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At UN Climate Conference U.S. Growers Defend Large-Scale Farming

For the first time ever, the UN is building out a roadmap for curbing carbon pollution from agriculture. To take part in that process, a coalition of U.S. farmers traveled to the UN climate conference in Madrid, Spain this month to make the case for the role that large-scale farming operations, long criticized for their outsizedREAD MORE

Drought Is Crippling Small Farmers in Mexico (PHOTOS)

Talk with farmers in Mexico and they will tell you they’re already feeling the brunt of climate change. Persistent heat and meager rainfall are drying out the land, posing a significant challenge to indigenous small farmer in southern states like Oaxaca, Chiapas and Quintana Roo. Complicating matters, these farmers, called “campesinos,” often lack access to irrigation,READ MORE

Farming with Artificial Intelligence

Farming with Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Our Food Supply

Wine growers have a neat, if unusual, trick for making more flavorful wine — don’t water the vines. Let the vines go dry right before harvest, and they will yield smaller grapes with more skin and less juice. Smaller grapes produce wine with a deeper color and more complex flavor. What if artificial intelligence could discover other tricksREAD MORE

Students Climate Change Nexus Media News

This Year, Graduating Seniors Will School the Country on Climate Change

In June of 1968, Dartmouth valedictorian James Newton devoted his commencement speech to the foremost issue of his time: the Vietnam war. Calling the conflict a “vast international atrocity,” Newton urged his fellow classmates to resist the war and avoid the draft, earning “energetic booing and walk-outs by parents” and criticism from the follow-up speaker, asREAD MORE

racism climate change denial

The Long Fight Against Racism Shows How to Deal with Climate Denial

Early 20th-century black historian Carter G. Woodson once wrote that schools were places where African-Americans “must be convinced of their inferiority.” He saw that the tools of oppression wielded by white Americans were not limited to billy clubs and poll taxes, but included books, lectures and tests on U.S. history, which left black students with aREAD MORE

Oceans Are Losing a Football Field of Seagrass Every Half-Hour

Seagrasses are flowering marine plants that live in shallow coastal waters almost everywhere in the world. The more than 70 species of seagrass provide an important habitat for thousands of ocean animals, from tiny invertebrates, crabs and turtles to large fish and birds. Equally if not more important, seagrasses also are natural carbon sinks — even more effectiveREAD MORE

The Year That Climate Change Became a Kitchen-Table Issue

It feels like a standard-issue attack ad—menacing voiceover, pulsing underscore, rust-tinted photos that signal dirt, grime, corruption. The narrator warns of a politician surrounded by “shady characters,” who is profiting off a dubious family business while running a campaign “flooded with dirty coal money.” Here’s the twist. The politician isn’t Donald Trump, and the ad wasn’tREAD MORE

Doha, Qatar. Source: Pixabay

Will Climate Change Make the Next World Cup Too Hot to Handle?

After four weeks of fanfare, the 2018 World Cup has come to a close. France’s victory in Sunday’s final marked the end of a summer filled with thrilling victories, surprise defeats, national pride (and disappointment), penalty kick-induced panic and many other emotions associated with soccer. Fans, unfortunately, will have to wait longer than usual to experienceREAD MORE

Uncovering the Mental Health Crisis of Climate Change

The young man believed he only had five years to live. “Not because he was sick,” said Kate Schapira, “not because anything was wrong with him, but because he believed that life on Earth would be impossible for humans.” The sign on Schapira’s booth read: CLIMATE ANXIETY COUNSELING 5¢ THE DOCTOR IS IN. Time to earnREAD MORE

Climate Change Gets Personal for Shellfish Growers

A great wine is the product of many things, from the strain of yeast used in fermentation, to the variety of wood used in the casks, to the soil, climate and topography of the region where the grapes are grown—factors collectively known as “terroir.” Terroir is the reason why wine made in Santa Barbara has aREAD MORE

Cutting-Edge Design On Display at Super Bowl LII

Early one December morning in 2010, the inflatable roof on the Minnesota Vikings’ old stadium in Minneapolis ruptured and collapsed under the weight of 17 inches of wet snow. No one was hurt, but the incident was a wake-up call for the Vikings’ front office. The team needed a new facility that could withstand the rigorsREAD MORE

Cities Are Short on Housing. That’s Bad News for the Climate.

Over the last decade or so, white-collar workers have flocked to cities, driving up rents and triggering shortages of affordable housing. Now, advocates and policymakers are in a pitched battle over what to do. That conflict came to a head in Sacramento this week, as California legislators killed a bill that would have allowed developers toREAD MORE

Young Americans Want to Save You From Climate Change

It was one of the largest youth-led protests since the Vietnam War, as hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the capital to protest gun violence. But it wasn’t the size or scale of the March for Our Lives that made it remarkable. As Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic wrote, it was that “adults paid attentionREAD MORE

Is Partisanship the New Religion?

President Trump enjoys a 61 percent approval rating among white evangelical Christians, despite the fact that he does not seem to share many of their core beliefs. He may be willing to appoint pro-life judges, and he’s hawkish on Israel, but in many other ways, he stands at odds with U.S. evangelicals. He does not belongREAD MORE

Pollution, Race and the Search for Justice (VIDEO)

Without a touch of irony, the EPA celebrated Black History Month by publishing a report that finds Black communities face dangerously high levels of pollution. African-Americans are more likely to live near landfills and industrial plants that pollute water and air and erode quality of life. Because of this, more than half of the 9 millionREAD MORE

Extreme Temperature Fluctuations Tied to Increase in Heart Attacks

Temperatures along the East Coast began fluctuating wildly last month, from winter-like cold one day — which is normal for February — to summer-like hot the next day — which is anything but. This is a portentous harbinger of global climate change, and an irksome turn of events, as it forced people to switch their clothes, thermostats and ceiling fans from oneREAD MORE

Coal Country Knows Trump Can’t Save It

Since taking office, President Trump has been checking items off of a coal-industry wish list—ditching the Paris Agreement, stripping environmental safeguards, undermining workplace protections for miners. While the president’s rhetoric has raised hopes for renaissance of American coal, Trump’s policies have done little to revive the ailing industry. Experts warn that the administration’s repeated promises toREAD MORE

Why Are There No Good Movies About Climate Change?

It’s Oscar season, and Hollywood is abuzz with chatter about the year’s best flicks, which include films about poverty, racism and war. Not mentioned by prognosticators is 2017's one big movie about climate change, Geostorm, a sci-fi thriller so thin on story, drama and spectacle, it earned a rating of just 13 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.READ MORE

The Cost of Saving the World

The Cost of Saving the World

This week, diplomats are gathered in Bonn, Germany to hammer out the latest details of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. While the minutiae of the negotiations are important, the real action isn’t at the UN. The climate pact is bottom up, which means it’s up to each country to meet the goals set forth in Paris.READ MORE