The Runaway Greenhouse Effect
It’s sitting just under the permafrost The melting permafrost. This whole region was all white until recently. Now, with no ice cover, the peat moss is releasing…
How to Stop Global Warming
One key thing you can do to help make it happen Many of the things we’re told we should do to put a brake on global warming…
Warmest Decade on Record
This decade – 2000 to 2009 – was the warmest on record (i.e. since records started being kept in 1880), based on surface temperature figures released…
Living in the Southwest
More and more, it’s all about the water By Laura Merrill “When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.” Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s…
Environmentalist Is a Four-Letter Word
(. . . but how I became one anyway) By Lori Wark It was the height of the Cold War, the first Earth Day had just…
Nature’s Poet
The new poet laureate has words for animals. While visiting the Hawaiian island of Maui, he bought three acres of land on the side of a…
The Avatar Paradox
The intimate glimpse into the pulsing center of the natural world that modern technology delivers to us is threatening the natural world as never before. By Ptolemy Tompkins For a…
The Giving Tree
Few people need convincing that trees are good. Their emotional and psychological value, though hard to define, is powerful and indisputable. Trees clean the air, provide protection from noise and wind, and impart a calming and peaceful aspect to the surrounding streetscape. Trees are not like mailboxes or benches or other site amenities; they are biological touchstones and quite literally living community participants. So if the street trees in your neighborhood or downtown aren’t looking so good, what to do?
World’s Biggest Dam
It’s not the Hoover Dam or the Aswan Dam or even the huge Three Gorges Dam in China. It’s the Giant Beaver Dam in Canada.…