"Dear Mr. President-Elect, It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food." Michael Pollan advises the next president on what he can and should do to remake the way we grow and eat our food. [Via]
posted on Oct 10, 2008 - View this thread

Old Growth Forests Are Valuable Carbon Sinks. "Contrary to 40 years of conventional wisdom, a new analysis published in the journal Nature suggests that old growth forests are usually 'carbon sinks' - they continue to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and mitigate climate change for centuries." Seven Best National Parks for Visiting Old Growth Forests. 20 Visually Arresting but Threatened Forests.
posted on Sep 14, 2008 - View this thread

Yale Environment 360 is an online environment magazine from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. It has a lot of great material, like "Biodiversity in the Balance" by Carl Zimmer and "Carbon’s Burden on the World’s Oceans" by Carl Safina and Marah J. Hardt. [Via Zimmer's blog The Loom]
posted on Jun 18, 2008 - View this thread

The Museum of Nature by Ilkka Halso. [Via Ectoplasmosis!]
posted on Jun 9, 2008 - View this thread

What Is A Species? "To this day, scientists struggle with that question. A better definition can influence which animals make the endangered list."
posted on Jun 8, 2008 - View this thread

Rehabilitating Carson: "Why do some people continue to hold Rachel Carson responsible for millions of malaria deaths?"
posted on Jun 2, 2008 - View this thread

Greening the Ghetto. A TED talk (also on YouTube) on environmental justice and urban renewal by Majora Carter, the founder of Sustainable South Bronx organization. She spoke recently at the Aspen Environment Forum.
posted on Apr 9, 2008 - View this thread

Dr. President: "The next president of the United States of America will control a $150 billion annual research budget, 200,000 scientists, and 38 major research institutions and all their related labs. This president will shape human endeavors in space, bioethics debates, and the energy landscape of the 21st century." With the coming election, the AAAS has created a new website and devoted a section of their journal Science to the Democratic and Republican candidates' positions on science and technology issues. But to help further clarify their positions, some people are calling for the candidates to have a presidential debate on science and technology. [Via The Intersection and Wired Science.]
posted on Jan 9, 2008 - View this thread

Don Berto’s Garden. "The plants of the ancient Maya whisper their secrets to those who speak a shared language."
posted on Oct 28, 2007 - View this thread

The Right Livelihood Award "celebrates and supports people of vision. People who have ideas and apply them in concrete initiatives for the public good. They give hope for tomorrow, for a world in peace and balance. They demonstrate how we can overcome oppression, war, poverty, the destruction of our environment, and a widespread sense of meaninglessness and fear."
posted on Oct 3, 2007 - View this thread

Superfund365 is an online data visualization application by Brooke Singer. Each day for the next year, Superfund365 will visit one of the EPA’s Superfund sites and collect data on contaminants, corporate responsibility, photos of the sites, and stats on local inhabitants. In the end, it will have 365 visualizations of some of the worst toxic sites in the U.S. [Via The Underwire.]
posted on Sep 25, 2007 - View this thread

Imaging a Shattering Earth: Contemporary Photography and the Environmental Debate.
posted on Sep 15, 2007 - View this thread

The 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
posted on Sep 13, 2007 - View this thread

Science in the Himalayas. [Via Gristmill.]
posted on Aug 27, 2007 - View this thread

Appalachian Apocalypse. Mountaintop removal mining (previously) has a devastating effect on the environment and local populations. The Bush administration wants to loosen regulations and expand the practice. [Via Wired Science.]
posted on Aug 25, 2007 - View this thread

The Case for Resilience. How Efficiency Maximizes Catastrophe.
posted on Aug 15, 2007 - View this thread

China Praises Its Progress Toward Olympics. With one year to go before the 2008 Olympics, China still has many challenges ahead, like dealing with Beijing's terrible air pollution. There is still much criticism over China's record on human rights and freedom of the press, and some protests. But perhaps the most embarrassing public relations setback is that one of the official mascots, Yingsel (aka Yingying) the Tibetan Antelope, has defected from China's Olympic team and gone underground to campaign for a free Tibet. [Some links via BB and MoFi.]
posted on Aug 9, 2007 - View this thread

