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Main » Health, Enviroment, Nature
In December 2012, Brad Werner — a complex systems researcher with pink hair and a serious expression — made his way through the throng of 24,000 earth and space scientists at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. But it was Werner’s session that was attracting much of the buzz. It was titled “Is Earth F**ked?” (Full title: “Is Earth F**ked? Dynamical Futility of Global Environmental Management and Possibilities for Sustainability via Direct Action Activism”).
Standing at the front of the conference room, the University of California, San Diego professor took the crowd through the advanced computer model he was using to answer that rather direct question. He talked about a whole bunch of other stuff largely incomprehensible to those of us uninitiated in complex systems theory. But the bottom line was clear enough: Global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient and barrier-free
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“The roads were cracking, the crime rate was rising”: What happens when fracking takes over your town
Director Jesse Moss talks to Salon about "The Overnighters," his haunting portrait of a fracking boomtown gone bust
 North Dakota is sitting on gold. The oil-rich Bakken formation, thanks to the advent of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, produces hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil each day; in one month this year, it produced as much oil as it had in all
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Americans are driving more than ever and guzzling more gas, while the White House and Congress stand by and let it happen
 Considering all the talk about global warming, peak oil, carbon divestment, and renewable energy, you’d think that oil consumption in the United States would be on a downward path. By now, we should certainly be witnessing real progress toward a post-petroleum economy. As it happens, the opposite is occurring. U.S. oil consumption is on an upward trajectory,
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Populations of Africa’s forest and savannah elephants continue to decline precipitously, leading conservationists to call for more extreme measures.
African elephants are in crisis. As demand for ivory continues to skyrocket, poaching and illegal trafficking follow. The ivory trade has more than doubled since 2007, and the Wildlife Conservation Society now believes an estimated 96 African elephants die daily as poachers fuel demand from an increasingly wealthy Asian middle class.
Efforts to reduce demand and poaching and enforce existing regulations—which prohibit international but not domestic sales of ivory—are coming up short, prompting some conservat
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After years of obfuscation and, simply put, lies; TEPCO has admitted in a new report that more nuclear fuel had melted at the Fukushima nuclear reactor than previously stated. While this is dreadful news, it gets worse, as the report further confirms that despite Abe's promises and TEPCO's state-funded efforts to build ice-walls, it may miss an important deadline binding it to clean radioactive water stored inside the Fukushima nuclear plant. Bloomberg reports officials commenting "we are doing everything we can do," but it appears, that is not enough as tens of thousands of tons of toxic water are expected to remain at the site by the imposed deadline.
As NHK reports, the meltdown was far more significant that originally publicly stated...
Tepco finds meltdown of the fuel at Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 3 nuclea
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 In this March 29, 2013 photo, a rig drills for natural gas which will eventually be released using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on leased private property outside Rifle, in western Colorado. Once drilling is completed, wells are fractured to allow the flow of gas from deposits typically more than a mile underground. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)Albert Einstein is rumored to have said that one cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that led to it. Yet this is precisely what we are now trying to do with climate change policy. The Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, many environmental groups and the
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 Last week, Freedom Industries — the now bankrupt company that was responsible for a chemical spill that tainted the drinking water of hundreds of thousands of West Virginians — learned that there will be a small price to pay for its negligence.
Kevin Conlon reports for CNN:
A settlement was reached Friday with the company at the center of a January
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 You could be forgiven for not having browsed through the latest issue of the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences. If you care about politics, though, you’ll find a punchline therein that is pretty extraordinary.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences employs a rather unique practice called “Open Peer Commentary”: An article of major significance is published, a large number of fellow scholars comment on it and then the orig
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