Earth Wise

Any conversation about climate policy and energy in the United States has to take Texas into consideration.  Texas leads the nation in energy production, providing more than one-fifth of U.S. domestically produced energy.  Texas also uses more energy than any other state and accounts for almost one-seventh of total U.S. energy consumption.  The state’s industrial […]

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, global sea levels have been rising over the past century, and the rate has increased in recent decades.  Sea levels are currently rising about one-eighth of an inch every year. Sea level rise is caused primarily by two factors related to climate change:  the added water from […]

A massive but unintended experiment in animal conservation has revealed an unexpected result.  Thousands of desert tortoises moved to a translocation site in Nevada had a greater chance of surviving if they had lots of genetic variation. From 1997 to 2014, over 9,000 Mojave desert tortoises were moved to a 39-square-mile translocation site in the […]

Several different clean technology trends may come together on farms across the country where wind turbines could power devices that produce green ammonia for fertilizer and zero emission fuel. Distributed wind is a kind of renewable energy that doesn’t get much attention.  It refers to turbines that are used to generate electricity for on-site use, […]

Composting is popular as a way to keep solid waste out of landfills and many people turn much of their kitchen waste into rich soil amendments.   Cities and towns across the country have composting programs that collect waste from residents to produce large quantities of compost rather than adding the waste to landfills.  A new […]

With their characteristic tall dorsal fins and black and white color patterns, orcas are one of the ocean’s most iconic species.  Measuring up to 32 feet long and weighing as much as 6 tons, orcas have one of the largest geographic distributions of any species.  They live in all latitudes, in all oceans, from the […]

Global insect populations have been in decline since the beginning of the 20th century.  The decline accelerated during the 1950s and 1960s, and it has reached alarming levels during the past 20 years. The causes of plummeting insect populations include habitat destruction, deforestation, climate change, light pollution, and the rise of industrial agriculture.  This so-called […]

Thousands of contaminated sites exist nationally due to hazardous waste being dumped, left out in the open, or otherwise improperly managed. These sites include manufacturing facilities, processing plants, landfills, and mining sites.  A Congressional act in 1980 established authority by the EPA to ultimately clean up these “Superfund” sites. According to a government survey last […]

By mid-November, the Arctic stays dark around the clock and twilight does not return until the end of January.  But even as winter darkness descended upon the Arctic this year, record-breaking high temperatures in the region continued.  In late November, temperatures across the entire Arctic basin were 12 degrees Fahrenheit above normal and some locations […]

Ash trees are some of the most important plants along riverbanks and in wetlands.  There are three ash species in North America:  the white, green, and black ash.  Unfortunately, all three species are critically endangered because of the emerald ash borer. The emerald ash borer is an exotic beetle from Asia that first showed up […]