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4 Mins Read By: Irina Ivanova The millions of Americans who are skipping their morning commute and working from home because of the coronavirus have drastically reduced smog over America’s largest cities and otherwise benefited the environment. Yet the growing ranks of workers now plying their trade online using tools like Zoom and Slack are taking their own toll. […]
5 Mins Read By: Bill McKibben We’re cooked unless investors stop funding fossil fuel companies. Nineteen-seventy was a simpler time. (February was a simpler time too, but for a moment let’s think outside the pandemic bubble.) Simpler because our environmental troubles could be easily seen. The air above our cities was filthy, and the water in our lakes and […]
4 Mins Read By: Samantha Arechiga We are currently facing a climate crisis that we cannot seem to imagine any way out of. The climate change we are experiencing is accelerating at unnatural levels, and some experts believe it’s disproportionately impacting communities of color and the countries in the Global South. Due to the scale of climate change and the grip that the fossil fuel industry […]
37 Mins Read By: Adria Vasil Laura Väyrynen & Toby Heaps In the 50 years since Earth Day was launched, which companies stepped up to deliver green solutions? It’s been 50 years since the first Earth Day in 1970, when 10 million people took to the streets for a national teach-in on the environment. At the time, questions […]
6 Mins Read By: Mark Hertsgaard Author Michael Pollan talks about whether drugs that comfort the terminally ill can also help people mourning the climate future. The dread that many people are feeling these days about the coronavirus is nothing new to those acquainted with climate grief. As terrible as the virus is, the heat waves, droughts, fires, and […]
5 Mins Read Benita Chick, the founder and CEO of Hong Kong-based social enterprise Encompass HK, previously busted some myths and outlined challenges to overcome for Hong Kong to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Now, she shares the additional obstacles that lie ahead for the city to ensure inclusiveness and equality in the midst of the current […]
4 Mins Read By: Tim Radford If we farm efficiently, scientists say, we can cut climate change, slow extinction and feed the world even as it asks for more. Forget about organic farming: get the best out of the best cropland, return the rest to nature and still feed the world. It could work, say researchers. Once again, […]
4 Mins Read By: Alan Simson The 21st century is the urban century. It has been forecast that urban areas across the world will have expanded by more than 2.5 billion people by 2050. The scale and speed of urbanisation has created significant environmental and health problems for urban dwellers. These problems are often made worse by a lack of […]
5 Mins Read By: Tom Levitt Switching from meat production to growing crops for vegan foods can be good for farmers and the environment. The future of food doesn’t have to include animals. At least that’s what Miyoko Schinner believes. “A lot of farmers see us as a threat,” Schinner said of her Californian plant-based dairy company, Miyoko’s […]
5 Mins Read By: Erin McCormick From singing birthday cards to baby food pouches, a growing trend of mixing materials is making recycling even harder. The cheerful, singing voice inside your musical “Happy Birthday” card is enough to strike horror in the heart of your local recycler. The musical cards, which play a recording when opened, look like […]
2 Mins Read By: Minwoo Park; Writing by Josh Smith; Editing by Michael Perry (Reuters) For South Korean artist Ryu Jong-dae, it’s important that his works not only push the envelope of modern design, but also explore environmentally friendly choices. The 40-year-old artist is known for his wooden concept furniture pieces, but in recent years has also turned […]
5 Mins Read By: Katie Lambert & Sarah Gleim The United Nations suggests that climate change is not just the defining issue of our time, but we are also at a defining moment in history. Weather patterns are changing and will threaten food production, and sea levels are rising and could cause catastrophic flooding across the globe. Countries must […]
6 Mins Read By: Carbon Copy Editorial Team The severe restrictions placed on the movements of people and goods in India and around the world have had a range of fascinating unintended consequences beyond the massive shock to livelihoods and the global economy. The most apparent of these has been the impact on the air quality in major urban […]
7 Mins Read Jill Robinson, the founder and CEO of animal welfare charity Animals Asia writes passionately about how Covid-19 has exposed humanity’s crimes against animals why moving forward, the modern world must change its ways. As the number of people tragically succumbing to Covid-19 grows across the world, we are left reeling with the terrible consequences of […]
4 Mins Read By: Rebecca Leber Time to socially distance ourselves from car culture. Oakland, California, on Saturday started to phase in what it is calling a “slow streets” initiative, to give residents “more room to spread out safely.” The city’s mayor, Libby Schaaf, ultimately plans on closing 74 miles, or 10 percent, of its streets to cars, creating more […]
8 Mins Read By: Jamie Margolin When I first became involved with activism at age 14, I had absolutely no clue what I was doing and desperately wished for some sort of guidebook to guide me through the complex and unfamiliar world of organizing. The climate justice world was a new landscape, and once I got my footing […]
6 Mins Read By: Sharon Zhang The suspension of air pollution regulations threatens to further harm communities struggling to cope with the pandemic. Past exposure to air pollution increases the risk that an individual will suffer critical illness after contracting COVID-19, according to a report released on April 8 by researchers at Harvard. In light of this finding, the […]
< 1 Min With Covid-19 bringing the world to a near standstill, virtually ending air travel and significantly reducing industrial output in many areas of the world, many of us might be wondering what the environmental impact of the pandemic is. Have carbon emissions and pollution decreased, and if so, by how much? What about waste – are […]
4 Mins Read By: Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope Earth Day’s 50th anniversary serves as a moment to reflect on how to more rigorously cover the climate story. The coronavirus pandemic is a tragic reminder of just how essential fact-based, outspoken journalism is, especially in times of crisis. Without it, people die. In China, the lack of an independent press […]
4 Mins Read By: Hannah Thomasy The rapid changes happening in the Arctic Ocean, including increasing freshwater input, could dramatically affect its ability to store carbon. Historically, scientists have believed that the Arctic Ocean will be an important carbon sink in the coming years—ice melt will increase the surface area that’s exposed to the air, facilitating carbon uptake from […]
5 Mins Read By: Kate Wheeling Researchers find that a pulse of volcanic activity spanning several hundred years released as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as anthropogenic emissions projections for the 21st century. Many of Earth’s most severe extinction crises have coincided with some of its largest volcanic events. At the end of the Triassic era (some 202 […]