The first three agricultural revolutions allowed the human population to blossom by the billions, but they also had—in the words of Nobel Laureate Steven Chu—“unintended consequences.” The first agricultural revolution included the domestication of wheat, rice, cattle and chickens, yeast for bread and the first irrigation. The second spurred population growth through crop rotation, improvement [...]
The United States Patent and Trademark Office will expedite patent applications, at no extra charge, for inventions that promise to mitigate climate change, its director announced this month. Normally the USPTO can take two to three years to process a patent, during which time products may be labelled as “patent pending.” The agency has long [...]
Three communities in the United States now have officials dedicated to managing extreme heat—Phoenix, Los Angeles and Miami-Dade County. But that means 19,000 communities do not, according to a leading researcher, and many of those probably couldn’t afford one. Officials in many of those communities recognize the problem of extreme heat, said Ladd Keith, a [...]
Whether human society mitigates climate change, adapts to it, or fails at both, rapid societal change is looming. Governments are going to need political mechanisms, an expert in global sustainability said last week, to navigate that rapid change. “How do we build the politics?,” asked Nathan Hultman, director of the Center for Global Sustainability at [...]
Last week a panel of social scientists convened at the behest of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to talk about accelerating decarbonization. Being social scientists, their discussion ventured into the social. “I am fascinated by this topic of how do you change consumer behavior,” said Devashree Saha, a senior associate at the [...]
Farmers may lose money when they fill a field with crops from edge to edge, an expert said Friday, while they could profit from identifying and restoring unprofitable areas within fields. “There can be small areas within a field that are less profitable,” said Claire Kremen, a University of British Columbia ecologist and applied conservation [...]
Once upon a time, a single electric utility would send electricity in one direction to many customers. But the grid is evolving so that millions of devices will buy and sell, exchange and share electricity, system services, and information instantaneously in a multitude of directions. U.S. energy labs have begun developing systems that use blockchain [...]
When cities build protected bike lanes, it doesn’t just save the lives of current bicyclists, said a leading global health expert, it saves lives by getting sedentary people out of their cars. “Because of our over-dependence on the private motorized vehicle, we are leading sedentary lifestyles,” said Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute [...]
The pollutants driving the climate crisis are also making people sick, and as the crisis worsens people are getting sicker. That’s the bad news. Now the good: Mitigating the climate crisis, according to a global health expert, would eliminate nearly half of the world’s premature deaths. “When you think about what it means to get [...]
PALOMINO, COLOMBIA — Sandbags and seawalls have proven feeble against the hunger of the sea as it devours the beach in this Caribbean coastal town. (Photo by Jeff McMahon) PALOMINO, COLOMBIA — A brief hike east or west from this Caribbean coastal town reveals long expanses of light gray sand, pounded by waves, backed by [...]
