Environment featured

CAFE Standards in the Age of Trump: It’s a Stall Y’all!*

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Candidate Trump had promised the auto industry and his supporters that he would get Detroit working again by deregulating the industry. On the Ides of March 2017, The Donald started to make good on that promise. In an executive order, The Donald directed EPA and the Department of Transportation/National Highway Transportation and Safety Agency to re-open the Midterm Evaluation (MTE) completed just prior to President Obama’s leaving office.

‘We feel stronger’: Meet those Fighting the Sand Dredging Business in Cambodia

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Sand-dredging is big business, especially in Asia, where demand has sky-rocketed thanks to the booming construction industry. Rod Harbinson reports from Cambodia on an extractive industry that is mired in corruption and scandal, and meets some of those on the frontline of the fight against it.

US States and Cities could Meet Paris Climate Goals without Trump

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With the decision by the Trump administration to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change and reverse many of the prior administration’s climate change policies, it seems that federal action on climate change will be unlikely in the next few years. However, the US system of government gives individual states broad powers to regulate CO2 emissions within their borders, with many states actively moving forward with their own mitigation strategies in absence of federal action.

Australia Ignores risks, Shirks Moral Responsibility on Climate

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The first responsibility of a government is to safeguard the people and their future wellbeing. The ability to do so is increasingly threatened by human-induced climate change, the accelerating impacts of which are driving political instability and conflict globally. Climate change poses an existential risk to humanity which, unless addressed as an emergency, will have catastrophic consequences.

Earth Restoration: How to Change the World Together

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The Ecosystem Restoration Camps allow us act together and let us learn to respect, collaborate and co-create the world we want. We need to work on this and we also need to play and to practice perhaps more than work on it … so that we can experiment and find the answers to many perplexing problems.

The Impacts Of An Ice Free Arctic: A Climate Paradigm Shift?

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The paper “Mitigation implications of an ice-free summer in the Arctic Ocean”[4] provides estimates for the effect of an ice-free Arctic in the month of September in 2050 and 2040. As the paper comments, the possibility of an early loss in arctic sea ice has not been included in any of the Integrated Assessment Models used to assess the societal impacts of climate change.

Beyond ‘No’ and the Limits of ‘Yes’: A Review of Naomi Klein’s ‘No Is Not Enough’

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In her new book, “No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need”, Klein reminds us to pay attention not only to the style in which Trump governs (a multi-ring circus so routinely corrupt and corrosive that anti-democratic practices seem normal) but in whose interests he governs (the wealthy, those he believes to be the rightful winners in the capitalist cage match)…

Sail Power Makes New Inroads in the Mediterranean

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In a fast-changing world, it is no longer possible to automatically assume that what one is used to will endure. People want stability and predictability, but, as they say, good luck with that. We are witnessing out-of-control evolution of a rapid, uncertain sort.

A Climate Cooling Proposal

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Climate cooling activities increase water storage to support green plant growth, and draw carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis to form deep, rich soils under forests, marshes, and grasslands. The result is known as Drawdown, carbon banking, or when coupled with agriculture, carbon farming.

Donald Trump, the Paris Agreement, and the Meaning of America

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Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change has sparked a global uproar. Yet America’s reluctance to reduce its use of fossil fuels is, in fact, logical. Not only because of the U.S. president’s overt denial of man-made climate change, but also and more fundamentally because it reflects America’s historical essence and trajectory.

Back to the Land 2.0: A Design Agenda for Bioregions

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A bioregion, in this sense, is literally and etymologically a ‘life-place’, in Robert Thayer’s words, that is definable by natural rather than political or economic boundaries. Its geographic, climatic, hydrological, and ecological qualities – its metabolism – can be the basis for meaning and identity because they are unique.