Featured Posts By Experts
Posted by Sidney Draggan on January 16th, 2009
Posted in: Expert Commentary, Energy, Environmental Sociology, Global Warming, Environmental Policy, Environmental Education | Author Posts | No Comments »
Testimony before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming
Opportunities For Green Growth: Myths & Realities About Green Jobs
Chairman Markey and members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me here today.
I am here representing Green For All, a national organization dedicated to helping to build an inclusive, green economy – strong enough to lift millions of people out of poverty.
I first testified before this esteemed committee in May 2007. At that time, the term “green collar job” only rarely had been heard in the halls of Congress. The term had seldom – if ever – appeared in the mainstream political press.
Posted by Sidney Draggan on January 5th, 2009
Posted in: Expert Commentary, Human Health, Environmental Policy, Environmental Education | Author Posts | 2 Comments »
The Center for Science in the Public Interest has prepared and released a report on how science and science advice can fall victim to politics (Twisted Advice: Federal Advisory Committees are Broken).
The Center’s report says . . .
Posted by Sidney Draggan on January 4th, 2009
Posted in: Climate change, Expert Commentary, Resource management, Environmental Policy | Author Posts | 2 Comments »
Charles F. Kennel, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and founding director of the Environment and Sustainability Initiative at the University of California, San Diego, writes in the Winter 2009 Issues in Science and Technology
Posted by Sidney Draggan on December 22nd, 2008
Posted in: Climate change, Expert Commentary, Environmental Monitoring | Author Posts | No Comments »
The U.S. Geological Survey has led an assessment authored by a team of climate scientists from the Federal government and academe. The report (Synthesis and Assessment Product 3.4: Abrupt Climate Change) was commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program with contributions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation. The assessment notes that the United States faces . . .
Posted by Sidney Draggan on December 21st, 2008
Posted in: Expert Commentary, Water, Human Health | Author Posts | 1 Comment »
A National Research Council Committee report says that “. . . [t]he U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should examine whether combined exposures to chemicals known as phthalates could cause adverse health effects in humans. The Committee goes on to say the examination, called a cumulative risk assessment,
Posted by Sidney Draggan on December 12th, 2008
Posted in: Expert Commentary, Technology, Pollution, Environmental Policy, Environmental Monitoring | Author Posts | No Comments »
The National Science Foundation has announced that two of its “. . . sponsored say public acceptance of the relatively new, nature-altering science of nanotechnology isn’t a foregone conclusion. Instead, the studies indicate continued concern.”
The Foundation goes on to say that “Federal entities are looking into safety and public acceptance
Posted by Sidney Draggan on December 5th, 2008
Posted in: Expert Commentary, Water, Pollution, Environmental Monitoring, Waste management | Author Posts | No Comments »
The U.S. Geological Survey’s National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program/Source Water-Quality Assessment (SWQA) Program has released a wealth of information on “Man-Made Chemicals Found in Drinking Water at Low Levels“.
The Survey finds that low levels of certain man-made chemicals remain in public water supplies after being treated in selected community water facilities.
Posted by Sidney Draggan on December 1st, 2008
Posted in: Expert Commentary, Biodiversity, Resource management, Environmental Education, Environmental Monitoring | Author Posts | 2 Comments »
Lynn Maguire and James Justus argue (Why Intrinsic Value Is a Poor Basis for Conservation Decisions) in a recent issue of Bioscience that “. . . [c]onservationists from Muir to McCauley have championed intrinsic value as the right basis for conservation, one that derives from qualities innate to nonhuman biota, independent of human affairs. They argue that intrinsic value acknowledges the integrity of all species and ecosystems, protects them from short-term human whims, and gives conservation the ethical status it deserves.
Posted by Sidney Draggan on November 27th, 2008
Posted in: Climate change, Expert Commentary, Energy, Environmental Sociology, Water, Human Health, Biodiversity, Agriculture, Environment and Security, Acid Rain, Minerals and Mining, Technology, Pollution, Emissions, Global Warming, Environmental Economics, Resource management, Forestry, Environmental Policy, Environmental Education, Environmental Monitoring | Author Posts | No Comments »
In a just released report, the National Research Council Committee on the Ecological Impacts of Climate Change highlights the need “[t]o illuminate how climate change has affected specific species and ecosystems.” The report, “Ecological Impacts of Climate Change“, documents a series of case studies of the ecological impacts of climate change that have been observed, to date, across the United States.
