You never know what a hurricane will unearth
As hurricane season begins, we’re all prepared for the devastation caused by wind, rain, tornadoes and floods. The catastrophic damage, exacerbated by climate change, has become worse in recent years and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association (NOAA) is predicting another above-normal Atlantic hurricane season in 2021.
While many of the hurricanes’ effects, such as the wind damage to structures, are obvious, these powerful storms also unleash insidious, toxic dangers that are neither easy to recognize nor remediate. …
Getting your vehicle towed can be a memorable experience — not in a good way
In 2000, three of the biggest 20-something stars of the moment — Ashton Kutcher, Seann William Scott and Jennifer Garner — starred in a movie called “Dude, Where’s My Car.” The film looked so stupid that despite my love of juvenile humor, I never had any interest in seeing it, and haven’t to this day.
While the trailer was inane, the title was a stroke of genius. It resonated with me at the time, and still does two decades later. I can’t be the only one who feels this way. Who among us hasn’t emerged from a store or mall…
People look to put their money where their morals are
As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day to the best of our ability while quarantined in our homes, you may be wondering how you can help reduce the pollution that accelerates climate change and causes respiratory distress. One of the most powerful and immediate steps you can take without leaving the house is joining the movement of people around the world divesting from fossil fuels.
Last Thursday, to help individuals learn more about fossil fuel free investing, Environment America hosted a panel on Facebook Live, moderated by The New York Times contributor Tim Gray, and featuring Bill McKibben…
Why do many Americans go hungry while we waste so much food?
My son and I recently spent two hours volunteering at a food bank that helps nourish the community near our Colorado home. While the primary feeling we came away with was gratitude, we also returned to our comfortable home with its fully-stocked refrigerator and pantry with quite a bit of incredulity.
Although the United States of 2020 hosts one of the most well-off societies in human history, about 1.8 million households contain adults who have to go entire days without eating because they lack the money for food — a condition described these days by the strangely sanitized term “food…
Will the wolf survive? It may depend on whether our love of awe and wonder can help us transcend our fears.
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen. But do you know this guy?
That’s one of the coyotes that I’ve seen patrolling the other side of my backyard fence about 20 times since I moved into my Colorado home 2 ½ years ago. They more often make their presence known audibly. I hear them howling dozens of nights a year, presumably over a kill. My neighborhood hosts a veritable buffet for dining predators. Prairie dogs, rabbits and squirrels run amok — and those rodents would dominate the ecosystem without coyotes keeping their populations in check.
The Dark Sky movement is winning hearts and minds across the country
We “fell back” from daylight saving time to standard time earlier this month. While that may interfere with some outdoor activities such as sports, the extended “night time” means more opportunity to turn your eyes toward the invigorating, beautiful night sky — if artificial light doesn’t blot out your view of the stars.
When we had an agrarian society and a nascent (or no) electric grid, electricity was viewed as a scarce, expensive resource worth saving. …
On the calendar, autumn started in the Northern Hemisphere this year on a typical date — September 23. But throughout much of the world, it will still feel like summer for weeks to come. According to the federal government, we just had the hottest summer since the government began recording that data in 1880, and the five hottest summers on record have occurred over the past five years.
Unwittingly, in our efforts to thrive and survive through increasingly long, hot summers, we have created a vicious cycle that exacerbates the problem. …
by Jesse Torrence, senior director of climate campaigns, and Mark Morgenstein, senior communications manager
Calling today’s youth “Generation Z” has no meaning. But calling them “Generation Climate Change” makes a lot more sense. A CBS News poll released this week shows as public awareness of our climate crisis rises, younger Americans are “more serious, yet more optimistic” about the topic and our capacity to deal with it than any other age group.
This attention to climate change transcends boundaries, even oceans. What began last year as a simple act of protest by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg culminates today in a…
It’s abundantly clear
After landing in Italy for a recent vacation, as our train from the Milan airport to Lake Como chugged through the countryside, I noticed an obvious lack of SUVs and pickup trucks on the nearby roads. When we got to the hotel, I saw a gas-can-sized waste basket in our bathroom that wouldn’t contain a day’s worth of trash at home in Colorado. And the tiny scoops of gelato seemed like mere samples from an American ice cream parlor.
Before this trip, I’d left North America only three times — and not since 2003. I don’t remember whether everything overseas…
The tradeoffs between quality of life now and quality of life in the future
I’m flying to Italy for the first two weeks of August.
I’ve only been to Europe once, in 1998, and I didn’t make it that far south on the continent. My children have never been out of the Western Hemisphere, and I keep telling them this is a “once in a lifetime” vacation.
My generous in-laws are providing us with free lodging and some other experiences such as Italian cooking lessons during the trip. They’re the kinds of gifts — experiences rather than more “stuff” — that my wife and I constantly request for our birthdays and holidays.
We ask…
