• Sustainability

Environmental Technology for Peace

• 2021
• clmate change
• droughts
• floods
• innovation
• peace
• technology
• wildfires

At United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres closed out 2020, he offered a searing indictment of the global community’s treatment of our planet.  “Humanity is waging war on nature,” he warned, driving “instability, displacement and conflict.” Indeed, global warming, dying oceans, declining biodiversity, and degraded ecosystems now endanger world peace and prosperity.

• Weather

FEMA Proposes Major Cuts to Disaster Relief

• climate change
• FEMA
• Hurricanes
• natural disasters
• wildfires

by Amy Lupica, ODP Contributing Writer Immediately following a record-breaking Hurricane season, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is proposing massive cuts to federal disaster aid that would make it more difficult for states to qualify for federal disaster aid.  The proposal, published Monday, would be one of the largest revisions of federal disaster policy […]

• Climate Change

NOAA Releases Annual Arctic Report Card, Reports Unprecedented Warming

• Alaska
• Arctic
• climate change
• NOAA
• permafrost
• sea ice
• warming
• whales
• wildfires

On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its 15^th annual Arctic Report Card. It observed a “sustained transformation to a warmer, less frozen, and biologically changed Arctic.”  The holistic report is a collection of “vital signs” from the Arctic ecosystem and factors in variables like wildlife, air temperature, wildfires, and sea ice.

Why This Matters: In a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification, the Arctic is warming at a rate 2 to 3 times higher than the global average

• Air

California’s Choking Smoke

• air pollution
• wildfire smoke
• wildfires

by Ashira Morris, ODP Contributing Writer This year’s nightmare wildfire season in California has burned more than 3.7 million acres across the state since the beginning of the year. The fires have also produced some of the worst smoke the state has seen. Smoke from the wildfires has the same dangerous particulate matter as tailpipe […]

• Land

California’s Never-Ending Wildfire Season Need Not Be The Case

• California wildfires
• science
• science literacy
• Trump
• wildfires

by Natasha Lasky, Our Daily Planet Contributing Writer This past week, California’s biggest utility, PG&E, conducted the largest brownout of the year, shutting off the power for 466,000 people in 34 counties, affecting 1.1 million people. The blackouts have hit small towns as well as densely populated parts of the San Francisco metropolitan area, including […]

• Land

Colorado Sees Worst Wildfire in History

• climate change
• Colorado
• wildfires

by Natasha Lasky and Miro Korenha A wave of deadly forest fires has erupted in Colorado, despite the fact winter storms have begun hitting the state. Warming temperatures across the West Coast have lengthened fire season into November, with disastrous consequences. Three mega-fires have erupted near Denver — the largest (Cameron Peak Fire) and second-largest […]