Earth Wise

The world’s rivers carry billions of cubic yards of sediment – sand, silt and other material – and transport it to wetlands and coastal areas.  Until fairly recently, this was viewed as a negative thing.  But that has changed. Vast amounts of natural river-borne sediment are trapped behind the world’s 57,000 large dams and countless […]

We have talked about the monarch butterfly on a number of occasions.  The population of these iconic orange and black butterflies in North America has plummeted from 1 billion to 33 million over the past 20 years.  People have undertaken a variety of efforts to try to save the species but now a major project […]

Carbon dioxide is not a very popular substance.  As a greenhouse gas, it is the chief culprit in climate change and, as such, the world continues to seek solutions for preventing its release in the environment. But CO2 has a second identity:  it is a cheap, readily available and non-toxic source of carbon that is an […]

Sea pickles are translucent, tubular creatures that are usually found in tropical ocean waters.   Also known as pyrosomes, they are actually made up of many small multicellular organisms that are linked together in a tunic to form a tubelike colony that is closed on one end. Back in 2014, there started to be reports of […]

Clean water supplies are dwindling around the world.  As a result, the use of untreated wastewater on farms for crop irrigation is on the rise.  According to an updated assessment recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, more than 72 million acres of farmland located within 25 miles of urban centers are being irrigated […]

On Monday, August 21, there will be a total solar eclipse visible in a band across the entire contiguous United States.  The last time that happened was in June of 1918.  In fact, the last time a total solar eclipse was visible anywhere at all in the continental U.S. was in 1979.  So, this is […]

There have been many stories in the media about the ongoing environmental crisis at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.  Over the past two years, the reef has lost almost half of its coral because of bleaching events.   Faced with this situation, the Australian government created the Reef 2050 Plan, a strategy to protect and maintain the […]

Terrible traffic in cities around the world is a real blight on urban life.  Increasingly, there are many cities where you simply don’t want to have to go anywhere by car during morning and evening rush hours. One place that was notorious for bad traffic problems is the city of Jakarta in Indonesia, home to […]

On the heels of the Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, France has rolled out ambitious plans to reduce its carbon footprint even further.  The country has pledged to halt all coal-fired energy production by 2022, reduce the share of nuclear power from 75 to 50 percent in the next eight […]

Now that the Trump administration announced that the United States would cease implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement, various state, local and corporate entities in this country have been stepping up to assume climate leadership. On June 1st, New York Governor Cuomo, California Governor Brown, and Washington State Governor Inslee declared their states’ commitment to […]