Chris C. Mooney: SEAL Award Winner 2018
A selection of this year’s best environmental journalism
--
Shell Foresaw Climate Dangers And Understood Big Oil’s Role
Shell documents as old as 1988 showed the oil company understood the gravity of climate change, the company’s large contribution to it and how hard it would be to reverse it. The report was commissioned by Shell in 1981, and noted that the effects would become detectable late in the 20th or early 21st century. Source: The Washington Post (Approx. 5 Minutes)
The Staggering Environmental Footprint Of All The Food That We Just Throw In The Trash
The mass quantities of food Americans waste every year has staggering environmental consequences, from land and water use, fertilizer wasted, and greenhouse emissions caused by growing, packaging and transporting food which ends up in the trash. Source: The Washington Post (Approx. 6 Minutes)
The People Who Will Be The Most Hurt By Climate Swings Did The Least To Cause Them
Developing countries or economies in transition have historically not caused much of the climate problem, but suffer most from climate change. These asymmetries are one reasons why climate negotiations are so difficult. Source: The Washington Post (Approx. 7 Minutes)
Climate Change Will Make Europe’s Migrant Crisis Even Worse
A recent study focuses on one of the potentially devastating consequences of a warming climate: changing patterns of human migration. There is a mass of evidence that climate is impacting the way people behave, along with substantial evidence that climate is a likely driver or contributor to massive migratory movements. Source: The Washington Post (Approx. 6 Minutes)
The Artic’s Carbon Bomb Might Be More Potent Than We Thought
After a seven-year experiment, researchers from Germany, Russia and Sweden have determined that, as Arctic permafrost melts and warms, microorganisms living in the soil will release methane, a greenhouse gas whose warming effect is several times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Source: The Washington Post (Approx. 7 Minutes)
The Latest Thing Climate Change Is Threatening Is Our History
Roman ruins, the original site of Carthage, historic regions of Istanbul and many other landmarks left by cultures ranging from the Phoenicians to the Venetians could be flooded in extreme storm events, or face growing erosion risks due to rising seas. Source: The Washington Post (Approx. 7 Minutes)
The World Has Just Over A Decade To Address Climate Change
We stand on the brink of failure when it comes to holding global warming to moderate levels, and nations will need to take ‘unprecedented’ actions to cut their carbon emissions over the next decade. Source: The Washington Post (Approx. 10 Minutes)
Clean Up Climate Change? It’s Just Good For Business.
To a greater extent than ever before, the best interest of many businesses and those of the planet are aligned. Government policies alone won’t ensure the “unprecedented” societal changes needed over the next decade to stem climate change. That puts the onus on the business sector to clean up a mess it helped create. Source: The Washington Post (Approx. 11 Minutes)
GreenReads:
Your must-read guide to environmental issues, published by the SEAL Awards (an environmental advocacy organization that hosts environmental journalism awards and business sustainability awards).
