Report
by jim motavalliThe big electric car launches of 2011 failed to generate the consumer excitement that some had predicted. But as new battery technologies emerge and tougher mileage standards kick in, automakers and analysts still believe that electric vehicles have a bright future.
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Report
by dave levitanWith the industry’s support and despite political opposition, new U.S. lighting efficiency standards went into effect this month. This move, along with similar actions in Europe and China, is helping spur new technologies that will change the way the world's homes and businesses are illuminated.
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Opinion
by william lauranceFrom Brazil to Borneo, new roads are being built into tropical forests at a dizzying pace, putting previously intact wilderness at risk. If we hope to preserve rainforests, a leading researcher says, new strategies must be adopted to limit the number of roads and reduce their impacts.
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Report
by michael d. lemonickWhile U.S. action on climate change remains stalled, four south Florida counties have joined forces to plan for how to deal with the impacts — some of which are already being felt — of rising seas, higher temperatures, and more torrential rains.
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Analysis
by jon r. luomaChina has undertaken ambitious reforestation initiatives that have increased its forest cover dramatically in the last decade. But scientists are now raising questions about just how effective these grand projects will turn out to be.
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e360 Video Report
Photographer Pete McBride traveled along the Colorado River from its source high in the Rockies to its historic mouth at the Sea of Cortez. In a
Yale Environment 360 video, he documents how increasing water demands have transformed the river that is the lifeblood for an arid Southwest.
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Opinion
by carl popeMore than a billion people worldwide lack access to electricity. The best way to bring it to them — while reducing greenhouse gas emissions — is to launch a global initiative to provide solar panels and other forms of distributed renewable power to poor villages and neighborhoods.
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Report
by winifred birdThe Japanese government is launching a large-scale cleanup of the fields, forests, and villages contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. But some experts caution that an overly aggressive remediation program could create a host of other environmental problems.
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Analysis
by fred pearceA new study finds that Britons are consuming less than they did a decade ago, with similar patterns being seen across Europe. Could this be the beginning of a trend in developed countries? Might we be reaching “peak stuff”?
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Interview: Monitoring Grim Rise
In the World’s Illegal Ivory Trade
Last year was the worst year for ivory seizures since an international ivory ban went into effect in 1989. During 2011, authorities seized more than 23 tons of ivory,
Tom Milliken
which represented about 2,500 individual elephants killed. At the forefront of efforts to track this grim data is Tom Milliken, the elephant expert for TRAFFIC, the group that monitors the international trade in wildlife under CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). Milliken attributes the spike in ivory seizures to a seemingly insatiable demand for ivory in Asia and the increasingly sophisticated network of criminal gangs that are feeding the market. In an interview with
Yale Environment 360, he talked about the factors leading to the continued slaughter of Africa’s elephants and about the lack of strong law enforcement against traffickers.
Read the interviewA litany of environmental threats, from forest fragmentation and logging to climate change and disease,
are wiping out the world’s biggest trees, according to a published report. In forest ecosystems worldwide, research shows that giant trees have become particularly vulnerable to a changing environment, ecologist and tropical forest expert
William Laurance writes in
New Scientist magazine. Increased fragmentation has left big trees exposed to stronger winds, while dry conditions and warming temperatures have forced the giants of the forest to consume more energy simply to survive, allowing less energy for growth, Laurance writes. Climate change is also promoting the spread of exotic pathogens, such as Dutch Elm disease, which are devastating native forests. “The decline of big trees foretells a different world where ancient behemoths are replaced by short-lived pioneers and generalists that can grow anywhere, where forests store less carbon and sustain fewer dependent animals, where giant cathedral-like crowns become a thing of the past,” Laurance writes.
California regulators are expected to pass new rules today requiring that 15 percent of all new cars sold by 2025
be powered by electricity, hydrogen, or other reduced-emission sources. The new rules proposed by the California Air Resources Board would also require a 75-percent reduction in smog-creating emissions from new cars, SUVS, pickups and minivans, and a 50-percent reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 2025. According to the board, the initiative would put about 1.4 million low-emission vehicles on California roads by 2025, compared with current levels of about 10,000. They predict the new rules will add about $1,900 to the price of a new car, but will save about $5,900 in fuel costs during the life of the vehicle. “This is a really large step. It’s transformational,” Tom Cackette, the board's chief deputy director, told the
San Jose Mercury News. “Ten years from now the market is going to look quite a bit different.” The new standards will be introduced in 2018 and strengthened over the next seven years.
Interview: Putting a Price
On the Real Value of Nature
How do you put a price on the value of nature? That’s the question Indian banker Pavan Sukhdev and
Pavan Sukhdev
his colleagues are seeking to answer in their international project on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), which published
its latest report last month. The challenge, as Sukhdev sees it, is how to address the “economic invisibility of nature.” In an interview with
Yale Environment 360, he cited crucial benefits from nature that are often overlooked, including the capacity of wetlands for filtering water, the role of forests in preventing erosion and flooding, and the importance of bees in pollinating crops. “When did the bees last send you an invoice for pollination?” he asks.
Read the interviewA U.S. scientific panel is calling for a
systematic study of the growing use of nanomaterials in industry, saying little is known about the risk of the microscopic particles increasingly being used in everything from cosmetics to clothing and paint. The National Research Council (NRC), part of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, noted that the use of nanomaterials — measured on the scale of billionths of a meter — is growing rapidly, rising from $225 billion in nanotechnology-based products in 2009 to an estimated $3 trillion by 2015. But the NRC said that
little is known about the potential risks posed by nanomaterials, the pathways of exposure, and the severity of such exposure. The NRC called for
a systematic research effort to identify sources of nanomaterials releases, the different industrial processes that affect exposure, and nanomaterial interactions from a sub-cellular to an ecosystem level. Nanomaterials — often made from minerals such as gold, silver, carbon, zinc, and aluminum — have unique electrical, chemical, and optical properties. “The number and variety of nanomaterials is just mind-boggling,” said Mark R. Wiesner, an engineering professor at Duke University and a panel member.
Years of lax oversight, corruption, and political rivalry have allowed industrial fishing fleets from Asia, Europe, and Latin America
to decimate fish stocks across the southern Pacific, a “free-for-all” that has pushed one
Getty Images
A Peruvian fishmeal factory
critical species to the brink, according to a new report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). With governments ignoring the threat of overfishing and heavily subsidizing the fishing industry, fleets have plundered the waters off Chile and Peru and have fished heavily right up to protected Antarctic waters. Stocks of jack mackerel — an oily fish that is a staple in Africa and a vital component in fishmeal for aquaculture — have declined by more than 90 percent, from an estimated 30 million metric tons to less than 3 million metric tons, in just two decades. According to Daniel Pauly, an oceanographer at the University of British Columbia, the jack mackerel decline could portend a collapse in fisheries worldwide.

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The Warriors of Qiugang, a
Yale Environment 360 video that chronicles the story of a Chinese village’s fight against a polluting chemical plant, was nominated for a 2011 Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject).
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As temperatures rise and water supplies dry up, tribes in East Africa increasingly are coming into conflict. A
Yale Environment 360 video reports on a phenomenon that could become more common: how worsening drought will pit groups — and nations — against one another.
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Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining, an e360 video examining the environmental and human impacts of this mining practice, won the award for best video in the 2010
National Magazine Awards for Digital Media.
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