Posted by Sidney Draggan on November 24th, 2008
Posted in: Expert Commentary, Environmental Sociology, Environmental Economics, Environmental Policy | Author Posts | No Comments »
You should have noticed that this week the Earth Portal features in its Environment in Focus series a broad assessment of large corporations beyond the realm of simple economics. This summer, the Conference Board of Canada released “The Role of the Board of Directors in Corporate Social Responsibility.” The Board notes that from the Canadian perspective
Posted by Sidney Draggan on November 23rd, 2008
Posted in: Expert Commentary, Human Health, Environmental Monitoring | Author Posts | 2 Comments »
Research from the December 2008 issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, conducted by investigators from Brown University, the University of California-Berkeley, and the Silent Spring Institute notes that people often do not connect their household use of chemical substances with their own personal chemical exposure and subsequent adverse health effects.
Posted by Sidney Draggan on November 19th, 2008
Posted in: Uncategorized, Expert Commentary, Energy, Human Health, Agriculture, Environment and Security | Author Posts | No Comments »
Paint a scenario with a human population of 6.4 billion—with nearly 854 million men, women and children chronically hungry—where, in all, over 2 billion people lack food security—we have a problem.
The Food and Agriculture Organization has released “The State of Food and Agriculture 2008”. The report “ . . [e]xplores
Posted by Sidney Draggan on November 17th, 2008
Posted in: Climate change, Expert Commentary, Energy, Human Health, Environment and Security, Technology, Pollution, Emissions, Global Warming, Environmental Policy, Environmental Monitoring, Conferences | Author Posts | No Comments »
The National Academies has noted that “[t]here is a growing sense of national urgency about the role of energy in long-term U.S. economic vitality, national security, and climate change. This urgency is the consequence of many factors, including the rising global demand for energy; the need for long-term security of energy supplies, especially oil; growing global concerns about carbon dioxide emissions; and many other factors affected to a great degree by government policies both here and abroad.
Posted by Sidney Draggan on November 15th, 2008
Posted in: Climate change, Expert Commentary, Energy, Human Health, Transportation, Agriculture, Technology, Pollution, Emissions, Global Warming, Environmental Monitoring | Author Posts | No Comments »
Posted by phil henshaw on November 9th, 2008
Posted in: Uncategorized, Expert Commentary, Environmental Economics, Environmental Policy | Author Posts | No Comments »
Ideas about needing non-growing economies for a non-growing planet have been excluded from the public discussion of our conflicts with the earth for many years. Not bringing it up until now, when it is actually too late for so many people and cultures can’t be undone. The ‘physics’ of that is that time is an accumulative process, exclusively, and nothing it the future departs from the past except by building on and diverging from it.
Posted by Sidney Draggan on November 6th, 2008
Posted in: Expert Commentary, Human Health, Environment and Security, Technology, Environmental Economics, Earth Restoration, Environmental Policy, Environmental Education | Author Posts | No Comments »
The Nature Publishing Group in collaboration with the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) [the academy of sciences for the developing world] has released A World of Science in the Developing World —a special supplement to this week’s Nature. The Supplement publication coincides with the twenty-fifth anniversary of TWAS.
Posted by Sidney Draggan on September 23rd, 2008
Posted in: Climate change, Expert Commentary, Energy, Environmental Sociology, Water, Human Health, Biodiversity, Agriculture, Environment and Security, Global Warming, Environmental Economics, Resource management, Forestry, Environmental Education, Environmental Monitoring, Conferences | Author Posts | No Comments »
The North-South Center for Social Sciences (NRCS) at Ibn Zohr University in Agadir, Morocco, has issued a Call for Papers for an up-coming conference (”Integration of Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development in the Context of Climate Change, the Energy Crisis and Food Insecurity“).