Amy Boyer

Florida is embarking on a multipronged effort to restore seagrass meadows, including seeding oysters and clams for natural water filtration. This article focuses on the manatees, but seagrasses are essential cradles of biodiversity.

 Claire Krummenacher

This week I tuned in to Marshallese climate activist Selina Neirok Leem's TED Talk "Climate change isn't a distant threat—it's our reality," which explains the power of Indigenous solutions in confronting the most serious realities of climate change. To learn more, I also read the NYT's recent interview with Tina Stege, the climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, who spoke to the importance of storytelling amidst the climate crisis.

 Courtney White

I’ve been working on the Onsets and Offsets Nexus and I’m getting a deep education in how much greenwashing is going on, particularly around so-called ‘Net Zero’ pledges by corporations. A recent analysis examined the pledges of 25 major corporations and determined their emissions would be reduced by only 40% on average, not 100%. Greenwashing indeed! Here’s a story about the report.

 Emily Jensen

Most large-scale solar parks are located in deserts, where dust buildup on panels can reduce efficiency by up to 30%. These new dust-repellent solar panels inspired by the lotus leaf’s self-cleaning properties can improve efficiency and save billions of gallons of water currently used to remove dust. 

 Juliana Birnbaum

My 12-year-old daughter joined the San Francisco chapter of Fridays for Future for an international climate rally and protest last week, the first since COP26.  The school strike was one of about 600 worldwide (see photos from around the globe here) that day organized by young activists including Greta Thunberg for #PeopleNotProfits and locally organized by Youth vs. Apocalypse.

 Kavya Gopal

A push to make medical curricula inclusive of the health risks of climate change is taking place at Emory’s Medical School, which is leading the way in recognising how there is “nothing within the health system that climate change won’t impact.”

 Milica Koscica

Just finished reading Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency, a book on regenerative design and architecture that explores examples of natural and cultural wisdom in the built environment. The heart of it revolves around changing the mindset of those in the design industry and offering five key paradigm shifts that can bring transformation and healing when we design, make and manage our buildings and communities.

 Paul Hawken

Once again, a mega-dam looms, this one in Tanzania, what is being called "one of the most environmentally disastrous dams ever constructed.” In this piece, Fred Pearce, one of the best environmental journalists on the planet, explores how such lunacy occurs and propagates itself. When completed, the Rufiji River delta will be starved and eroded by the ocean, wet season floods will be contained, wetlands will dry up, mangroves will die and fish will disappear.

 Robert Denney

Earlier in March, Mumbai became the first South Asian city to release a net zero timeline. In fact, the city plans to zero out its carbon emissions by 2050, which is two decades ahead of India’s national target. Mumbai’s timeline, which is set forth in a Climate Action Plan, is based on six sectoral priorities: energy and buildings, sustainable mobility, sustainable waste management, urban greening and biodiversity, urban flooding and water resource management, and air quality.

 Tim Treuer

This semi-technical and fairly thorough piece in Nature explores what it will take to clean up the carbon emissions of steel and cement. The punchline is that with current best practices, we can have carbon-free cement and steel if we're willing to pay double and 20-40% more for the materials, respectively. Put in terms of new construction, that would mean spending an extra 1-3% of the value of the building on construction (~15% of total construction costs). 

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