Earth Wise

The conventional wisdom is that invasive species are bad news and we constantly hear about the dangers of foreign plants and animals moving into new territories. Such alien species are often the greatest threat to native wildlife. There are numerous examples such as the fungus that caused the chestnut blight that decimated chestnut trees in […]

The Paris climate agreement last December resulted in commitments by 195 countries to reduce their carbon emissions.  The countries around the world made specific pledges to reduce emissions in the form of “intended nationally determined contributions” or INDCs. What this means is that every country participating in the Paris agreement has to be able to […]

When we think about solar power, we mostly think about rooftops covered with solar panels.  And indeed, there are more than 800,000 solar rooftops in the U.S. and the numbers are growing. But an equally important area of explosive growth is utility-scale solar:  solar plants that are larger than 5 MW, or about 1,000 times […]

Estimates are that as much as 40% of produce in America is wasted.  We throw out fruits and vegetables for a variety of reasons, but one of the most unfortunate is when produce is tossed simply because it doesn’t look good enough.   Misshapen tomatoes, lumpy carrots, double-lobed potatoes, and crooked cucumbers end up in the […]

When it comes to addressing infectious disease, we have a short attention span. Forces are mobilized when we’ve crossed a tipping point, and demobilized when the immediate threat has passed. In the case of Zika, the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency based on a strong association between Zika infection and microcephaly in […]