There hasn’t been much good news on the climate front lately. We’ve just survived a record hot summer, and the very expensive natural disasters continue. Yet here is something positive — painting roofs white can significantly lower urban temperatures. This revelation came from London, which is expecting a changing climate to bring hotter and drier summers,
An image of the Castle Bravo nuclear detonation. (Image credit: Shutterstock) When I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, the Cold War was a very real thing. The great fear was a major nuclear exchange could virtually end civilization itself. Recently an article headline jolted me back to that time — “Mass Starvation After
Beavers are nature’s master builders. Their dams can change a landscape, creating wetlands and enriching the habitats of other species. They’re also cute, with fur that’s been highly prized in other eras. But frequently they get in our way. Our developments don’t utilize dams made of trees and saplings. We like our land dry and
How big does a forest have to be to make a difference in people’s lives? Not very big. Greenery condensed to the size of a tennis court can have a huge effect. This small-is-good idea germinated in the 1970s with Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, who pioneered a way to plant young indigenous species close together to
Good news for the environment: recently a startup company in Chile, Highly Innovative Fuels (HIF), opened its first synthetic gasoline production facility. HIF was organized to run the plant, which is a collaboration among Porsche, Siemens Energy, Exxon Mobil, Enel Green Power, the Chilean state energy company ENAP, and Empresas Gasco. The plant will begin operating
The African country of Niger had a serious environmental problem. Decades of drought, clearing of land, and the need for firewood had decimated the native trees. The farming needed to feed the world’s fastest-growing population in one of the world’s poorest countries was preventing new trees from growing. The government had recognized the problem, but