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2 More Fracking-Related Earthquakes Hit Oklahoma Despite New Rules Meant to Prevent Them
2 More Fracking-Related Earthquakes Hit Oklahoma Despite New Rules Meant to Prevent Them Two earthquakes registering at a 4.5 and a 4.4 magnitude shook frack-happy Oklahoma on Saturday, some of the strongest felt in the state this year. The stronger quake occurred just a few miles from the city of Cushing, which holds one of the largest […]
Bubbles and Backlashes
Bubbles and Backlashes Image: trialsanderrors/Flickr CC. Financial markets have been turbulent as of late with no end in sight. A sagging global economy could overwhelm America’s recovery efforts with toxic effects on key climate change and clean energy initiatives now underway. The Federal Reserve’s recent decision to postpone an interest rate hike is but one reflection […]
Shrinking the Technosphere, Part I
Shrinking the Technosphere, Part I On September 28, while addressing the UN General Assembly, Putin proposed “implementing naturelike technologies, which will make it possible to restore the balance between the biosphere and the technosphere.” It is necessary to do so to combat catastrophic global climate change, because, according to Putin, CO2 emissions cuts, even if implemented […]
How Soil and Carbon are Related
How Soil and Carbon are Related Carbon cycle is one of the fundamental requirement of life on earth. Soil organic carbon (SOC) can be described as the amount of carbon that is stored in the soil as one of the components of the soil organic matter which comprises the animal and plant materials and different […]
Healthy Soils Reduce Water Pollution
Healthy Soils Reduce Water Pollution Absorbent soils yields big benefits for air and water. Photo © Brett Walton / Circle of Blue The rainfall simulator demonstrates the soil’s capacity to store and filter water. When heavy rain strikes bare fields and construction sites, the two soil samples in the middle, dirty water flows into […]
Inspired By Game Of Thrones, TEPCO Resumes Building “Ice Wall” Around Fukushima
Inspired By Game Of Thrones, TEPCO Resumes Building “Ice Wall” Around Fukushima 14 Months after abandoning the “Game of Thrones”-esque frozen-water-wall containment plan for Fukushima, Bloomberg reports that TEPCO expects to begin freezing a soil barrier by the end of the year to stop a torrent of water entering the wrecked Fukushima nuclear facility, moving a step closer to […]
The Rapid and Startling Decline Of World’s Vast Boreal Forests
The Rapid and Startling Decline Of World’s Vast Boreal Forests Scientists are becoming increasingly concerned about the fate of the huge boreal forest that spans from Scandinavia to northern Canada. Unprecedented warming in the region is jeopardizing the future of a critical ecosystem that makes up nearly a third of the earth’s forest cover. The boreal […]
Honeybees Face Global Threat: If They Die, So Do We
Honeybees Face Global Threat: If They Die, So Do We “There is one masterpiece, the hexagonal cell, that touches perfection. No living creature, not even man, has achieved, in the center of his sphere, what the bee has achieved in her own: and were some one from another world to descend and ask of the […]
The Oceans Are Becoming Too Hot for Coral, and Sooner than We Expected
The Oceans Are Becoming Too Hot for Coral, and Sooner than We Expected Soon the oceans will be too warm to support thriving coral reefs. USFWS – Pacific Region/Flickr, CC BY This week, scientists registered their concern that super-warm conditions are building to a point where corals are severely threatened across the tropical Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans. They […]
Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Lies
Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Lies Over the last few years, a growing number of people have been taking a hard look at what is happening to our planet – historic droughts, rising sea levels, massive floods – and acknowledging, finally, that human activity is propelling rapid climate change. But guess what? Exxon (now ExxonMobil) […]
Michael Klare, Tipping Points and the Question of Civilizational Survival
Tipping Points and the Question of Civilizational Survival In mid-August, TomDispatch’s Michael Klare wrote presciently of the oncoming global oil glut, the way it was driving the price of petroleum into the “energy subbasement,” and how such a financial “rout,” if extended over the next couple of years, might lead toward a new (and better) world of energy. […]
Fukushima Kids Suffer Thyroid Cancer Up To 50x Normal Rate, New Study Finds
Fukushima Kids Suffer Thyroid Cancer Up To 50x Normal Rate, New Study Finds Children living near the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer at a rate 20 to 50 times that of children elsewhere, according to a new study. As AP reports, most of the 370,000 children in Fukushima prefecture have been given ultrasound […]
Taking a Bite Out of Plastic Waste: New Research Offers Unexpected Promise as Permaculture Hack
Taking a Bite Out of Plastic Waste: New Research Offers Unexpected Promise as Permaculture Hack Reducing plastic pollution has seemed a daunting prospect, until now. Can the tiny Mealworm bite off more than we can chew? According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Americans alone throw away 25 billion Styrofoam cups each year. Styrofoam […]
The Problem of Agriculture
The Problem of Agriculture This is an excerpt from the new book Plain Radical: Living, Loving, and Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully, published by Counterpoint/Soft Skull, which tells the story of Robert Jensen’s intellectual and political collaboration with teacher/activist Jim Koplin. I was born and raised in North Dakota, a rural state with an economy […]
