The Energy-Water Collision Ahead
But it will not be averted by defining water as just another component of energy production. No matter where you live in the U.S. – desert or coast, city or farm – there is a better than 95% chance your electricity comes from water. How so, you might ask, if...
Achieving Water Security, Part 3: Striving for “Blue Peace” in the Eastern Himalayas
Toward a True India-Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission. By Anumita Raj Editors Note: Our previous installments on water security and transboundary waters (here and here), have included discussions of shared water resources as a vehicle for peaceful relations between...
CAFOs 101
First in a Series about Animals, Agriculture and the Environment. What is a CAFO? First, let's parse. A CAFO is a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation. Some call it a Confined Animal Feeding Operation. You are already getting the idea. “Feeding operation" does not...
“Gangster Fish” by Nick D. Kim
Nick D. Kim is a cartoonist, environmental chemist and lecturer whose website, Strange-Matter.net, is "an archive of largely satisfactory science & other cartoons." His companion site Parallel.net is "about life in a highly improbable (yet quantumly possible)...
The Struggle to Achieve Water Security, Part Two
Alexandra Dapolito Dunn Reports from World Justice Forum IV. By Alexandra Dapolito Dunn Editor's Note: Alex Dunn's follow-up to her first post from World Justice Forum IV at The Hague underscores EarthDesk’s recent coverage of global water issues: part one of our...
Lying and Tigers and Bears . . .
On September 24, 1980, two days after a Siberian Tiger killed his best friend Bob Wilson, my brother Jim stood in a driving English storm outside his trailer home at Howlett’s Zoo Park and howled his horror to the Canterbury countryside. As if the night winds would...
Alexandra Dapolitio Dunn Reports from World Justice Forum IV at The Hague
Perspectives on the Rule of Law and the Environment. Justice Anthony Kennedy on Law, Dignity and Freedom. By Alexandra Dapolito Dunn I am privileged to send this post from The Hague, the Netherlands. The Hague is the political center of the Netherlands but also the...
Water Is a Women’s Issue
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The Great Trans-Atlantic Beach Plague
The United States is not the only developed nation plagued by summertime beach closures, even after decades of laws requiring treatment of sewage. Hundreds of beaches in England do not not make the grade as well, according to The Guardian newspaper. On July 1,...
“Meat Industry” by Hajo de Reijger
Hajo de Reijger is a prolific political cartoonist and freelance illustrator whose themes include animal welfare and the environment. He works for the Dutch newspapers NRC Handelsblad, NRC Next and de Pers, and lives with his wife and three children in Amsterdam. You...
Next Stop, the Twilight Zone . . . of Congressional Climate Denial
It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears, and the summit of his knowledge. -- Rod Serling "Climate change is happening, humans are the cause, and a shocking number of congressional...
Report: A “New Normal” Needed to Protect Insurance Companies from Climate Change
Think Tank Recommends Industry Climate Activism. The world's leading insurance think tank is calling for a new definition of normal weather conditions because of the impacts of climate change and ocean warming on the insurance industry. In its thirty-page...