Environment

By Abrahm Lustgarten, Lauren Kirchner and Amanda Zamora | (ProPublica) | — Why do I keep hearing about the California drought, if it’s the Colorado River that we’re “killing”? Pretty much every state west of the Rockies has been facing a water shortage of one kind or another in recent years. California’s is a severe, […]

Climate Change

To fight Climate Change, we have to Eat Fewer Hamburgers

contributors

By Dora Marinova and Talia Raphaely | (The Conversation) | – – Climate change is the greatest challenge to human health, according to the recent Lancet Commission report which calls for action to protect the global population. The report says that tackling climate change could deliver huge public health benefits, largely through phasing out coal, […]

Acidification of Oceans

If World Refuses to Act on Carbon, Oceans Doomed to ‘Irreversible’ Damage

contributors

By Nadia Prupis, staff writer | (Commondreams.org) New study warns, ‘any new global climate agreement that does not minimize the impacts on the ocean will be inadequate.’ Without “immediate and substantial” reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the world’s oceans and marine life face massive, irreversible damage with far-reaching consequences by 2100, a new study published […]

Civil Rights

Your Fourth of July and My Fourth of July

Juan Cole

Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Revised for the 2010s: Your Fourth of July is invasions and wars. My Fourth of July is the pure sunbeam of peace. Yours is the Confederate flag and nostalgia for the hierarchies of slavery. Mine is ‘all men are created equal.’ Yours is kowtowing to billionaires in […]

Green Transportation

The Future of Flying: Purely Solar-Powered Plane lands in Hawaii after taking off from Japan

contributors

Euronews | (Video Report) | – – “A solar powered plane has successfully completed a record-breaking five-day nonstop solo flight across the Pacific Ocean. The Solar Impulse is the first aircraft to fly day and night without any fuel from Japan to Hawaii Its Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg is attempting to circumnavigate the globe with […]

Desertification

Climate Change-Driven Drought in Karachi hits Poor Hardest

contributors

By Zofeen Ebrahim | {Inter Press Service) | – – KARACHI (IPS) – Over 950 people have perished in just five days. The morgues, already filled to capacity, are piling up with bodies, and in over-crowded hospitals the threat of further deaths hangs in the air. Pakistan’s port city of Karachi, home to over 23 […]

Climate Change

Think California’s Drought Is Bad? Try Palestine’s.

contributors

By Laith Shakir | (Foreign Policy in Focus) | – – While Israelis water their lawns and swim in Olympic-sized pools, Palestinians a few kilometers away are literally dying of thirst. California is in the midst of one of the worst droughts in the state’s history, prompting Governor Jerry Brown to declare a water “state […]

Climate Change

In first, Court orders Dutch gov’t to protect citizens from climate change

contributors

The Tree | – – The Dutch government has put its citizens in danger by failing to address greenhouse gas emissions, a court [has] ruled . . . In a landmark verdict, the judge said the government “must do more to avert the imminent danger caused by climate change” and ordered it to reduce CO2 […]

Climate Change

Humans Causing the Sixth Great Extinction of other Life Forms, on which we Depend

contributors

By Gerardo Ceballos | (The Conversation) | – – Vitus Bering, the famous explorer, led perhaps the most ambitious scientific expedition ever in the 1730s. Commanding 10,000 people, he was in charge of exploring the vast lands of Siberia and the unknown sea between Siberia and Alaska. In 1741, he was forced to land on […]