Tag: climate
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The Impact of Barry Commoner
As one of America’s most influential environmentalist, Barry Commoner devoted his life and career to ecology, awareness, education, and enacting positive change. He was among the first to begin advocating for recycling and organic farming, as well as raising awareness about the threats of the greenhouse effect and the dangers…
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Algae as a Biofuel
With the exception of chemosynthetic life forms such as many of those who reside at the openings of deep-sea hydrothermal vents, the vast majority of biological energy has the sun to thank for its origins. Whether it be thermal, or through photonic collisions within the chloroplasts of plant cells, the…
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Putting a Price on Carbon: Who Pays, and How?
It’s not uncommon that a Carbon tax or Cap-and-Trade is dismissed as some sort of scheme, just another example of the government taking the people’s hard-earned money. Thing is, this simply isn’t true, and both options carry some serious weight in terms of the impacts they could have on reducing…
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Japan’s Solar Surge + How Solar Works
30% of Japan’s energy comes from nuclear reactors, at least it did until March 11th, 2011 when an earthquake lead to a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. 11 others shut down that day. Within a year, the countries remaining nuclear power plants all shut down in order…
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Can the Market Save the World?
Welcome to part two in an ongoing series examining our connections and impact on the environment, sustainability, and our changing climate. Part 1 through roughly 9 will focus on laying the groundwork for understanding these complicated issues from a variety of perspectives, while parts 10 through 20 or so will…
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The Danger Zone
This was originally written as an essay in 2015 based on a New Yorker article by Elizabeth Kolbert entitled “A New Climate-Change Danger Zone?” and reflects my opinions at the time. Much has changed in the world and the climate crisis has only gotten worse and my understanding of that…