There is no escaping it. Climate change makes demands on affluent lifestyles. They range from the trivial, to the mildly disruptive, to the highly annoying. Over time these demands have evolved. Swapping out incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescents - now LEDs - was an early demand. Turning the heating or A/C down a notch …
Food, Freedom, and Smiley Faces
The day before Independence Day in 2018 was the last day to comment on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s proposal for mandatory labeling of foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The requirement for a nationally recognizable standard was passed in 2016 during the Obama administration. The proposal offers guidance to food companies who will soon …
Climate Engineering and the Sustainable Development Goals: The Tangled Web of the Anthropocene
A report released by C2G2 at the end of May is an interesting exercise in bringing two important global challenges into conversation. Carbon Removal and Solar Geoengineering: Potential Implications for Delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals is a noble effort to tie what policy makers should do about climate change with what they should do …
Champagne, Truffles, and Climate Change
For a few scant years, the challenges of climate change lay only in the future. The prospect of transformed landscapes and disrupted ecologies was a threat that could be – and was – easily ignored. Although atmospheric scientists assured anyone who would listen that real problems lay ahead, interest in doing anything serious about it …
Salmon, Forests, and Protein Factories
It only took a day and a half. That was all the rainfall required to turn the lethargic assembly of fish milling around at the mouth of the creek into a full-on salmon run. For nearly two weeks, I had watched a growing school of pink salmon slowly circulate where the dwindling fresh water from …
