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Do the environmental and energy crises driving so many of today’s headlines actually represent a unique opportunity for revitalizing the global economy? That is the argument that Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman advances in his latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008). Steve Mirsky, a staff editor and writer for Scientific American and host of its Science Talk podcast, spoke with Friedman about his book in August; what follows is adapted from that conversation, which can be heard/read in full here. --The Editors [More] How Obama Can Change Antienvironmental Policies Dear EarthTalk: How can the new Obama administration and/or Congress undo the many antienvironmental actions the Bush administration undertook over the last eight years, including the obstruction of Bill Clinton’s landmark “roadless rule” legislation? -- Ann Lyman, Lake Tahoe, CA [More]

Tags: book, obama, antienvironmental, administration, friedman

Dear EarthTalk: Is it true that palm oil, common in snack foods and health & beauty products, is destroying rainforests? If so, what can consumers do about it? -- Emma Miniscalco, via e-mail [More] The U.S. Needs to Lead in Clean Tech Do the environmental and energy crises driving so many of today’s headlines actually represent a unique opportunity for revitalizing the global economy? That is the argument that Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman advances in his latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008). Steve Mirsky, a staff editor and writer for Scientific American and host of its Science Talk podcast, spoke with Friedman about his book in August; what follows is adapted from that conversation, which can be heard/read in full here. --The Editors [More]

Tags: book, friedman, rainforests, editor, oil

I grew up in Lake Charles, LA., where we fished and hunted, living off the land. Like many others, I went to work for the petrochemical industry and stayed for years. That’s where the jobs were. But in 1994 my company offered a buyout. I left and started pushing the chemical industry to clean up its pollution and treat people fairly. I also tried to convince oil companies to explore alternative energy supplies. Progress was difficult. Fossil fuels were cheap. The underlying principle of the American economy was this: the more fossil fuels we consumed, the richer we became. [More] The U.S. Needs to Lead in Clean Tech Do the environmental and energy crises driving so many of today’s headlines actually represent a unique opportunity for revitalizing the global economy? That is the argument that Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman advances in his latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008). Steve Mirsky, a staff editor and writer for Scientific American and host of its Science Talk podcast, spoke with Friedman about his book in August; what follows is adapted from that conversation, which can be heard/read in full here. --The Editors [More]

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I grew up in Lake Charles, LA., where we fished and hunted, living off the land. Like many others, I went to work for the petrochemical industry and stayed for years. That’s where the jobs were. But in 1994 my company offered a buyout. I left and started pushing the chemical industry to clean up its pollution and treat people fairly. I also tried to convince oil companies to explore alternative energy supplies. Progress was difficult. Fossil fuels were cheap. The underlying principle of the American economy was this: the more fossil fuels we consumed, the richer we became. [More] The U.S. Needs to Lead in Clean Tech Do the environmental and energy crises driving so many of today’s headlines actually represent a unique opportunity for revitalizing the global economy? That is the argument that Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman advances in his latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008). Steve Mirsky, a staff editor and writer for Scientific American and host of its Science Talk podcast, spoke with Friedman about his book in August; what follows is adapted from that conversation, which can be heard/read in full here. --The Editors [More]

Tags: industry, editor, fossil, energy, friedman

I grew up in Lake Charles, LA., where we fished and hunted, living off the land. Like many others, I went to work for the petrochemical industry and stayed for years. That’s where the jobs were. But in 1994 my company offered a buyout. I left and started pushing the chemical industry to clean up its pollution and treat people fairly. I also tried to convince oil companies to explore alternative energy supplies. Progress was difficult. Fossil fuels were cheap. The underlying principle of the American economy was this: the more fossil fuels we consumed, the richer we became. [More] The U.S. Needs to Lead in Clean Tech Do the environmental and energy crises driving so many of today’s headlines actually represent a unique opportunity for revitalizing the global economy? That is the argument that Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman advances in his latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008). Steve Mirsky, a staff editor and writer for Scientific American and host of its Science Talk podcast, spoke with Friedman about his book in August; what follows is adapted from that conversation, which can be heard/read in full here. --The Editors [More]

