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The World’s Happiest People already Have a Green New Deal, and they Love it

The World’s Happiest People already Have a Green N...

According to the latest report from the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the Nordics are once again in the top tier of the World’s Happiest People. This year’s report, which came out March 20, pulled together the scores from the last three years to build a composite score, revealing that the four happiest countries from 2016-2018 are Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland, with Sweden coming in...
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EPA Announces 20 Toxic Chemicals It Won’t Protect Us From

EPA Announces 20 Toxic Chemicals It Won’t Protect ...

On Wednesday the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the first 20 chemicals it plans to prioritize as “high priority” for assessment under the Toxic Substances Control Act. Given the EPA’s record of malfeasance on chemicals policy over the past two years, it is clear that these are chemicals that EPA is prioritizing to ensure that they are not properly evaluated or regulated. Of the 20...
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The problem with ignoring people’s emotions about climate change

The problem with ignoring people’s emotions ...

Many people feel helplessness, hopelessness, anger, and fear when they hear about the topic. About 20 years ago, while presenting the science of climate change to a large public group, I stopped in the middle of my talk. Up until this time, my presentations had been filled with 50 minutes of scientific information. However, during my graduate work in psychology, I had become more attuned to the importance of affect in how we...
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Batteries are key to clean energy — and they just got much cheaper

Batteries are key to clean energy — and they just ...

Batteries are critical for our clean energy future. Luckily, their cost has dropped so low, we might be much closer to this future than we previously thought. In a little less than a year, the cost of lithium-ion batteries has fallen by 35 percent, according to a new Bloomberg New Energy Finance report. Cheaper batteries mean we can store more solar and wind power even when the sun isn’t shining or wind isn’t blowing. This...
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Plastic Pollution: Could We Have Solved the Problem Nearly 50 Years Ago?

Plastic Pollution: Could We Have Solved the Proble...

There’s plastic in seabirds, in the middle of the remote Pacific Ocean, even in people. It’s a challenge to turn to the news these days without reading or hearing the latest horror story about plastic pollution. These updates seem new and striking and scary, but in reality much of the fundamental information contained in these stories is actually far from fresh. “In the last five years there has been more...
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Battery Power’s Latest Plunge in Costs Threatens Coal, Gas

Battery Power’s Latest Plunge in Costs Threatens C...

London and New York, March 26, 2019 – Two technologies that were immature and expensive only a few years ago but are now at the center of the unfolding low-carbon energy transition have seen spectacular gains in cost-competitiveness in the last year. The latest analysis by research company BloombergNEF (BNEF) shows that the benchmark levelized cost of electricity,[1] or LCOE, for lithium-ion batteries has fallen 35% to $187...
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Battery start-ups are raising millions in the battle to crush Tesla

Battery start-ups are raising millions in the batt...

Source: Tesla Tesla’s Roadster uses a rechargeable lithium battery that has been the standard for electric vehicles. For powering your smartphone or your Tesla Model 3, there’s currently nothing better than the lithium-ion battery. Since its introduction in 1991, the rechargeable lithium battery has been the standard for everyday tech devices and electric-vehicle power. Many of the world’s more than 3...
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Fact check: Is snow on solar panels a problem for clean energy goals?

Fact check: Is snow on solar panels a problem for ...

Snow can temporarily slow solar panel output, but the impact tends to be small and short-lived, a developer says. On the day Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced a goal of powering his state entirely by renewable electricity by 2050, a rural Republican legislator threw snow on the proposal in a Facebook post. Rep. Jeremy Munson’s photograph of snow-covered solar panels was accompanied by a pointed a rebuke of Walz’s vision: “On...
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New Warnings on Plastic’s Health Risks as Fracking Industry Promotes New ‘Plastics Belt’ Build-Out

New Warnings on Plastic’s Health Risks as Fracking...

A new report traces the life cycle of plastic from the moment an oil and gas well is drilled to the time plastic trash breaks down in the environment, finding “distinct risks to human health” at every stage. Virtually all plastic — 99 percent of it, according to the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) report — comes from fossil fuels. And a growing slice comes from fracked oil and gas wells and the natural gas...
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What Can Be Recycled? Your Complete 2019 Recycling Guide

What Can Be Recycled? Your Complete 2019 Recycling...

Picture this: you just finish eating your favourite meal in a styrofoam container along with your favourite chips and a refreshing can of pop. You get up to throw everything out but you’re stuck. Do you recycle everything? What about the chip bag? Is the styrofoam recyclable? When it comes to waste, it’s important to know what you can recycle and what you can’t recycle. And to answer those questions, the chip bag and...
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Project Drawdown is the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming.

Project Drawdown is the most comprehensive plan ev...

We did not make or devise the plan—the plan exists and is being implemented worldwide. It has been difficult to envision this possibility because the focus is overwhelmingly on the impacts of climate change. We gathered a qualified and diverse group of researchers from around the world to identify, research, and model the 100 most substantive, existing solutions to address climate change. What was uncovered is a path forward...
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Bees Brought Bavarians Together. And They Have a Lesson for us All

Bees Brought Bavarians Together. And They Have a L...

Last week, Bavarians forced their state legislature to change farming policies with the most successful petition in the state’s history. And while the law proposed by the petition covers a range of measures, it’s no surprise that campaigners’ rallying cry quickly became “save the bees”. Bees stand for diligence, dedication and orderliness. But they are also a symbol of our relationship with nature – and everything that has...
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Intensive Agriculture Driving Worldwide Decline of Insects

Intensive Agriculture Driving Worldwide Decline of...

Over 40% of insect species are at risk of extinction over the next few decades and 75% to 98% of insect biomass has already been lost, according to this review of the current state of knowledge about insect declines, with habitat loss through conversion to intensive agriculture being the main driver. Agro-chemical pollutants, invasive species and climate change are also driving insect declines. The authors conducted a...
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‘Kicking Ass for Her Generation’: Applause for 16-Year-Old Greta Thunberg as EU Chief Pledges Billions to Curb Climate Threat

‘Kicking Ass for Her Generation’: Appl...

Sixteen-year-old climate action leader Greta Thunberg stood alongside European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker Thursday in Brussels as he indicated—after weeks of climate strikes around the world inspired by the Swedish teenager—that the European Union has heard the demands of young people and pledged a quarter of $1 trillion budget over the next seven years to address the crisis of a rapidly heating planet. In the...
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This Is the Green New Deal’s Biggest Problem

This Is the Green New Deal’s Biggest Problem

A Tesla in every driveway just won’t cut it. There might be no better monument to the limits of American environmentalism in the climate change era than a parking garage in Berkeley, California. It’s got “rooftop solar, electric-vehicle charging stations and dedicated spots for car-share vehicles, rainwater capture and water treatment features”—not to mention 720 parking spots. It cost nearly $40 million to build. At night,...
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