“The rising sea is coming up to our doorstep every day and every night” Sonia Narang October 12, 2018As sea water encroached closer and closer to Kelepi Saukitoga’s family home over the years, he knew something was wrong. His family lives in the remote village of Narikoso – part of the Pacific island archipelago of Fiji – where climate change has started to u...
The Inside Story of How the World Closed the Hole in the Ozone Layer Mark Leon Goldberg July 23, 2018The year is 1985. Ronald Reagan is president. Margaret Thatcher is prime minister of the United Kingdom. Michael Jackson, White Snake and George Michael are dominating the billboard charts. Back to the Future is a smash hit at the box office.And scien...
A Paris Agreement for the Shipping Industry John Light April 18, 2018The UN agency that oversees shipping, the International Maritime Organization, adopted its first-ever deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions last week. On Friday, the IMO, which has more than 170 member nations, announced that it would oversee efforts by ship...
Young People Around the World Are Increasingly Suing Governments To Protect the Environment. (And they are winning) John Light April 11, 2018In 1998, researchers at Shell wrote a memo in which they predicted a series of devastating storms in the year 2010. The storms would ravage the East Coast of the United States, the memo suggested, and would be followed by a series of class-action lawsuits “aga...
Map of the Day: Where Investment in Renewables is Booming Mark Leon Goldberg April 6, 2018Today's map comes from a new UN-backed report Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2018. As the name suggests the report, which was a joint effort of the United Nations Environment Program and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, examined investment patterns ...
For the first time, an International Treaty to Protect Environmental Activists John Light March 16, 2018In many Latin American countries, environmental protests can be a matter of life and death for the activists involved. In a tally put out last year, the non-profit Global Witness reported that 200 people had been murdered in 2016 defending their land and the e...
PODCAST: Anote Tong is the former President of Kiribati, an island nation threatened by the rising seas Mark Leon Goldberg February 12, 2018To the people of Kiribati, climate change is an existential threat.This is an Island nation in the pacific -- it is a string of atolls about halfway between Australia and Hawaii. It has a population of about 100,000 and is known for its vast Tuna stock...
The Fires in California, Portugal and Spain Share One Thing in Common John Light October 23, 2017As wildfires raged in the Western United States this month, southern Europe was experiencing an intense wildfire season of its own.Last week, one tore through Portugal and northern Spain, killing at least 40 people and threatening cities. Thousands of fire...
Why the Larsen C Ice Shelf Break is Such a Big Deal John Light July 12, 2017Something is very wrong on our planet’s poles.Temperatures soared in the Arctic over the weekend as the storm system that brought snow and freezing rain to the US’s east coast this week pushed warm air into the Arctic. Scientists are alarmed because it’s t...
