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Across Europe, pollution-eating moss is cleaning the air. Part-nature and part man-made, the CityTree combines the purifying factor of moss with remote technology to increase the airflow through the “trees” to maximize their ability to filter air pollution. Two-thirds of the world’s population is expected to live in cities by 2050 thus cleaning up the […]
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On Monday, Ethiopians around the nation planted trees — and not just a few — the citizens of the second-largest African nation planted 353 million trees in just 12 hours as part of the “Green Legacy” initiative led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
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We wrote last week that trees and forests have an important role to play in fighting climate change and their importance was only underscored by the recent heatwave that much of the east coast experienced. Tree cover can cool cities by as much as 10°F but in the United States, we’ve been losing a significant […]
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Jim Richards is the CEO of Milkadamia, the maker of plant-based, vegan macadamia milk and products produced through regenerative farming techniques. ODP: What are the barriers that prevent regenerative farming from being used more widely? JR: The interest in regenerative farming among farmers is high and we can anticipate many more farms becoming regenerative. However, […]
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The Overstory by Richard Powers won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction on Monday. As its name suggests, it is an “epic” tale of the rich life and tragic death of trees. According to The Washington Post, the novel’s win “marks a new high point in the growing prominence of environmental novels.” Powers said upon learning […]
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A new analysis presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science even concluded that replenishing the world’s forests on a grand scale would suck enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to cancel out a decade of human emissions–a stance that, while intriguing, doesn’t yet have broad consensus (we’ll keep you posted if consensus builds).
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President Trump issued an Executive Order late last year directing the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior to increase logging on lands under their agencies’ control by 31% above levels of timber harvest in 2017. The Washington Post reported that the President had been itching to sign this Order — he wanted to do it during his trip to California in mid-November, an inside source told The Post, but it wasn’t ready for his signature. The order only became public earlier this week.
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Scientific American recently reported that U.S. forests are among the most vulnerable in the world to predators and disease, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The report also explained that biotechnology has the potential to be a part of the solution in protecting forest trees against destructive pest and disease outbreaks,
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Brazil’s new President, Jair Bolsonaro, who is ultra-conservative and ran on a promise of deregulation similar to President Trump’s, has moved the administration of Brazil’s extensive protected areas in the Amazon from the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs to the Agriculture Ministry. This “paves” the way for new and increased development in the Amazon and the loss of a major global carbon sink.
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