Earth Wise

Electric vehicles are widely known to be the environmentally friendly alternative to internal combustion-based cars.   But there are skeptics who argue that EVs actually have a larger carbon footprint than nonelectric vehicles.  The argument is that the manufacturing and disposal of vehicle batteries is very carbon intensive.  They also point to the reliance on coal […]

The U.S. Committee of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative has published the State of the Birds 2022, an assessment of bird populations in North America. The news is not good.  The report identifies 70 Tipping Point species, which are those that have lost half or more of their breeding population since 1970 and are […]

It is tragic that 31% of the world’s food production goes uneaten.  About 14% isn’t distributed after it is harvested.  Another 17% ends up wasted in retail or by consumers.  Worldwide, the amount of food that is wasted is enough to feed more than a billion people while at least 828 million people continue to […]

For the world to reach a state of net-zero emissions, it is going to require more than the ongoing transition to renewable energy sources.  There will also need to be efforts to capture the emissions from sources that can’t easily eliminate their pollution.  These include steel mills, cement plants, and other industrial sites.  At least […]

The United Nations climate change conference that recently took place in Egypt is an annual event.  Last year, the conference was in Glasgow, Scotland, and the participants – heads of state and business leaders – produced a long list of promises aimed at fighting global warming.  How have the countries and companies making those promises […]

The World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London recently published the latest Living Planet Index, which is designed to measure how animal populations are changing through time.  The purpose is to provide an assessment of the health of ecosystems and the state of biodiversity. The LPI only looks at the population of vertebrates:  […]

El Paso, Texas is part of the Paso del Norte region, which includes Ciudad Juarez in Mexico and Las Cruces, New Mexico.  The population on both sides of the border is booming, approaching 3 million people.  The region’s primary water source is the Rio Grande River.  But that river is declining. Rising temperatures and decreasing […]

Our planet is choking on plastic.  According to the United Nations, 79% of the 6.3 billion tons of plastic produced every year accumulates in landfills.  Half of all plastic produced is actually designed to be used just once and thrown away.  But plastic is not only accumulating on land.  In fact, the world’s oceans are […]

Hybrid renewable energy systems combine multiple renewable energy and/or energy storage technologies into a single plant.  The goal is to reduce costs and increase energy output relative to separate systems taking advantage of common infrastructure and the ability of one renewable energy source having appreciable output while a second one might not at a particular […]

California has tremendous potential offshore wind resources.  The state set a preliminary target of 15 GW of offshore wind by 2045 earlier this year and may increase that number to 25 GW.  But installing offshore wind on the West Coast is much more challenging than it is on the East Coast.  The reason is that […]