Bloomberg [no paywall]: “Banks, pension funds and insurers have been turning California’s scarce water into enormous profits, leaving people with less to drink…Some of the world’s largest investment banks, pension funds and insurers, including Manulife Financial Corp.’s John Hancock unit, TIAA and UBS, have been depleting California’s groundwater to grow high-value nuts, leaving less drinking… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Environmental Law
Visualizing California’s Wildflowers
Center on Data Innovation – “The Wall Street Journal has created a visualization tracking wildflower observations in southern California from 1876 to 2023 [subscription req’d – right click on photo to open in new window w no text]: The visualization shows poppies as orange dots, suncups as yellow dots, lupins as blue dots, pincushions as… Continue Reading
Parking Lot Map
Parking Reform Network Parking Lot Map: “Explore how much land cities dedicate to parking in over 50 cities included on the map below. Click the drop-down icon in the upper right corner to select a city and use the popup info card on the right to learn more about the city and its parking reform… Continue Reading
Study raises fears that glaciers may retreat quickly
ClimateWire: “Researchers found that old glaciers retreated more than a quarter-mile a day. That’s worrisome for today’s sea-level rise. Melting glaciers may be capable of shrinking much faster than scientists previously thought, according to a new study that adds to concerns about rapidly melting Antarctic ice, including the massive Thwaites Glacier, often called the “Doomsday… Continue Reading
‘Bees are sentient’
The Guardian: inside the stunning brains of nature’s hardest workers…This March, Stephen Buchmann [a pollination ecologist] released a book that unpacks just how varied and powerful a bee’s mind really is. The book, What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories and Personalities of Bees, draws from his own research and dozens of other studies… Continue Reading
Best Buy’s new recycling program will let you mail in your old electronics
Engadget: “Best Buy announced today that it’s extending its gadget recycling program to include a new mail-in option. The retailer will now sell you a box for your used electronics that you can ship back for recycling, saving a trip to the store. Best Buy says it’s recycled 2.7 billion pounds of electronics and appliances… Continue Reading
Americans feel favorably about many federal agencies, especially the Park Service, Postal Service and NASA
Pew: “As President Joe Biden and the new Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives face off over the debt ceiling and government spending, more Americans say they have favorable than unfavorable opinions of many agencies and departments of the federal government. Americans view 14 of 16 federal agencies more favorably than unfavorably, according… Continue Reading
A gobal approach for natural history museum collections
Popular Science – Is there a way to keep track of all the items held in natural history museums? By Charlotte Hu: “Natural history museums offer amazing portals into worlds miles away from our own, and into eras from the distant past. Comprised of fossils, minerals, preserved specimens, and much more, some collections are of… Continue Reading
Geographic information systems: a use case for journalists
DataJournalism.com: “…Speak with a few GIS professionals and a common theme will emerge: they struggle to explain to their loved ones exactly what it is they do. Many of us understand superficially that GIS has something to do with ‘mapping’ and ‘geography’, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Similar to how tools… Continue Reading
We’re inhaling, eating, and drinking toxic chemicals
MIT Technology Review: “Now we need to figure out how they’re affecting us. What are chemical pollutants doing to our bodies? It’s a question that’s been on my mind this week, for a few reasons. Last week, people in Philadelphia cleared grocery shelves of bottled water after a toxic leak from a chemical plant spilled… Continue Reading
Report Identifies PFAS Injected into at least 1,600 Oil and Gas Wells
Industry-Friendly State Disclosure Rules May Shield Far Broader Use. “Previously unpublicized information unearthed by Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) shows that since at least 2013, oil and gas companies have used more than 21 tons (43,000 pounds) of a class of extremely toxic and persistent chemicals known as PFAS in hydraulic fracturing of oil and… Continue Reading
Alexander Skarsgård Explains the Answer to Everything
The New York Times – (It Involves Doing Some Math – Opinion / Video) “Partha Dasgupta is a Cambridge University economist who in 2021 prepared a more than 600-page report for the British government about the financial value of nature. Not your average bedtime reading. But believe us when we say his report, the culmination… Continue Reading
