The mineral-stained canyon walls and the plunging water levels at Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, are the most visible signs of the driest 14-year period in the Colorado River Basin’s historical record. The Colorado River flows past irrigated fields in Arizona. During a dry decade, most of the water losses in the seven-state basin […]
History is often made by strong personalities wielding bold new political, economic or religious doctrines. Yet any serious effort to understand how and why societies change requires examination not just of leaders and ideas, but also of environmental circumstances. The ecological context (climate, weather and the presence or absence of water, good soil and other resources) […]
President Barack Obama tried to curb pollution this week as opposed to starting an industry war, but that’s not how some in the media viewed the proposal. “Obamacare for Air” quickly became the catchphrase for opposers of the carbon plan earlier this week, but another one is quickly gaining ground—Obama’s war on coal. Stephen Colbert […]
While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a goal of decreasing carbon emissions by 30 percent—compared to 2005 levels—by 2030, states will be given the flexibility to devise their own plans. Clearly, some will have more work to do than others. Coal-fired power plants are responsible for about 40 percent of the country’s emissions, and states like […]
Geographers in the U.S. have found a new factor in the carbon cycle, and—all too ominously—a new potential source of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2). They have identified huge deposits of fossil soils, rich in organic carbon, buried beneath the Great Plains of America. Hidden menace: a vast store of organic carbon lies beneath the […]
Earlier this spring the chaplain at Harvard joined students sitting-in outside the Harvard president’s office to demand climate action. He took the bullhorn for a minute, and thanked the organizers for “giving me the chance to be the person who I purport to be—a person who gives a damn.” We’re all going to get that […]
If you’re reading this article, there is a good chance you’ve already taken steps to stop climate disruption. You probably ditched incandescent lightbulbs years ago. You may drive a hybrid or (even better) an EV. Some of you have installed solar panels on your homes. And a whole lot of you frequently fire off messages […]
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 […]
At the elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) anticipated by around 2050, crops that provide a large share of the global population with most of their dietary zinc and iron will have significantly reduced concentrations of those nutrients, according to a new study led by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). Given that an estimated 2 billion […]
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