, dramatic reductions in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. But emissions reductions alone won’t be enough to limit warming to the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal at the heart of the 2015 Paris Agreement, or even to the Agreement’s upper limit of […]

When it comes to slowing the warming of our planet, there is no substitute for immediate, dramatic reductions in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. But emissions reductions alone won’t be enough to limit warming to the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal at the heart of the 2015 Paris Agreement, or even to the Agreement’s upper limit of […]

BALI — Indonesia has revised down its 2021 target for rehabilitating mangroves in light of “technical hurdles” brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, according to the nation’s mangrove restoration agency. The new target is 33,000 hectares (81,500 acres), down from 83,000 hectares (205,000 acres), according to Hartono Prawiraatmadja, the head of the […]

International forest and climate experts have released a “playbook” for ecosystem restoration with a set of 10 principles that they say, if followed, could be a game-changer. The Political Ecology Playbook, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, recognizes that issues such as climate change and forest loss are not just biophysical and environmental problems, […]

More than 100 scientists have issued a letter urging U.S. President Biden and Congress to remove provisions promoting logging, forest biomass and fossil fuels from the multitrillion-dollar infrastructure and reconciliation (Build Back Better) bills.

Trees are a logical solution to climate change, but allowing or encouraging trees to spread into areas where they don’t typically grow, such as tundra and grasslands, can actually do more harm than good. A newly published review paper in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment asks the question: “Should tree invasions be […]

JAKARTA — Indonesia says it will begin retiring coal-fired power plants for good — while still continuing to build more than a hundred new ones, in the latest mixed message from one of the last coal-friendly countries in the world. PLN, the state-owned power utility, which has a monopoly on the national grid, announced late […]