Andrew Revkin reflects on the end of the “Rio+20” United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in his Dot Earth blog from the New York Times. Ilan Safit, a colleague of mine at Pace University who teaches philosophy and religious studies with a focus on the environment, sees the focus of Rio and related discussions as…
The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) ended with an international agreement on the need for all countries to commit themselves to achieving sustainable development. The agreement immediately came under fire from several quarters for its lack of detail about how this will be done, and the absence of new financial commitments from the…
Around the world, sticking up for the environment can be deadly, and it appears to be getting deadlier. People who track killings of environmental activists say the numbers have risen dramatically in the last three years. Improved reporting may be one reason, they caution, but they also believe the rising death toll is a consequence…
For decades, psychologists and other researchers assumed that the mother-child bond was the most important one in a kid’s life. They focused on studying those relationships, and however a child turned out, mom often got the credit — or blame. Within the last several decades, though, scientists are increasingly realizing just how much dads matter….
Scientists say new dads exhibit hormonal changes and, in turn, alter their behavior, which suggests that having children influences men in far-reaching ways. The research found that when a dad was more involved with his kids, he had better health, drank less and had lower substance use, as well as prompting men to be less…
Daniel Hillel developed a system called micro-irrigation, which has opened up dry regions to farming, revolutionizing agriculture worldwide. The Israeli scientist has worked closely with Arab friends in Jordan, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.
By investing in bike paths and energy-efficient buildings, the capital of Denmark aims to produce no more CO2 than it consumes by 2025
A bold plan to bring every person on Earth sustainable energy within 18 years will face its first test of international acceptance at the Rio+20 Earth Summit – the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in June. The Sustainable Energy For All initiative is a flagship programme launched by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon. Its goals…
From an evolutionary standpoint, the key players in the mating game were males with poor fighting skills and females faithful to them.
Chimpanzees and orangutans really do have personalities “like people”, researchers say. For years experts have debated whether great apes truly display human-like personalities – or if such behavior is simply the anthropomorphic projections of human observers. The research team used a statistical technique to “remove” any biases apparent in human observers of the apes’ behaviour,…