Whether in Davos or almost anywhere else that leaders are discussing the world’s problems, they are missing by far the biggest issue: the rapidly deteriorating global environment and its ability to support civilization. The situation is pretty much an endgame. Unless pressing issues of the biology of the planet and of climate change generated by…
The first feast related to our current national holiday, which we call Thanksgiving, was celebrated in either October or November of 1621. The feast included around 50 English Separatists (of Mayflower fame) held at their Plymouth Plantation, and nearly 100 Wampanoag Indians. In addition to Wampanoag oral history, there are just a few original sources…
Sally Hurd Smith, a veteran teacher, held up her brand-new tablet computer and shook it as she said, “I don’t want this thing to take over my classroom.” It was late June, a month before the first day of school. In a sixth-grade classroom in Greensboro, N.C., a dozen middle-school social-studies teachers were getting their…
A report sponsored by NASA has concluded that the agency is failing to inspire the world, the nation or even its own staff, and is unlikely to achieve long-term objectives such as a manned Mars landing. In a report commissioned by Congress last year, the National Research Council also says that NASA’s budget doesn’t match…
Failing to reduce methane leaks from fracking largely eliminates the environmental advantage of natural gas over coal. Yet If the leaks are reduced to 1 percent, the decrease in greenhouse gases jumps to 14 percent.
China, India, South Africa and Brazil said a climate deal planned for 2020 won’t be a “new regime,” threatening confrontation with the U.S. which wants to eliminate a firewall between developed and developing nations. The four nations reined in expectations for the Durban Platform, a mandate agreed last December at United Nations treaty talks in…