To promote positive change, stating that climate change is your top priority is akin to saying attending church is the most essential activity of the week. Both involve acting on your personal beliefs without sharing much about the reasoning behind them. Without the clarifying details that make the existential crisis more personal and relatable for…
Enacting Ordinances for the Hydration of Our Landscapes It is time to acknowledge and codify the natural rights of the earth to retain the rainwater that falls upon it. Such recognition marks a paradigm shift from the prevailing approach of channeling stormwater swiftly out of our communities, toward a model that honors the earth’s intrinsic…
The abomination of a budget bill shoved through Congress offers a glimmer of hope for the environment and efforts to fight climate change. The government will cease providing subsidies to solar industry investors. These subsidies made it profitable for investors in Boston to outbid two farming families for a 182-acre farm in Shaftsbury, Vermont, nestled…
In 1810, in the Greenland Sea, William Scoresby Jr., the captain of Resolute, who was 21 years old, used an oceanographic instrument made from a ten-gallon wooden cask. It was built following Lord Joseph Banks’s instructions. The cask was made of two-inch-thick fir planks, “as being a bad conductor of heat.” At each end of…
Without mangroves, the oceans would be significantly less biodiverse. These unique forests provide a nursery for developing marine life and food for numerous species. However, the critical connection between mangroves and marine life goes deeper than their iconic root structure. Every part of the mangrove benefits the ecosystem, from its nutrient-dense leaves to shore-stabilizing roots.…
From Climate Misconceptions to Sustainable Solutions A new scientific study indicates that changing cloud cover may be behind most of the abrupt global warming observed in 2023, with the rise in carbon dioxide contributing to only 10% of the warming. Climate scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies found that the world’s cloud cover…
In Shetland’s Lerwick Harbor, the grey stone buildings stand close together. Rows of houses line streets that march downhill in curving lines to meet the sea. They buttress against the cold winds that race across the northernmost fetch of the North Sea. On the first Sunday of October, Saint Columba’s Church of Scotland fills with…
My first experience with a right whale was as a college student alone on the deck of a twenty-seven-foot sailboat. Suddenly, beside me was what looked like a sandbar the length of the boat. Yet, it was alive and moving forward. Those below decks thought I was having an epileptic attack. I had never imagined…
