Climate

Lasting Effects of the Polar Vortex on the Great Lakes

Lasting Effects of the Polar Vortex on the Great Lakes

This winter was brutal. Polar vortex brutal. My salt-caked boots and dry skin can attest to the frigid temperatures that covered more than 90 percent of the Great Lakes in ice. Much of that ice is still there—though some of it has run aground in an ice tsunami(!). Over the decades, ice coverage on the lakes has […]

Join our newsletter

The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!

    Report Shows Sharp Rise in Murders of Environmentalists, Only 1% of Killers Convicted

    Report Shows Sharp Rise in Murders of Environmentalists, Only 1% of Killers Convicted

    Killings of people protecting the environment and rights to land increased sharply between 2002 and 2013 as competition for natural resources intensifies, a new report from Global Witness reveals. In the most comprehensive global analysis of the problem on record, the campaign group has found that at least 908 people are known to have died in this time. […]

    ExxonMobil Ignores IPCC Warning, Vows to Burn All Oil Reserves

    ExxonMobil Ignores IPCC Warning, Vows to Burn All Oil Reserves

    Yesterday the world’s leading climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published their final report in their recent trilogy of warnings about climate change. The latest authoritative document, produced by 1,250 international scientists and approved by nearly 200 governments, argued that climate change can be avoided if we move fast to decarbonise the […]

    New IPCC Report: Fossil Fuel Divestment Must Start Now

    New IPCC Report: Fossil Fuel Divestment Must Start Now

    For the second time in three weeks, a United Nations panel sent a loud-and-clear message—now is the time to divest from fossil fuels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released another addition to its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Sunday in Berlin, Germany, entitled Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change, to detail how the world can keep […]

    UN Predicts 30% Rise in Agriculture’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 2050

    UN Predicts 30% Rise in Agriculture’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 2050

    New Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates of greenhouse gas data show that emissions from agriculture, forestry and fisheries have nearly doubled over the past fifty years and could increase an additional 30 percent by 2050, without greater efforts to reduce them. This is the first time that FAO has released its own global estimates […]

    13 Useful Tips for Climate Action From the IPCC Report

    13 Useful Tips for Climate Action From the IPCC Report

    If you’ve come across any of the recent headlines on the release of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, you’re probably feeling pretty low. The doom and gloom levels were off the charts. And understandably so. Major nations across the globe—especially Canada—are dragging their heels when it comes to climate change action. Canada, sadly, doesn’t […]

    How Ecological Farming Builds Resilience to Climate Change

    How Ecological Farming Builds Resilience to Climate Change

    Last week, I joined a panel at the Global Agribusiness Forum in São Paolo (Brazil) to talk about the impacts of climate change on agriculture and food production. You might be surprised that Greenpeace was at an agribusiness conference. The room was full of agri-business people, who are not the crowd we normally engage with; they are […]

    Divest Duke Urges University to Phase Out Investment in Fossil Fuels

    Divest Duke Urges University to Phase Out Investment in Fossil Fuels

    Laura Mistretta is a senior Environmental Science and Policy major at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. As a student of environmental science I have made it a priority to understand the root causes of climate change in the hopes of contributing to a solution. My classes have highlighted numerous possible points of intervention: […]