From about as long as I can remember, Thanksgiving in my family has really been about food first and foremost. Of course, immediately followed by family. (If not for family, both real and adopted, who would all that food be for anyway?!) Then, not exactly as an afterthought, we would give thanks.
These days, I’m profoundly aware of the need for gratitude in our lives, and not just as a virtue but because gratitude can…
Two months ago, in early September, four Asháninka indigenous forest defenders were brutally slain in a remote region along the border of Peru and Brazil. One of the activists, Edwin Chota (pictured at left) had received frequent death threats from loggers he had previously tried to expel from the lands for which his community was seeking title. As the New York Times reported, “Pervasive corruption lets the loggers operate with impunity, stripping the Amazon…
Last Tuesday was the most expensive midterm in U.S. history, with an estimated price tag of nearly $4 billion.
Exactly who spent what is still a little unclear. What is known is that in the final weeks an infusion of cash was dropped into tight Senate races, specifically timed with filing deadlines to obscure where the money came from until after the election. And of course dark money groups, empowered to spend…
For those who remember the closed-door secrecy and fossil fuel bias of the Bush-Cheney Energy Task Force, then last Thursday, November 6, was like déjà vu. An invite-only meeting, closed to the public, environmental groups, and the press, was held at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, North Carolina, to discuss energy exploration on the Outer Continental Shelf off the mid-Atlantic coast. The meeting was organized by the North Carolina Department…
Over the last ten years, damage from hurricanes has resulted in the loss of 2,334 lives and more than $310 billion in damages. UNC@MPA, the online component of the Master of Public Administration program at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, recently took a look at the last ten years of hurricanes and created the below infographic, entitled “Decade of destruction: The high cost of hurricanes.”
When it comes to extreme weather, climate…
Last Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry took the release of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report as a chance to do a little pre-midterm electioneering. Drawing an implicit contrast between the Obama administration and Congressional skeptics, he said that the “hard science” on climate change could no longer be ignored for the sake of “politics and ideology.”
Considering that the “politics and ideology” of climate denial just expanded its majority in…
Opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline has always been about people power. Led by farmers and ranchers, tribal communities and everyday Americans, the fight over the pipeline has brought thousands of people into the streets and emboldened hundreds to get arrested to show their opposition. These are many of the same people that brought President Obama into office when he leaned on an unprecedented base of small donors.
These are also the same people whose…
The media is all abuzz about the big conservative wins throughout the country last night. Yet despite the flurry of victories for anti-environmental and pro-fossil fuel candidates, another story is also emerging. Small towns are fighting back against the fossil fuel industry to protect their health and the environment they live in.
Last night towns and counties throughout the country voted to ban fracking in their localities. These victories occurred in the face of strong…
The meat at the center of your plate is also at the center of some of our world’s greatest ecological and public health threats: deforestation, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, climate change, water pollution, diet-related disease, antibiotic resistance, intolerable animal cruelty and more.
This morning, ExxonMobil and Chevron—the largest and the second-largest oil companies in the US—announced their third quarter profits for 2014.
In spite of gloomy expectations that the recent drop in crude oil prices would eat into their profits, both of these giants are still making a killing causing the climate crisis, with ExxonMobil reporting $8.07 billion in net income and Chevron $5.59 billion.
Just in time for Halloween, here are four terrifying facts…