Wildfires are a fact of life in California but extent and devastation in the American West feel dramatic this year: More than 5 million areas of uncontrolled fires lead to incredible footage on the news & reports of orange skies in Oakland or San Francisco. The 2020 fire season has broken almost every record in terms of frequency and ferocity. We analyzed several factors like climate change, housing development and fire suppression & management to see what’s behind the largest and most destructive wildfires in the state’s history and what can be done to solve the worsening problem?
Category Archives: Environment
Environment Videos: NASA Reports Rising Arctic Temps, Low Sea Ice In 2020
On Sept. 15, 2020, Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum extent — the second-lowest on record. This summer, temperatures soared in the Siberian Arctic, and intense fires burned through peatland. The Arctic region is warming three times faster than the rest of the planet.
New Environment Videos: “The Science Of Wildfires”
Global satellite data indicate wildfires are becoming bigger and more intense. WSJ talks with NASA’s Doug Morton to understand the science behind what’s making the planet more flammable and making fires harder to control.
Noah Berger/Associated Press
Travel Video: “A Northern Light”, Boundary Waters Canoe Area (Patagonia)
Encompassing over 1,000,000 acres, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is in peril from a proposed toxic copper mine on the park’s boundary. Patagonia ambassador Nathaniel Riverhorse Nakadate paddles through the BWCAW to give voice to a silent, pristine place. A film by Riverhorse Nakadate and Tony Czech.
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, is a 1,090,000-acre wilderness area within the Superior National Forest in northeastern part of the US state of Minnesota under the administration of the U.S. Forest Service.
Conservation: “How To Increase Water Efficiency At Home” (NatGeo Video)
We’re facing a water shortage in the United States, but there’s a few helpful tips you can do at your home and in your gardens to make a difference. Partner Content for Finish.
Top Ecological Design: “Roatán Próspera” In Honduras Designed By Zaha Hadid Architects
The first residential units on Roatán Próspera are a case study in local sustainability and global integration. Combining the most advanced modular construction techniques with sustainably-sourced local materials, the design and planning for the first dwellings in Próspera is a tangible example of the dramatic shift in development methodologies taking place around the world.
The people of neighboring settlements will take part in construction and management and part of the purchase of each residence goes toward the construction of a sister residence in the neighboring community.
Roatán Próspera rethinks the whole design and conventional delivery approach to development, starting from understanding the local supply chain, logistics, energy and economical aspects as a basis to engage technologically-curious, ecologically-minded, entrepreneurial building contractors. Local labor and methods are engaged for construction methodologies and logistics of supply, procurement, and assembly in Roatán.
Interviews: 75-Year Old Earth Day Founder Denis Hayes – “How It Began”
From a Rolling Stone Magazine Interview (April 22, 2020):
Well, in 1970, things were vastly more limited. We had three dominant television networks, and also public broadcasting. We had a handful of national newspapers and the wire services. News magazines were much more important than now. That was pretty much it.
Denis Hayes is the Mark Zuckerberg of the environmental movement, if you can imagine Mark Zuckerberg with a conscience and a lot less cash. Like Zuckerberg, Hayes dropped out of Harvard to start an eccentric and unpromising venture. Zuckerberg’s was called Facebook, which he launched in 2004; Hayes’ was called Earth Day, which he founded in 1970.
Hayes is a child of the Sixties. He grew up in a small town on the Columbia River in Washington state, where his father worked in a paper mill and Hayes saw firsthand the toxic consequences of the collision between industry and nature: dirty air, spoiled streams, dead fish. He drifted through college, bummed around in Asia and Africa, and thought deeply about the role of humans in the natural world.
Environment: “NASA Looks Back At 50 Years Of Earth Day” – April 22, 2020 (Video)
It’s been five decades since Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders photographed Earth peaking over the Moon’s horizon. The iconic image, dubbed Earthrise, inspired a new appreciation of the fragility of our place in the universe. Two years later, Earth Day was born to honor our home planet. As the world prepares to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, NASA reflects on how the continued growth of its fleet of Earth-observing satellites has sharpened our view of the planet’s climate, atmosphere, land, polar regions and oceans.
Literary Tribute: Rachel Carson “Dreams Of The Sea” (The New Yorker)
Before she published “Silent Spring,” one of the most influential books of the last century, Rachel Carson was a young aspiring poet and then a graduate student in marine biology. Although she couldn’t swim and disliked boats, Carson fell in love with the ocean. Her early books—including “The Sea Around Us,” “The Edge of the Sea” and “Under the Sea Wind”—were like no other nature writing of their time,
Jill Lepore says: Carson made you feel you were right there with her, gazing into the depths of a tide pool or lying in a cave lined with sea sponges. Lepore notes that Carson was wondering about a warming trend in the ocean as early as the 1940s, and was planning to explore it after the publication of “Silent Spring.” If she had not died early, of cancer, could Carson have brought climate change to national attention well before it was too late?
Excerpts from Carson’s work were read by Charlayne Woodard, and used with permission of Carson’s estate.
Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist, author, and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.
Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U.S. National Book Award, recognition as a gifted writer, and financial security. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the reissued version of her first book, Under the Sea Wind, were also bestsellers. This sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life from the shores to the depths.
Late in the 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation, especially some problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was the book Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented share of the American people. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides. It also inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter.
Wildlife Videos: “Cuba’s Wild Revolution” (PBS)
Boomers Daily 