Now, we have a unique opportunity as human beings: we can interpret these warning signs and make long-term plans for the future. We can begin today to prepare a gift for our own future, and for t...
https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/20/a-snowballs-chance-in-california/
It’s a privilege to be distanced from the world’s most pressing environmental issues. Thanks to various socioeconomic and political forces, it’s a privilege that exists only for a few – n...
https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/06/environmental-justice-lessons-for-the-wilderness-romantic/
Of course, many of our fish farms, which often rely on wild-caught “fish meal” themselves, aren’t sustainable either. Like many environmental conundrums, there are no easy answers – yet. ...
https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/22/no-more-fish-in-the-sea/
We need to develop an environmental consciousness that admires sustainability, not consumption, and rewards conservation, not excess. In so doing, we’ll become better caretakers, not just of ou...
https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/08/in-the-eye-of-the-sandstorm/
How, then, can we prevent other species from meeting Lonesome George’s fate? For many of the 11,500 species listed as endangered (or critically endangered) by the IUCN, it may already be too la...
https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/04/lonesome-george-allee-and-the-invisible-line/
A huge potential reservoir of new medicines is contained in Earth’s biodiversity. So long as we continue to decimate this biodiversity, we will be locked in a losing race against time to catalo...
https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/18/doctor-nature-how-our-health-hinges-on-biodiversity/
At subway stations and bus stops, we’re warned by conductors “mind the gap.” While in those cases, the solution is a short hop from side to side, when it comes to the gap in scientific know...
Such success stories won’t be echoed everywhere. On a planet with 7 billion humans and counting, wild places are necessarily eroding in the face of human need, despite the activism of conservat...
What if microfinance could accelerate the demographic transition? Many microfinance institutes focus on making loans to women: properly administered, these loans should enable women to establish ...
https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/12/small-steps-to-sustainability/
For all its present-day pleasantries, the reality of life on a Hawaiian island also foreshadows humanity’s grim future of resource limitation and expensive essentials. Just like Oʻahu, Planet ...
The emerging – or rather, submerging – environmental catastrophe is as grand in scale as it is complex in its origins. Since 1930, Louisiana has lost 1880 square miles of its coastal marshes ...
https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/03/denial-is-not-a-river-in-louisiana/
Last month, as gas prices fell, we started buying less efficient cars again: SUV sales soared while hybrid sales sank, and average vehicle gas mileage made its biggest drop since 2011. The effici...
https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/20/backsliding-into-oil-addiction/
Rather than fearing discussion of human overpopulation, we should embrace it. That’s a lot less scary than rocketing blindly towards 10 billion with no plan for the environmental consequences w...
https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/06/human-overpopulation-when-no-news-is-bad-news/
Placing restrictions on the major consumers of California’s precious fresh water will not cripple the state’s economy. And the gradual implementation proposed by the new legislation (the real...
VANCOUVER, B.C.: I have been fortunate to live in many places, but none have ever felt like “home” in the way the Pacific Northwest does. It has the gray skies and rainy days that soothe my s...
The hearts of these legislators are in the right place, even if change is a long way off. Certainly, they have the support of many environmental advocacy groups, who recognize the importance of c...
Last week, the climate-conscious received new cause for alarm. Two studies, published separately but simultaneously by independent groups of scientists, reached the same frightening conclusion: T...
In 2010, President Barack Obama announced the shutdown of the government’s manned space shuttle program. The task of putting humans in space has been turned over to the private sector; the trul...
Many hatchlings are not expected to survive to maturity, and in fact most sea turtles are endangered, so ensuring successful nesting is a major conservation goal. Many turtle-nesting beaches are ...
If we fail to deal with climate change, managed relocation — physically distributing members of at-risk species to new, potentially suitable habitats — could help at least a few species escap...
The story of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada farmer currently in a standoff with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, reads like some kind of anachronistic, anarchist Wild West showdown to a city slicker l...
It's an uphill battle in a political environment that, regardless of the (increasingly unequivocal) state of climate science, is viciously polarized. One side is populated by arguments for headin...
Brain development is a process we still know little about. Yet its complexity and delicacy suggest that it may be susceptible to a variety of derailments. So why, then, do we let tens of thousand...
https://stanforddaily.com/2014/04/09/a-chemical-brain-drain/
At last, solar power seems ready for the big stage. Finally at the same price point as traditional electricity generation, solar is no longer the pet project of wealthy greenies and will increasi...
“Why is that man dressed like an astronaut, Dad?” I must have been 10 or so when I asked that question from the back seat of the car while my parents drove by a golf course. The seeming astro...
Steller’s sea cow. The dodo. Passenger pigeons. These are names many of us have heard. They’re part of a sad list, now dozens of species long, of animals that human activity has driven extinc...
https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/26/ecological-opportunity-in-the-modern-homogocene/
Last Wednesday was the 205th birthday of Charles Darwin. February 12 isn’t a date I usually take particular note of. But this year, Darwin’s work on evolution happened to be at the forefront ...
It was a sight I’d never expected, and one I didn’t figure on seeing again — until late last year, when stories of flaming, even exploding trains seemed to suddenly fill the news. What chan...
https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/05/a-train-car-named-disaster/
Shivering, the first group of students arrived at Almaden Quicksilver County Park at 8 A.M. on Saturday morning. Spoiled by a winter that, so far, has seemed more like summer, a few hadn’t even...
https://stanforddaily.com/2014/01/29/seeing-green-in-drying-times/
What did you eat for breakfast this morning? I posed that question to my Santa Clara University students last Friday during our late-morning lecture on the human population and its many impacts. ...
https://stanforddaily.com/2014/01/22/seeing-green-oil-for-breakfast/
This is not a column about how we should regulate the possession of firearms in this country nor is it about the human tragedy of gun-related violence. Instead, this is a column about how guns �...
While methane concentrations are low, they’re still twice what they were just a couple hundred years ago (before the Industrial Revolution). And they’re rising. The post Bubbling Away appe...
When I stood before Mount St. Helens, I felt small and insignificant, sure that I had no right to command control over any aspect of this landscape. The post Who’s Serving Whom? appeared fir...
SANTA CRUZ, CA – As a gray ceiling closed over Main Beach mid-Saturday afternoon, those of us waiting on volleyball games scrambled for our sweaters. Anyone accustomed to spending long hours pl...
https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/13/redwood_climatic_distillery/
FREDERICTON, N.B. – Daniel Boisclair, calm, alert, and with a subtle French accent, took the floor promptly at 9am to open the second day of talks at the Aquatic Reserve Networks meeting. Like ...
https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/06/seeing-green-for-everything-a-season/
If there's one thing I love and hate about biology, it's that it is so very complicated. One of the things that makes it so complicated is sex. In this case, I'm thinking of the fact that sex lik...
Last week, I wrote about inspiration and the story of Rachel Carson. I figured I could get away with a quick summary of Carson's contributions, but judging by some of the commentary I received, I...
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately wondering what I’d like to do with my life – professionally, that is. It’s hardly a unique problem: I know plenty of people graduating this year fr...
https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/16/tirelessly-telling-the-truth/
One week before my grant submission deadline, my internal procrastinator finally decided to get serious. I fired off drafts to collaborators, requests for letters of recommendation to my mentors,...
https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/09/seeing-green-neither-dollars-nor-sense/
No matter how many times I hear Toto “bless the rains down in Africa,” I’ve never thought of the continent as a water-rich place. Perhaps it’s the fame of the Sahara desert, the nature do...
https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/02/seeing-green-drilling-down-drinking-up/