environment

Plastic waste is piling up at a daunting pace around the world. The World Bank estimates that every person on the planet generates an average of 1.6 pounds (0.74 kilograms) of plastic waste daily. To curb this flow, 175 nations are negotiating a binding international treaty on plastic pollution, with a completion target of late 2024. In July 2024, the Biden administration released the first U.S. plan for addressing this problem. The new U.S. strategy covers five areas: plastic production, product design, waste generation, waste management and plastic capture and removal. It also lists actions that federal agencies and departments are currently pursuing. I study environmental law, including efforts to reduce plastic pollution. As the world’s largest economy, the U.S. is a critical player in this effort. Based on my research, here are three proposals in the U.S. plan that I believe are important and one omission that I view as a major gap. As of...

You probably have been hearing phrases like “climate crisis,” “climate emergency” or “climate justice” more often lately as people try to get across the urgent risks and consequences of climate change. The danger is real, but is using this language actually persuasive? It turns out that Americans are more familiar with – and more concerned about – climate change and global warming than they are about climate crisis, climate emergency or climate justice, according to a recent survey we conducted with a nationally representative sample of 5,137 Americans. Moreover, we found no evidence that the alternative terms increased people’s sense of urgency, willingness to support climate-friendly policies or willingness to act. The familiar terms – climate change and global warming – did at least as well, and sometimes better, than climate crisis and climate emergency in eliciting concern, perceived urgency and willingness...

Most Americans will remember 2020 as the year when the pandemic changed everything. But for Lake Charles, Louisiana, and its neighbors along the Gulf Coast, it was also the year of record-setting disasters, when “once-in-a-lifetime” storms hit in such rapid succession that their impacts blurred together. A recent National Academies consensus study I worked on looked into the compounding disasters that the region faced – both physical and socioeconomic – as storm after storm arrived during the pandemic with little time for recovery. It concludes that Lake Charles’ experiences could be a harbinger of what’s to come in a warming world unless the nation fundamentally rethinks its disaster preparedness, response and recovery strategies. Lake Charles’ compounding disasters Hurricane Laura made landfall near Lake Charles on Aug. 27, 2020, as a powerful Category 4 storm, with wind speeds exceeding those that local building codes were designed...

And consequently also the fishing and agricultural sectors

Under the eyes of bathers and residents, at dawn on the beach of Laigueglia, in the province of Savona, 43 Caretta Caretta turtle eggs hatched:a cage on the beach had protected them