By Shannan Lenke Stoll The Senate Agriculture Committee just passed its version of a farm bill in a 20-1 vote Thursday. It’s one more step in what has been a delayed journey to pass a 2018–2022 bill before the current one expires in September. The farm bill is a colossal piece of highly partisan legislation […]
The Earth could use some climate-change-fighting superheroes right about now. And according to a new comic series by the nonprofit Amplifier, there are a few real-life ones in our midst. Thirteen of them, actually. On Earth Day, April 22, Amplifier released the comic art series #MyClimateHero, portraying leaders of the modern climate justice movement. Amplifier […]
By Jenni Monet At the height of the movement at Standing Rock, Indigenous teens half a world away in Norway were tattooing their young bodies with an image of a black snake. Derived from Lakota prophecy, the creature had come to represent the controversial Dakota Access pipeline for the thousands of water protectors determined to […]
By Megan Wildhood The average lifespan in the U.S. is about 78 years, and for the first time since the 1990s, it’s getting shorter. Despite spending much more on health care, Americans are sicker than people in other wealthy countries, with illnesses like diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and stroke on the rise. So are “despair […]
By George Nicholas Our knowledge of what the denizens of the animal kingdom are up to, especially when humans aren’t around, has steadily increased over the last 50 years. For example, we know now that animals use tools in their daily lives. Chimps use twigs to fish for termites; sea otters break open shellfish on […]
By Adam Lynch Marámellys Castro-Pérez is a Puerto Rican refugee living in Orlando with her husband and twins after the one-two punch of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Maria, in particular, scrubbed the island clean of electricity, working toilets and phone service. It dragged Castro-Pérez’s world into the dark ages and pitted the island’s modern, cosmopolitan […]
By Tom Jacobs Not happy with what you see when you look in a mirror? Well, you can take a hike. Seriously. New research from the United Kingdom finds strolling in nature—or even looking at photographs of the natural world—leaves people feeling better about their bodies. In recent years, a series of studies have found […]
By Olga Mecking, Commentary Recently, National Geographic published an article called This Tiny Country Feeds the World, where the author extolled the innovations of a small European country that has managed to become a global powerhouse in agriculture and technology—the Netherlands. Now the second biggest exporter in value of agricultural products after the U.S., the […]
By Peter Kalmus I grow a half-dozen fruit trees along my 40-foot stretch of sidewalk. The generous fig tree just finished, two young apple trees and a pomegranate are full of bounty, and the kumquat and persimmon are ripening. As much as I love the simple act of orcharding, I’m also sharing a radical vision […]