May 6th, 2013
Friends and family gathered last weekend at a memorial in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to celebrate the remarkable conservation legacy of Theodore McRoberts Smith, known to one and all as Ted. It was an inspiring, warm, and wonderful commemoration of a visionary leader — and Ted would have hated it. Read More
May 2nd, 2013
The week before last I had the opportunity to go to London to participate in a workshop at Chatham House, on an idea that may turn out to be very important in ending tropical deforestation. Over the past several years there has been important progress in reducing forest degradation, based on a simple principle: if it’s against the law to cut down trees in one country, then it should also be illegal to import the cut timber from those trees into other countries. In other words, we should respect and help enforce the laws that protect forests in the countries that we import from.
May 2nd, 2013
Read attempts to defend the sustainability of industrial agriculture and genetic engineering, and you will soon encounter no-till, or more generally, conservation tillage. Now it appears that no-till may be contributing to some serious environmental problems. Read More
April 22nd, 2013
While on my way to a climate change conference at the University of Notre Dame earlier this month I managed to slam my hand in my car door. So my first evening in South Bend was spent in the Memorial Hospital Emergency Room with ample time to think about my presentation on climate science and the personal attacks on climate scientists that have become all too frequent, and how to respond to those attacks using resources such as the UCS manual “Science in the Age of Scrutiny”. Read More
April 11th, 2013
Today’s “Champions of Change” event in Washington can be seen as a kick-off for a desperately-needed national conversation on climate change. It couldn’t have had a more fitting theme: “Preparing for the Costly Impacts of Climate Change – Community Resilience Leaders.” Read More
April 5th, 2013
INTRO NOTE: My colleague Melanie Fitzpatrick has just come back on board here at UCS. She’s a climate scientist who originally hails from Australia. She’s traveled the world doing scientific research on the climate, including in Antarctica. We’re very happy to have her back and she’ll have her own blog up soon. In the meantime, we wanted to share her thoughts on climate change in Australia and a disturbing op-ed recently published in The Australian. Read More
March 22nd, 2013
If you’re all done with your vernal equinox celebrations and looking for another excuse to party, you’re in luck. It may not show up on your run-of-the-mill cute-puppy-dog calendar, but it turns out that today is World Water Day. If you’re looking for a way to celebrate it, you could do worse than finding some way to save energy. Read More
March 13th, 2013
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) recently published a very misleading op-ed on electric cars. Given their similar history on climate change and oil subsidies, I’m sure this shocks you as much as would a dog bites man story. But the frequency of opinion pieces in the Journal and other publications that are peddling bogus memes around electric vehicles (EVs) calls for continued push back. Read More
March 11th, 2013
Union of Concerned Scientists Board Chair Jim McCarthy and I sent a letter to President Obama to applaud his commitment to address the threat of climate change in his second term and to propose a number of concrete ways he can do so. Read More
March 8th, 2013
Agriculture Secretary Vilsack made several recent pronouncements prompted by the growing recognition that climate change will make it harder to grow crops. It was a step in the right direction, but it will take a major shift in money and personnel to make needed changes happen. Read More
© 2013
