by Dean Keith Gilless
Frozen pipes never concern San Francisco residents, but Minnesotans insulate the pipes around their homes every winter. The West Nile virus scares many Californians but doesn't alarm Scandinavians at all. Where you are in the world goes a long way toward determining the things you worry about.
Some Californians shy away from using wood for fear of contributing to the deforestation so frequently associated with global warming. But relying on imported goods means burning fossil fuels to bring those goods to market, which increases greenhouse gas emissions. The arguments to promote "locally grown" are no more or less valid when considering one's consumption of lumber and other forest products.
Two CNR students are among 16 undergrads from around the nation that have been selected to participate in the 2007 Nissan-World Wildlife Fund Environmental Leadership Program.
Desirae Early and Ky Ngo were chosen for this prestigious fellowship for their strong leadership skills and a commitment to environmental progress.
Continue reading "Two CNR students win prestigious WWF fellowship" »
A new book co-edited by a CNR alumna attempts to answer a question familiar to anyone concerned with climate change:
"What can I do?"
Ignition: What You Can Do to Fight Global Warming and Spark a Movement, co-edited by Sissel Waage, ESPM Ph.D. '00, features a wide array of authors ranging from activists to scholars to students, who each discuss what the average person can do to turn their private concerns into public action.
The book recently received a positive review in the LA Times.
Continue reading "What you can do to fight global warming and spark a movement" »
From The San Francisco Chronicle [original URL]
By Alison Rood
When Professor Gordon Frankie wants to impress schoolchildren with the importance of bees, he lays out an array of foods such as berries, grapes, pears and chocolate alongside a couple of dried-out tortillas and rice cakes and asks them which foods they prefer.
"Invariably the kids go for the fruits and chocolate," he said. "Then I tell them: In a world without bees, the only choice they'd have would be the dried-out tortillas or rice cakes, since wheat and rice are self-pollinated. Even chocolate, from the cacao plant, depends on the pollination of bees. That gets their attention."
Frankie, an entomologist at UC Berkeley and a specialist in the behavior of native bees, has been the leader of a decadelong urban bee research project. By documenting bee diversity and populations in urban gardens throughout California, he's discovering which flowering plants attract native bees and determining whether urban gardens can support bees. He said the declining native bee population is comparable to global warming in terms of a potential ecological catastrophe.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has issued an executive order calling for California to establish the world's first carbon standard for transportation fuels. (Read about it in the Governor's op-ed here.)
Relying on research by David Roland-Holst, adjunct professor in ARE, the governor writes:
The University of California estimates our greenhouse gas emissions goals will increase our gross state product by $60 billion and create more than 20,000 new jobs. The time is now for America to transition to a clean-energy economy.... I am very pleased to be able to announce that California is leading the way.
Continue reading "Farmworkers: Can't afford the food they grow?" »
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