A trio of recent studies, one conducted in the U.S. and the others in Europe, are highlighting some alarming facts regarding the daunting realities of neonicotinoid pesticides and their prevalence in industrial agriculture. The timing of this research coincides with the closing of the public comment period for EPA’s proposal, which is part of the White House Pollinator Strategy and once again emphasizes why the administration’s policies should focus more heavily on eliminating neonicotinoid pesticides…
The below is an abridged version of the Medium article "TPP in Trouble." Read the full version here.
On Wednesday, July 29 almost 400 Hawaiians and visitors from around the globe gathered on the beach in Kaanapali on the island of Maui. They came for a rally, which Friends of the Earth co-sponsored, calling for a stop to negotiations between 12 Pacific countries led by the United States that opened that day with…
Climate change poses an unprecedented threat to our future and future generations. In the U.S., federal leasing of publicly owned fossil fuels contributes significantly to domestic and global greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for nearly a quarter of U.S. energy-related emissions and nearly 4 percent of global emissions over the past decade. Despite this pollution and the looming climate threat, the Obama administration continues to lease publicly owned fossil fuels, endangering the health and welfare…
Lucrative as it is for multi-national corporations, the palm oil industry has incited numerous humanitarian concerns in recent years. Palm oil giants have increasingly acted at the expense of those employed on their plantations for the sake of satisfying a rising global demand for oil palm - the same fruit whose large-scale cultivation is destroying invaluable rainforest habitats that shelter endangered species such as the Sumatran orangutan. Chronicled in the Wall Street Journal, Mohammad…
Lisa Arkin is the executive director of Beyond Toxics, a Eugene, Ore.-based non-profit that works to protect communities and the environment from toxic pollution.
Have you been enjoying watching the furry bumble bees visiting your garden flowers? They seem to be out and about, buzzing the blossoms just at dawn, and hanging around for that last nectar-y drop even as the sun sets.
Cherish them as they flirt with your oregano and lavender. Despite their…
The U.S.'s operable refinery capacity -- that is, the amount of crude oil that can be processed and sold to consumers as liquid fuel -- is a whopping 18 million barrels per day. The United States is home to 140 oil refineries, all but six of which were built before 1990.
However, a large chunk of these refineries have undergone substantial expansions over the last decade to allow for the processing of…
Earlier this year, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell called for “an honest and open conversation about modernizing the federal government’s coal program.” Today I am speaking at the Washington D.C. coal listening session to start that conversation. To be honest and open about our climate reality is to acknowledge that the only “modern” coal leasing program is one that doesn’t lease coal at all, but keeps it in the ground.
This is…
In a recently released paper in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussion, former NASA climate scientist Jim Hansen and 16 other researchers detail a climate change future more alarming than the one projected by the IPCC, the leading international body of science on climate.
Most importantly, the scientists warn that the target temperature increase to which most governments seek to limit warming, 2 degrees Celsius, is not a safe temperature threshold. This…
Developing countries urgently need money -- and lots of it -- to address climate change. To tackle this tremendous challenge, the international community is looking to the newly established United Nations Green Climate Fund to be the primary channel for multilateral climate finance for the poor and the vulnerable in developing countries. But a recent meeting of the GCF board in Korea brought some worrying developments regarding how the fund will work and for whom.…
Originally posted on Reuters The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is meant to be a new, innovative institution that will directly support climate action in developing countries, with a particular focus on the poorest and most vulnerable who thus far have had little access to climate finance. Further, the GCF is to do this through projects and programmes that also address sustainable development and bring social, environmental, economic and gender benefits. But last week, at…