This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. A wave of new companies are crafting financial incentives to block emissions from oil and gas wells that are near the end of their […]
Climate Solutions
The Living Forest Declaration and the Carbon Market Shell Game
In July of 2018, the Kichwa Nation of Sarayaku came forth with a bold and visionary proposal for protecting their Amazonian homeland and other rainforests across the world. Their proposal – the Kawsak Sacha (Living Forest) Declaration – was issued by the Amazon Rainforest itself. According to the Sarayaku, it was communicated to their community […]
Blueprint of ocean climate solutions is at Biden’s fingertips
There is no denying that we live on a blue world, as the oceans cover over 70% of our planet. Everything we breathe, do, pollute, degrade and dismantle is directly tied to the ocean, and ultimately, us. While the U.S. Congress recently passed its first major climate legislation with the Inflation Reduction Act, leading scientists […]
The Dark Green Web: Where Crypto Meets Climate
Bitcoin has given the world of crypto, sustainability-wise, a rather bad name. After all, the daily wattage of this particular blockchain surpasses that of Google and a few industrial nations, combined. The cryptographic “mining” of this mintage, while digital in process, is by that very token (pun intended), a function of electricity. In just the […]
Hemp Supercapacitors and the Future of Carbon-Negative Energy Storage
New research shows that hemp supercapacitors have the potential to fight climate change by improving how we store renewable energy, while also sequestering carbon from the atmosphere back into the soil and hemp biomass. As the world continues to expel 33.1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually, scientists are searching for […]
Urban Earthship: A holistic healthcare solution for poverty, climate change
What is an Earthship? At the corner of 41st Street and Lancaster Avenue in West Philadelphia, Rashida Ali-Campbell is pioneering the world’s first urban Earthship. An Earthship is a type of sustainable housing structure first developed in Taos, New Mexico by architect Michael Reynolds. The autonomous, off-grid house takes care of human’s six basic needs […]
Fossil fuel divestment around the world and in the heart of Texas
As global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions threaten the world with irreversible climate collapse, activists around the United States and the world have turned to fossil fuel divestment as a major strategy to stop fossil fuel extraction. Experts agree that global warming is caused by humans burning fossil fuels and that it will continue to accelerate […]
‘Global village’: Indigenous nations’ fight to protect Amazon rainforest is pivotal to global public health
Last year, global attention briefly coalesced around fires ravaging the Amazon Rainforest. As the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, continues to affect the whole world, Branch Out reported in the past weeks that deforestation is the leading cause of new infectious diseases. In addition to threatening global public health, deforestation threatens the very existence of the Indigenous […]
Coronavirus and the Climate: A Singular Crisis
Introduction The ongoing pandemic of the novel coronavirus – COVID-19 – is already affecting all our lives. While the full extent of its spread and resultant mortality is yet to be seen, there is no doubt that in terms of media coverage, social dynamics, economic consequences and government reaction, something unprecedented is happening. Far from […]
Playing with fire: the vicious cycle of deforestation
Global Burning This past August, a significant segment of world leaders attended the G7 Summit in Biarritz, France. The United States skipped out on the climate change discussion, where leaders turned their attention to forest fires, an often overlooked aspect of the climate crisis. Wildfires in the Amazon rainforest increased by an estimated 84% from […]