What lives when public transportation is used, and dies when it’s not? Potentially all of us.
This message is hauntingly conveyed by a street art installation showing polar bears coming to life as a subway passes beneath them:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Fdu6AD5Y3D0" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.
I live in New York City, and when I started riding my bike to work last year, I became acquainted firsthand with the obstacles to using this most efficient and green mode of transport. Here’s the short list:
Thankfully, help is on the way. New York City has turned decidedly pro-bike under Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Jeannette Sadik-Khan. And the non-profit group America Bikes is helping to bring bike-friendly changes to communities across the country.
At first I was excited to escape the inferno of August in Washington D.C. for a vacation in Maine, but after three straight days of rain I started to feel a certain amount of self-pity. On the fourth rainy morning, however, a visit to a farmer I used to work for quickly put my woes in perspective. The rain put a minor dent in my vacation, but it put a major dent in the growing season for Maine’s farmers.
Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont all have received exceptional amounts of rain this summer, seriously damaging certain crops. Maine’s raspberry and green bean crops were devastated, and livestock feed crops (grain and hay) could not be harvested due to the wet weather. Many farmers will be paying high prices to truck in feed to replace what was lost.
No particular weather event can be reliably ascribed to climate change. But as I talked to my farmer friend, I began to wonder if this summer’s wet weather was a glimpse into the future for farmers in the region.
This post is by Lisa Moore, Ph.D., a scientist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense Fund.
Have you ever spent time scrolling through NASA’s image gallery? Some of the pictures are mesmerizing. I particularly like the "Blue Marble" image of the Earth (at right), which was stitched together using satellite data.
Satellites provide more than pretty pictures. Our ability to understand and predict climate change depends on continuous high-quality satellite data.
Unfortunately, this critical data stream is threatened by budget cuts and lack of political support. In 2005, the National Academies assessed the situation and deemed it "alarming". Three years later, the outlook has not improved.
This post is by Lisa Moore, Ph.D., a scientist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense Fund.
What does wildlife conservation mean to you? Setting aside land? Restoring habitat? Reducing local stresses to species or ecosystems? These are the conventional methods. But because of rapid climate change, scientists in a recent paper say this may not be enough:
[T]he future for many species and ecosystems is so bleak that assisted colonization might be their best chance.
Assisted colonization – moving species to sites where they aren’t native – is a high-risk suggestion. There are many cases, for example, where introduced species have become invasive and wreaked havoc on native ecosystems. So why would some of the world’s leading biologists make such a suggestion?
This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.
Yesterday we sent an email to our action network asking how people were coping with high oil prices. The response on our sister blog, the Green Room, was enthusiastic – over 600 comments! Here are some of our favorites, organized by topic:
From Ann:
I’ve been driving 60 mph on the highway and have seen a dramatic improvement in my gas mileage. I’m getting 38-40 mpg in my Toyota Camry on the highway! Drive 60 when you go.
