Last October, Superstorm Sandy provoked widespread frustration and fear after it left more than 7.5 million people in the New York Metro area without power. In the hardest hit areas, outages lasted two weeks or more. These failures led many observers to wonder if America’s aging electrical grid was up to dealing with emerging climate and other challenges.
Where are materials for all tech gadgets coming from? Where is e-waste going? What policies are associated with these issues and are they working? Find out at a panel discussion and screening of Terra Blight.
Pushker Kharecha and James E. Hansen write about their recent paper on the long-term health effects of nuclear power versus fossil fuels, and argue that nuclear power needs to be part of the solution to climate change.
So far, tensiometers have been tested in four central districts of Punjab, initially with more than 500 farmers the first year, and then peaking with an additional 4,500 farmers in 2011 before testing was scaled back. Data showed, on average, a 30 percent reduction in the water used in the test plots when compared with the standard practices employed in the control plots.
Though driverless cars sound like something out of the “The Jetsons,” they are just one of many innovations already under way in the realm of personal transportation.
Collaboration between government and the private sector will be essential to substantially increasing job opportunities. The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 7.8% in September 2012 – its lowest level since January 2009.
Dr. Daniel Hillel was recently honored with the World Food Prize for his pioneering work in sustainable agriculture.
Our highly interconnected and interdependent world has given rise to an extraordinary collaborative effort to design a future that is sustainable, prosperous and empowering. The recently concluded Clinton Global Initiative 2012 annual meeting’s theme, “Designing for Impact,” focused on designing our lives, environments and the global systems that can create more opportunity and equality.
Rare earth metals play an important role in our envisaged carbon-free future, but their availability in the future is under question for different political and availability issues, which is worrying for planned reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
It is a unique challenge of our generation that many in the developing world have cellular phones and TVs, but lack reliable access to water. Odd, perhaps, given that water is marketed as essential for life, a human right, and heart rending pictures of women and children walking miles to fetch water are routinely flashed to tug at everyone’s heart strings.
State of the Planet is a forum for discussion on varying viewpoints. The opinions expressed by the authors and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Earth Institute or Columbia University.
