Air and Water
The Welfare Of The Animals In Factory Farms
These are not Old MacDonald’s farms. Far from the idyllic, spacious pastures that are often shown in food advertisements and children’s programming, factory farms raise large numbers of animals in extreme confinement. More than 99% of farm animals in the U.S. are raised on factory farms, where they’re regarded as a commodity for maximizing profit.
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What Is Factory Farming?
We should start by clearing up a myth: A factory “farm” is no farm at all. It’s quite simply an animal factory built for efficiency. Approximately 70 billion farm animals worldwide call these places home – including chickens, turkeys, cows, pigs, goats, and sheep.
Hope For Sea Turtles
If you are fortunate enough to have encountered sea turtles while swimming, snorkeling or diving in the sea, then you know how remarkable these creatures are. The seven species of these large reptiles are real throwbacks to the age of dinosaurs.
Restoring Rainforests
Forests play a major role in the Earth’s carbon cycle. Trees pull carbon dioxide out of the air and lock the carbon away in their wood and in the soil beneath them. Over time, we have cut down or damaged at least three-quarters of the world’s forests and that destruction has been an important contributor to climate change.
Cleaning Up Carbon Pollution And Improving Air Quality
States have a chance to safeguard more than the climate when they adopt the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan. That’s because many of the strategies used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions have the added benefit of improving air quality.
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Hidden Water Usage
Water is essential for life and we use lots of it. What few of us think about is how much of our water use is hidden. This is the water used to produce the food we eat and the things we use in our daily lives. When this is added in, each person consumes between 500 and 1,300 gallons per day, or as much as 480,000 gallons a year, enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
Ensuring The World’s Parks Protect Biodiversity
Every ten years, the International Union for Conservation of Nature hosts the World Parks Congress. In November, more than 6,000 people from 170 countries descended on Sydney, Australia to assess the state of the world’s protected areas at the sixth Congress.
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Keeping The Air Clean While Getting Warm
Fireplaces and stoves are coveted features in many homes, providing warmth and ambiance. But managed improperly, these heat sources can be inefficient and unhealthy.
Reducing Phosphorus Pollution In Lake Erie
Toxic algal blooms have been spreading throughout Lake Erie. In August, contamination left 400,000 residents in Ohio and Michigan without water for 72 hours. Now, legislators are taking steps to prevent future catastrophes by regulating farming practices.
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A Bad Year For Eels
The American eel has become one of the latest species to be deemed ‘at risk of extinction in the wild’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
A New Carbon Sponge
One way to mitigate the effects of burning fossil fuels is to capture the carbon emitted in the process and to prevent it from entering the atmosphere. The most common method in use today at natural gas and coal-burning plants is called amine scrubbing.
Getting Tough On Illegal Fishing
A White House task force has issued a set of recommendations to combat the growing problem of illegal fishing and make it easier to tell if the fish you are buying is what you think it is and whether it was legally caught and imported. [Read more…] about Getting Tough On Illegal Fishing
Let’s Get The Lead Out!
Lead has long been recognized as a potent neurotoxin associated with cognitive problems. Children who are exposed to lead often have lower IQ scores and behavioral troubles.
Strontium And Drinking Water
Thanks to the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, every five years the Environmental Protection Agency identifies new contaminants in our drinking water supply and determines if they should be regulated. This year, of the handful of contaminants assessed, the EPA made a preliminary determination to regulate strontium.
The Murky Hudson
Visitors to New York’s Hudson River often comment on how “dirty” or murky its water appears. This murkiness is often taken as a sign of poor water quality. Why does the river look so muddy? And what does it mean?
Turning Farms Into Deserts
By now, we all know too much salt is bad for our health. But did you know excess salt also threatens global food security? According to a new report by the United Nations, 20% of irrigated farmland worldwide suffers from escalating salt levels. Losses in crop productivity are estimated to cost 27 billion dollars annually.
Sustainable New Year’s Resolutions
With the holiday season behind us, it’s a great time to reflect on the past twelve months and set new goals for the coming year. Sure, there are tried and true New Year’s resolutions – join a gym, read the classics – but what about a resolution to be kinder to the Earth?
Toilet-to-Tap: It’s A Good Thing
California, which is the number one food and agricultural producer in the United States, is in the third year of one of the state’s worst droughts in a century. This has led to an increase in wildfires, losses in agriculture, and water restrictions and shortages. Some small communities even run the risk of running out of water.
Using Less Water
