All posts tagged "Climatechange"

The Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois is a mosaic of towering trees, lush wetlands and commanding rock formations that are the native habitat for a wealth of plants and animals, including 19 species of oaks. The forest is also a microcosm of an emergent national debate about how North America should manage public lands as wildfires burn through Canada, Hawaii and Louisiana. Climate change is catalyzing extreme weather events and drying ecosystems, making forests increasingly vulnerable. “It’s impossible to take our hands all the way off. We’ve caused this climate change. We’ve intro......

Steve Coombs’ lakefront home used to quake when waves crashed along Ogden Dunes’ receding shoreline. “At one point, my wife said, ‘Should we just move out? Should we just go to a hotel?’ I mean, it’s very unnerving,” he recalled. But fleeing the “biggest asset that we own” wasn’t an option for Coombs, who said he enjoyed 60 yards of sand between his home and the lake when he bought it a decade ago. “There are some people who say, ‘Well, you folks built houses where they shouldn’t have been built,’ but that’s not the case,” Coombs said. “Years ago, there was all kinds of shoreline and sand here......

Amazon on Tuesday reported a slight drop in greenhouse gas emissions, a milestone that comes as climate change activists pressure the company to do more. The company's carbon emissions dropped 0.4% in 2022 compared to 2021, but its total footprint remains millions of metric tons larger than past years, according to Amazon's sustainability report released Tuesday. Its carbon footprint totaled 71.3 million metric tons last year, down from the 71.5 million it recorded in 2021. The modest decrease is a shift for the company, which saw carbon emissions grow by roughly 10 million metric tons annuall......

PORTLAND, Ore. — That building looming on the corner? With a few tweaks, it might help with climate change. States with big commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are beginning to require that the owners of large buildings track how much energy they use and improve their efficiency. It’s part of a state, local and federal effort to lower greenhouse gas emissions from office buildings, big-box stores, hotels, apartments and other large commercial structures responsible for gulping down energy. Buildings “just sit there,” said Colorado Democratic state Rep. Cathy Kipp, who helped write t......

From Seattle to Palm Beach, Florida, city leaders agree that urban areas need more trees to alleviate the effects of climate change. Amid the growing attention to tree canopy — and an infusion of federal funding — more than a dozen cities are convening to share ideas and plan the urban forests of the future. Leaders in many communities now consider trees to be critical infrastructure, providing shade, absorbing stormwater runoff and filtering air pollution. The focus on urban forests has coincided with a growing recognition that low-income neighborhoods and communities of color often have far ......

Cities need to plant more trees. But not just any trees. As communities prepare for a massive influx of federal funding to support urban forestry, their leaders say the tree canopy that grows to maturity 50 years from now will need to be painted with a different palette than the one that exists today. “You need a tree that’s going to survive the weather of today and the climate of the future,” said Pete Smith, urban forestry program manager with the Arbor Day Foundation, a Nebraska-based nonprofit that supports tree planting and care. Forestry experts say trees are critical infrastructure that......