Industrial Scars. Photography by J. Henry Fair. [Via The Underwire.]
posted on Aug 8, 2007 - View this thread

Unnatural Disaster: Global Warming and Our National Parks (PDF). A new report from the National Parks Conservation Association explores the impact of global warming on America's national parks. [Via Gristmill.]
posted on Jul 17, 2007 - View this thread

The Green Scare: Rod Coronado gave a talk in San Diego and the feds called his words ‘terrorism.’ How new laws are equating environmentalists with Al Qaeda. [Via Gristmill.]
posted on May 14, 2007 - View this thread

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. [25 min Google Video.]
posted on Mar 27, 2007 - View this thread

Last Chance. "It took the Mississippi River 6,000 years to build the Louisiana coast. It took man (and natural disasters) 75 years to destroy it. Experts agree we have 10 years to act before the problem is too big to solve." [Via First Draft.]
posted on Mar 5, 2007 - View this thread

Convicted as an ecoterrorist, a brilliant young scholar nose-dives in prison. An article on Billy Cottrell, a physics genius with Asperger's Syndrome who was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison for his role in destroying $5 million worth of SUVs. His case was previously discussed here. [Via BB.]
posted on Mar 2, 2007 - View this thread

Cheatneutral. "When you cheat on your partner you add to the heartbreak, pain and jealousy in the atmosphere. Cheatneutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and NOT cheat. This neutralises the pain and unhappy emotion and leaves you with a clear conscience." [Via Gristmill.]
posted on Feb 13, 2007 - View this thread

End of the Year Review, 2026. Looking Back on the First Quarter of the Twenty-First Century.
posted on Dec 25, 2006 - View this thread

Environmental Literacy in America (PDF) is a new a report from the NEETF on the poor state of environmental literacy in the US and the consequences of our growing nature-deficit disorder. Meanwhile, some students have uncovered a confidential brief on climate change (PDF) for the president, allegedly from the IPCC (but probably not.) [Via WorldChanging and Gristmill]
posted on Dec 5, 2005 - View this thread

Atlantic currents show signs of weakening, according to a new study from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. I just hope these findings don't provoke the nightmare scenario of a sequel.
posted on Nov 30, 2005 - View this thread

The Climate of Man. The New Yorker has made Elizabeth Kolbert's three-part series on climate change (previously mentioned here) available online. Part I: How the earth is changing, Part II: The curse of Akkad, and Part III: What can be done? Say goodbye to the Holocene, and hello to the Anthropocene. [Via WorldChanging.]
posted on Jun 3, 2005 - View this thread

James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia theory, says that only a massive expansion of nuclear power as the world's main energy source can alleviate the effects of global warming. [Via WorldChanging.]
posted on May 26, 2004 - View this thread

Bush is sabotaging the laws that have protected America's environment for more than thirty years, according to this excellent article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Rolling Stone. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, was also recently interviewed by Salon.
posted on Nov 22, 2003 - View this thread

The Snow Leopard is a magnificent animal (and the cubs are adorable,) but also a very endangered one. A recent study by TRAFFIC, Fading Footprints: The Killing and Trade of Snow Leopards (PDF), describes the threat faced by the species, including in Afghanistan. The International Snow Leopard Trust has released the Snow Leopard Survival Strategy (PDF) to try to aid the species.
posted on Sep 7, 2003 - View this thread

A new study of climatic history says that the Earth is warmer now than it has been at any time in the past 2,000 years (contradicting another study discussed previously.) The Kazakhs probably agree. If correct, we may be joining the list of societies which made fatally disastrous decisions. Decisions like these [flash.]
posted on Sep 4, 2003 - View this thread

Satellite pictures of the Mesopotamian marshlands, published by the United Nations Environment Programme, show that the wetlands are beginning to return to life. [Via Best of the Web.]
posted on May 29, 2003 - View this thread