It’s the middle of September, the world is in chaos, and I can’t stop looking at my phone. That’s not because I’m checking my email or twitter, anxious to see the latest in the constant churn of political news or the current tropical superstorm calamities. I gaze at my phone instead because it features a...
Southern Utah is known as red-rock country, a place of magical canyons and arches sculpted from red sandstone, amidst sagebrush desert. And yet, in my travels in and through these fantastical places, it is the yellow sandstone of the Grosvenor Arch—a double arch, to be more accurate—that has stuck in my mind the most. Several...
Over the weekend, Donald Trump’s Palm Beach country club, Mar-a-Lago, was the location where he interviewed two candidates for National Security Advisor. The previous weekend, the club’s open dining room was where Trump and his advisors discussed how to respond to a North Korean missile test. Trump’s insistence on conducting government business at his beach...
This summer, I was intent on taking my daughter backpacking. Every summer I’ve tried to bring my family into the woods for either camping or hiking or backpacking; sometimes the effort is a success, sometimes not. But this summer would be no different, and even though my wife couldn’t get enough time off to join...
Tuesday, November 17, is the deadline for proposals to knock down hundreds of trees and pave over a stretch of the popular Capital Crescent Trail in Montgomery County, Maryland. If that sounds kind of backwards, well, it is. The planned conversion of a greenspace corridor into a transportation corridor—for the commuter train system called the...
In Indonesia, forest fires have spiraled out of control throughout much of the country. These fires were started as a way to clear the forests and peat swamps and replace them with palm oil plantations and other agricultural development, but have spread far and wide because of abnormally dry conditions over the past few months....
The Ultimate Frisbee community has been buzzing this week with the news that the International Olympics Committee (IOC) has finally recognized its sport. Critics wondered whether a defiantly counter-culture sport can continue to grow as part of mainstream culture, and others braced for yet another round of jokes at the expense of the sport’s dignity,...
Pretty soon now, environmentalists won’t have Sepp Blatter to kick around anymore. But, surprisingly, they never really did. Blatter resigned last week as President of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), the organization that runs the World Cup, the Women’s World Cup, the football (soccer) tournament at the Summer Olympics, and other international competitions. His...
Fiction writer Jonathan Franzen’s latest essay for The New Yorker on the hopelessness of climate change opens with a complaint about new football stadium being built for the Minnesota Vikings. The stadium will be built with glass walls that pose a lethal hazard to the thousands of birds flying through the area. But instead of...
From Chandra Kirana in Bogor, Indonesia. Six Indigenous communities have launched an ecotourism initiative that would show off their ancestral forests in a bid to develop alternate economic models that local government in Indonesia could embrace, moving away from extractive industries such as mining and palm oil plantations. The initiative, called GreenIndonesia, would ultimately help...
Between crazy weather, international events, and global agreements, 2014 was a year in which climate change took center stage. Whether it was a catastrophic drought in California, accelerated ice melting in Antarctica, or even record-breaking heat disrupting the Australian Open, the impacts of climate change are being felt around the world—and people are starting to...
The People’s Climate March that trumpeted its way through the streets of Manhattan yesterday was led by communities on the front lines of climate change—and Indigenous Peoples were at the forefront of this group. The tropical forests where they live are not only getting hammered by changing weather patterns, drug traffickers, invasive pests, and massive...
The weather in Washington, D.C. finally turned hot in September, just in time for Congress to resume. We enjoyed an unusually moderate summer this year, with many days topping out in the high seventies or low eighties. Plenty of sun. San Diego weather, you might say. Before September, we were missing about two full weeks...
The lure of precious metals and other natural resources has long been a source of conflict in Latin America, from the Andes to the Amazon and most everywhere else. But new research has begun to put a price tag on this conflict, and investors have started to respond. When the lives and livelihoods of Indigenous...
The troubles of Poyang Lake, China’s largest freshwater lake, are getting drowned out by the clamor generated by the superstorms Typhoon Haiyan and Cyclone Phailin. A crisis is still a crisis, however, even if it is not punctuated by 150mph winds and catastrophic flooding. Poyang’s water levels ebb and flow according to the season. In...