environment

Troubled Waters at Fukushima Daiichi

Since the 2011 triple disaster decimated Japan’s northeast Tohoku region, the area surrounding Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has seen the construction of hundreds of massive temporary water storage tanks.  These vessels contain highly contaminated water used to cool melted uranium fuel rods in the sites’s three reactors. In the days following the tsunami, each […]

Atoms for Peace: The New Reality is Embracing Nuclear Energy

Show almost anyone the yellow and black three-pronged nuclear emblem, and you will probably get a negative reaction. The symbol evokes feelings of impending doom, visions of mushroom clouds, and worries of radiation-borne maladies. But ironically, the energy behind it is the only thing that can avert catastrophe: the climate emergency.  Our current culture would […]

Climate Change in the Pacific Islands: Why the World Needs to Pay Attention

Until recently, climate change has always been a future problem. With most countries addressing climate change at a painfully slow pace, coupled with “gravely insufficient” policies, the recent uptick in support and concern worldwide is positive.  In 2020, 52 percent of US citizens listed global climate change as their top priority, compared to 30 percent […]

The Future of Climate Change International Policy

“We must now agree on a binding review mechanism under international law, so that this century can credibly be called a century of decarbonization.” –German Chancellor Angela Merkel, 2015 Paris Agreement negotiations The time for climate action is long overdue. Humanity must employ universal, cooperative efforts to prevent irreversible damage to our planet. The international […]

Stopping the World’s Worst Aquatic Weed

The Nile River is a contentious issue. As Ethiopia constructs a new dam along the Blue Nile, its neighbors fear this will threaten their water supply. However, the Nile faces a more imminent threat than Ethiopia’s project: water hyacinth.  Water hyacinth originates from the Amazon basin but was exported to warm temperate and tropical regions […]

Anti-Intellectualism and Partisanship are Killing US Climate Reform

Through patterns of industrialization and globalization, humanity has built planet-altering power. Daily activities as mundane as making coffee in the morning increase our chemical and ecological footprint. Sea levels rise at a startling rate of over an eighth of an inch per year and our oceans have lost two percent of their oxygen in half […]

Even the Environment is Racist: How Pollution Affects People of Color

After World War II, the United States began conducting nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean. The second test resulted in the radioactive contamination of hundreds of Navy ships. In an attempt to decontaminate these ships, the Navy moved them to a lab in the Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco, where the military would deep […]

Israel’s Cat-astrophe and Its Impact on Wildlife

This started out as an inside joke.  As I packed for my spring break trip to Israel, I asked my closest friends and family what they wanted as souvenirs. One said, “a cat that speaks Hebrew.”  When I reached my first tourist spot—an ancient grave—I spotted a stray. “Do you speak?” I joked as I […]

How You Can Fight The Worst Company in the World

In 2010, Cargill, a US private multinational corporation, pledged a zero net deforestation goal in all production sites by 2020. Last year, the company announced it would not achieve this aim. It wasn’t surprising. In 2017, Cargill was “one of the two largest customers of industrial-scale deforestation” because of its soy production sites. Some of […]

Corn (Not Coal) is Destroying the Environment

As the Iowa caucus steadily approaches, Democratic primary candidates are eager to demonstrate their support for rural America, promising to bolster industries that have yet to shift jobs overseas. In Iowa, the largest of these industries is ethanol, a biofuel made from the closest thing Iowa has to gold: corn. Ethanol is a biofuel made […]