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…
Successful examples for the Green Climate Fund from around the world UN climate watchers are eager to see what projects and programs the Green Climate Fund finances out of the starting gate. The implications of the initial project pipeline are big -- not only because they will set a precedent for future projects, but because they also set the stage for Paris. Ambitious, environmentally sound and socially just projects and programs will send the right…
Earlier this week, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected a challenge to the 1974 ban on campaign contributions by federal contractors. Ruling on Wagner v. FEC, the 11-member court collectively upheld the Nixon-era rule designed to prevent quid pro quo corruption via “pay-to-play” political donations by individual contractors. The D.C. courts decision came days after Friends of the Earth’s recent call-in campaign pressing President Obama to issue an executive order requiring federal…
The Obama administration’s plans to normalize relations with Cuba and the introduction of legislation to relax travel restrictions between the U.S. and Cuba have launched a tourism frenzy -- and the cruise industry is first in line.