climate change
Environmental Auditors Approve Green Labels for Products Linked to Deforestation and Authoritarian Regimes
Major environmental auditing firms ignore or fail to recognize glaring environmental damage caused by loggers and other clients whose practices they certify as sustainable, undercutting an elaborate global system meant to fight forest destruction and climate change. With alarming frequency, the auditors and so-called certification firms validate products linked to deforestation, logging in conflict zones […]
Read MoreTwo Volcanologists on the Edge of the Abyss, Searching for the Secrets of the Earth
On an overcast day last August, I stood in a parking lot listening to an Icelandic guide explain to a crowd of dejected tourists that the Fagradalsfjall volcano had stopped erupting the night before. “There is no carrot at the end of this journey,” he said. Reaching the volcano required a 4.4-mile hike up an […]
Read MoreActivists Make Final Appeal to Biden to Block Arctic Oil Project
Environmental and Indigenous activists rallied outside the White House on Friday calling on President Joe Biden to reject a major Arctic oil project that has been in development for years. The Biden administration is expected to make a final decision on the proposal as soon as next week, and environmental groups have been framing it […]
Read MoreDo elections spur deforestation? It’s complicated, new study finds
Ahead of the presidential election in Brazil last October, deforestation in the Amazon reached its highest level in 15 years. Was this an anomaly, or part of a pattern? Are elections and deforestation somehow linked? To answer these questions, a group of researchers examined deforestation and election data from 55 countries in the tropics between […]
Climate change lawsuits take aim at French bank BNP Paribas
One of Europe’s biggest banks is facing two ambitious new lawsuits that claim it finances some of the worst contributors to environmental destruction and climate change. French bank BNP Paribas is being sued by a group of environmental and human rights advocacy groups that allege it provides financial services to oil and gas companies as […]
Lawmakers Urge Biden Administration to Permanently Ban Rail Shipments of Liquefied Natural Gas
Seven members of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation have urged the U.S. Department of Transportation to permanently ban shipments of liquefied natural gas by rail, arguing that a plan to ship the highly explosive fuel through their districts to a proposed export terminal in New Jersey poses the risk of “catastrophic impacts.’’ The Biden administration had ordered […]
Read MoreJimmy Carter Signed 14 Major Environmental Bills and Foresaw the Threat of Climate Change
From “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life” by Jonathan Alter. Copyright © 2020 by Jonathan Alter. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. This year’s wildfires and hurricanes leave no doubt that climate change remains a key issue for a growing number of Americans despite the nation’s deeply polarized politics, as numerous polls […]
Read MoreWhy It’s Time to Officially Get Over Your EV Range Anxiety
Electric vehicle batteries keep getting larger, and the typical driving range between charges keeps growing. The shift is partly a response to “range anxiety”—the fear of being stranded because EV batteries don’t have enough power to get to the next charging station—an idea so familiar in discussions of electric vehicles that it was spoofed in […]
Read MoreIn Pennsylvania, Home to the Nation’s First Oil Well, Environmental Activists Stage a ‘People’s Filibuster’ at the Bustling State Capitol
HARRISBURG, Pa.—In the East Wing of the ornate Pennsylvania State Capitol, Karen Feridun stood at a simple podium and read an essay aloud as part of what she and other environmental activists were calling a “People’s Filibuster.” “We are here to remind you that you serve us, not the fossil fuel industry,” Feridun read into […]
Read MoreAs Emissions From Agriculture Rise and Climate Change Batters American Farms, Congress Tackles the Farm Bill
When Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) took to the stage at a recent conference in Washington, he made an urgent plea—a call for transformation that he framed as a moonshot. “They thought Martin Luther King was a dreamer,” Booker said. “They thought all the great activists were dreamers. We are dreamers, yes. But that’s what this […]
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