By Marlene Cimons This is one flying insect you don’t want to swat. It doesn’t bite, sting or spread disease. In fact, someday it could be a life- and climate-saver. In time, it could even be used to survey crops, detect wildfires, poke around in disaster rubble searching for survivors and sniff out gas leaks, […]
By Bartees Cox and Shravya Jain Without a touch of irony, the EPA celebrated Black History Month by publishing a report that finds black communities face dangerously high levels of pollution. African-Americans are more likely to live near landfills and industrial plants that pollute water and air and erode quality of life. Because of this, […]
By Nexus Media, with Thor Cheston Thor Cheston loves craft beer so much, he was made a knight in Belgium, the global brewing capital. He’s also a clean energy geek. When he founded Right Proper Brewing in Washington, DC, he invested in rooftop solar panels and energy efficiency. Cheston recently spoke about his passion for […]
Carbon fiber is the Superman of materials. Five times stronger than steel and a fraction of the weight, it is used in everything from tennis rackets to golf clubs to bicycles to wind turbine blades to passenger airplanes to Formula One race cars. There’s just one catch: Carbon fiber is made from oil and other […]
By Marlene Cimons Twentieth Century German social psychologist Erich Fromm first advanced the notion that humans hold an inborn connection to nature. Later, it was popularized by biologist E.O. Wilson as “the urge to affiliate with other forms of life.” In the ensuing years, support for the positive effects of nature has gained considerable traction, […]
By Marlene Cimons Natural burials—where bodies are buried in the soil to allow for a hasty decomposition—have already caught on. But an Australian scientist has proposed that the concept of “dust-unto-dust” go even further. He suggests that natural burials become “conservation” burials, that is, that people use the costs of interring bodies to buy, manage […]
By Molly Taft The deadly wildfires ripping through Northern California are just the latest in a season of record-defying natural disasters across the country. As the death toll passes 40, reports of Californians hiding in pools as their houses burn and scenes of devastated homes and vineyards add to 2017’s apocalyptic picture of how climate […]
By Jeremy Deaton People play dirty when they can’t win by playing fair. This is, more or less, the story of climate change denial in the U.S. Scientists overwhelmingly agree that humans are altering the climate, reaping changes with potentially catastrophic consequences. Climate deniers can’t dispute the data. They can’t win on facts. Instead, they […]
By Marlene Cimons The best coffee grows in the mountains, where it is cool. It needs low temperatures to thrive, which is why growers often put shade trees in their fields. But the mountains are getting hotter. And the higher you go, the less room there is to grow coffee. This is one reason scientists […]