Articles tagged with: sustainability
On Doctoring the Planet
Our planet is heating up in a hurry! Call in the Earth doctors! Let’s fix the planet!
Now that we’ve pushed Earth systems out of the comfort zone, Earth and environmental scientists are increasingly being called …
Looking Back at the Cradle in the Rear-view Mirror
Are humans pushing earth systems towards environmental catastrophe? Or are we just worrying needlessly about the novel state of the earth that we have now created? Or both?
In a Nature Feature entitled “A safe operating …
Save the planet? From who?
Millennia ago, our species reshaped the ecology of this planet and we have continued to reshape it ever more rapidly and intensively ever since. Today, we directly use or alter nearly all of earth’s terrestrial …
Globalization is good for the biosphere
Finally some good news about global change: globalization is making us cooperate! This is no minor discovery. Poverty, global warming, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss- all of these will only be solved when all of …
Ancient trees in Africa are eating your carbon
While you are driving to work, plume of carbon drifting lazily into the sky, do you ever wonder where all of your carbon will end up? Now, work by Simon Lewis and a large team …
The human jungle
Are pristine rainforests the only ones that matter? We know that forests do change as they age, developing some unique characteristics when mature, and that some species cannot live outside of large swaths of ancient …
The Biosphere- love it or change it for the better!
The Biosphere is home to all life on Earth. Now that we humans are living in and/or using almost all of it, the future of the biosphere is in our hands.
Keeping human influence out of …
Campfires degrade local ecosystems
Humans have been using fire since prehistory- indeed, it is one of our defining characteristics -distinguishing us from all other species.
There is little doubt that burning of forests to attract game and later, to clear …
China’s rural revolution
China’s explosive economic growth has awed the world, and is now felt in every corner of the Earth. As a result, earth systems are being changed at unprecedented rates, while bringing more people into a …
Beyond good intentions: let’s think globally!
A couple weeks ago, I was invited by UMBC to provide a new year’s message to the world, in 100 words, prefaced with “In 2009, the world should resolve to…”
Here is the video version of …











Recent Comments