Category: Environment

You Don’t Have to Be a Vegan to Be a Climate-Friendly Eater

Last October, scientists convened by the United Nations issued a dire warning: Unless carbon emissions fall by about 45 percent by 2030, we will face a world of climate chaos—more frequent droughts and floods, decimated coral reefs, and cities swamped by rising seas. Soon after, the Trump administration quietly released a similarly terrifying report from US government scientists, who estimated climate chaos will cost the country more than $500 billion annually by the century’s end. The president’s response? “I don’t believe it.”

Frankly, all this news made me want to stress-eat a giant steak and succumb to a food coma. But a spate of new studies have argued that cutting back on meat—way back—can help our climate enormously. Americans now eat a staggering 216 pounds of meat annually per person, nearly triple the global average. Even our appetite for beef, which fell during the Great Recession, has crept back up, and we eat more of it per capita than almost any other country.

You Don’t Have to Be a Vegan to Be a Climate-Friendly Eater

These Images Reveal What the Human Eye Can’t See | Time

Most of the human population now lives in urban areas. But the growth of these urban landscapes is something that we can only partially appreciate from the ground. Instead, we should also look from the sky. Imagery produced from satellites and infrared technology shows the ingenuity and expansion of cities, the symbiosis of urban and natural landscapes and how a changing climate is also changing the places most humans call home. Our goal as remote-sensing scientists — and the aim of our new book, City Unseen: New Visions of an Urban Planet — is to offer insights from these satellite-enabled perspectives.

These Images Reveal What the Human Eye Can’t See | Time

Trump’s Legacy: Damaged Brains – The New York Times

The pesticide, which belongs to a class of chemicals developed as a nerve gas made by Nazi Germany, is now found in food, air and drinking water. Human and animal studies show that it damages the brain and reduces I.Q.s while causing tremors among children. It has also been linked to lung cancer and Parkinson’s disease in adults.

The colored parts of the image above, prepared by Columbia University scientists, indicate where a child’s brain is physically altered after exposure to this pesticide.

This chemical, chlorpyrifos, is hard to pronounce, so let’s just call it Dow Chemical Company’s Nerve Gas Pesticide. Even if you haven’t heard of it, it may be inside you: One 2012 study found that it was in the umbilical cord blood of 87 percent of newborn babies tested.

And now the Trump administration is embracing it, overturning a planned ban that had been in the works for many years.

Trump’s Legacy: Damaged Brains – The New York Times

The geography of climate confusion: a visual guide – CNN.com

Climate change may seem like a complicated issue, but it’s actually simple if you understand five key facts, according to Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. 

They are: 1. It’s real. 2. It’s us. 3. Scientists agree. 4. It’s bad. And: 5. There’s hope.
Yet, far too few Americans get it.
That became more painfully apparent to me this week when Yale University researchers released data and maps that detail American attitudes on climate change. The data, which are based on surveys and modeling by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, do show there is broad agreement in the American public on the solutions needed to fight climate change and usher in the clean-energy era. The most striking example: majorities of people in every single congressional district support setting strict limits on carbon dioxide pollution from existing coal-fired power plants, according to the research. And this despite the fact that many Republicans and US President Donald Trump say they want to ax an Obama-era regulation — the Clean Power Plan — that aims to do just that. 
Still, there remain big pockets of climate confusion — perhaps denial — across the country, especially when it comes to climate science. Narrowing this info gap is particularly critical now since President Trump has denied the science of climate change and has promised to enact policies that can be expected to dirty the air and intensify warming. 
To that end, here is a geographic look at five key climate facts.

 

The geography of climate confusion: a visual guide – CNN.com: “”

(Via.)