Where You Stand Depends On Where You Frack
The Department of Interior's latest proposed regulations for hydraulic fracturing on public lands could set a precedent for how fracking is regulated on private lands nationally and by individual states. Judging from online reactions, the agency may well believe it...
To Find Another Earth, Find Water First
But Kepler-62f Offers No Oasis When Earth Runs Out. For my (tax) money, the most fascinating NASA program is the $600 million Kepler mission. Launched March 6, 2009, it searches for Earth-like planets outside our solar system, worlds that lie “in the habitable zone of...
Marine Invasives Spawn Multi-Billion Dollar Industry
Technological innovations that eliminate invasive aquatic species and pathogens from ship ballast water are spurring the growth of a multi-billion dollar industry. Ballast -- water pumped into holds to balance and stabilize ships, sometimes by the millions of gallons...
For STEM, Educators and the Environment, the Sequester Is Not an Abstraction
By Dr. Lauren Birney and Dr. Jonathan Hill STEM -- K-12 education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math -- is fundamental to the training of a technological workforce, the innovations environmental problems demand, and the competitive advantage the global...
Revisiting John Burroughs, Literary Naturalist
The Hudson River holds a special place in our collective heart here at EarthDesk. It is just down the road from Pace Academy World Headquarters in Pleasantville, NY, we all live within its watershed, and our education and research programs touch it at every turn. Dr....
The Animal Law Circus
(x-post from Animal Blawg) There’s a story about a Canadian farmer who won a $100 million tax-free, lump sum payment in the Canadian lottery. When asked what he would do with the money, he replied “I guess I’ll just keep farming until the money’s gone.” Now, let’s...
Student Filmmakers Reflect After Completing a Sea Turtle Tale
Four months ago, a dozen Pace University students and two professors embarked on a journey, aiming to understand the forces imperiling sea turtles on the Pacific coast of Mexico's Baja peninsula and make a film about efforts to mesh turtle conservation with the need...
The Economic Integrity of Water?
Can water have economic integrity? A team of students from Pace University's Lubin School of Business believe so and have called for an amendment to the Federal Clean Water Act that would add the term “economic” to the law’s primary objective "to restore and maintain...
Assessing Assessments of the Corporate ‘Green Bottom Line’
Is there a measurable "green bottom line" that justifies in financial terms companies' efforts to cut environmental impacts? The key word here is measurable, and measuring such factors is the specialty of Dr. Noushi Rahman, a professor of management at the Pace...
Exploring Why it Pays For a Company to Be Green
A popular focus of scholars studying corporate behavior and the environment has been a simple question: “Does it pay to be green?” But this arena is full of charges of "greenwash" and dogged by inconsistent ways of measuring success (both environmental and financial),...
A Year of Sunsets Merged Into One Image
The arts play a vital role in calling attention to the special nature of our planet -- and our species. Here's one example that I posted on Twitter (and then on Dot Earth) today but is also worth sharing here: Here’s the description of Molloy's method from his 500px...
A Blogger’s Guide to Best Practices
In a recent conversation with Donna Kowal, the program coordinator for the Pace Academy and the organizing force behind the creation of EarthDesk, I laid out some practical tips for blogging a better planet (that's the title of my fall course at Pace). Here's the...