Op-Ed

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) recently launched its 2019 Dirty Dozen List of companies and entities that facilitate sexual exploitation in the U.S. Four of the companies on the list tout their sustainability programs. Those companies are Amazon, Google, Twitter, and United Airlines. There is a serious disconnect with these companies between their sustainability efforts and their efforts to curb their companies …

A scan of the past week's climate news suggests this may be the case.

The happenings within the Trump administration can read like a soap opera. The recent departures of two top Interior Department officials are the latest storyline. Downey Magallanes, former deputy chief of staff and a top adviser to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, resigned on August 24. She already started a new job at BP. She worked on policy and operations, according to Think Progress, which …

All over the country this year, students are missing school because of the weather. Houston, Texas, schools closed for Hurricane Harvey. Other schools in California are closed now because of their proximity to wildfires. Most students in either middle or high school take science classes that address our physical environment. The question many schools are now facing is: Should teachers include climate change in …

Climate change is hereby canceled A story published last week in Reuters led with the headline “Pentagon strategy document will not include climate change” Sure, that’s the “official” statement. Gotta keep Mr. Trump and his bumbling buddies happy. Like the president says, “bundle up!” In fact, the military has long understood climate change as a threat multiplier. Like the insurance industry, they take assessing …

Easier said than done Last week, Taryn Fransen and Kelly Levin of the World Resources Institute published an informative analysis on the “Trump Effect” on the Paris Agreement, signed in Paris at COP21 in  December 2015. It was historic in many respects, not least of which was that it was the first time the whole world agreed on anything so ambitious. Even so, it …

Back in 2015 at the COP21 climate conference in Paris, the U.S. delegation presented numerous side events in the Blue Zone, from EPA, NASA, NOAA, the Department of Energy and more. The United States clearly embraced its role as a world leader at a historic global inflection point. Fast forward two years, to the end of President Donald Trump’s first year in office, and what …