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I grew up in Lake Charles, LA., where we fished and hunted, living off the land. Like many others, I went to work for the petrochemical industry and stayed for years. That’s where the jobs were. But in 1994 my company offered a buyout. I left and started pushing the chemical industry to clean up its pollution and treat people fairly. I also tried to convince oil companies to explore alternative energy supplies. Progress was difficult. Fossil fuels were cheap. The underlying principle of the American economy was this: the more fossil fuels we consumed, the richer we became. [More] The U.S. Needs to Lead in Clean Tech Do the environmental and energy crises driving so many of today’s headlines actually represent a unique opportunity for revitalizing the global economy? That is the argument that Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman advances in his latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008). Steve Mirsky, a staff editor and writer for Scientific American and host of its Science Talk podcast, spoke with Friedman about his book in August; what follows is adapted from that conversation, which can be heard/read in full here. --The Editors [More]

Tags: industry, editor, fossil, energy, friedman

I grew up in Lake Charles, LA., where we fished and hunted, living off the land. Like many others, I went to work for the petrochemical industry and stayed for years. That’s where the jobs were. But in 1994 my company offered a buyout. I left and started pushing the chemical industry to clean up its pollution and treat people fairly. I also tried to convince oil companies to explore alternative energy supplies. Progress was difficult. Fossil fuels were cheap. The underlying principle of the American economy was this: the more fossil fuels we consumed, the richer we became. [More] The U.S. Needs to Lead in Clean Tech Do the environmental and energy crises driving so many of today’s headlines actually represent a unique opportunity for revitalizing the global economy? That is the argument that Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman advances in his latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008). Steve Mirsky, a staff editor and writer for Scientific American and host of its Science Talk podcast, spoke with Friedman about his book in August; what follows is adapted from that conversation, which can be heard/read in full here. --The Editors [More]

Tags: industry, editor, fossil, energy, friedman

I grew up in Lake Charles, LA., where we fished and hunted, living off the land. Like many others, I went to work for the petrochemical industry and stayed for years. That’s where the jobs were. But in 1994 my company offered a buyout. I left and started pushing the chemical industry to clean up its pollution and treat people fairly. I also tried to convince oil companies to explore alternative energy supplies. Progress was difficult. Fossil fuels were cheap. The underlying principle of the American economy was this: the more fossil fuels we consumed, the richer we became. [More] The U.S. Needs to Lead in Clean Tech Do the environmental and energy crises driving so many of today’s headlines actually represent a unique opportunity for revitalizing the global economy? That is the argument that Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman advances in his latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008). Steve Mirsky, a staff editor and writer for Scientific American and host of its Science Talk podcast, spoke with Friedman about his book in August; what follows is adapted from that conversation, which can be heard/read in full here. --The Editors [More]

Tags: industry, editor, fossil, energy, friedman

Do the environmental and energy crises driving so many of today’s headlines actually represent a unique opportunity for revitalizing the global economy? That is the argument that Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman advances in his latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008). Steve Mirsky, a staff editor and writer for Scientific American and host of its Science Talk podcast, spoke with Friedman about his book in August; what follows is adapted from that conversation, which can be heard/read in full here. --The Editors [More] Aggressive Optimism: Environmental Challenges Facing the New President Aggressive optimism. Those two words capture the spirit of Earth 3.0 and, we hope, the spirit that Washington, D.C., will bring to urgent energy, environment and sustainability issues. Right now a new president is calculating his administration’s first steps. If he is serious about ending U.S. dependence on oil, stopping climate change and reversing destruction of land and sea, he has to take strong actions in his first 100 days. Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, talks straight about what those actions should be. One big decision will be how to limit carbon dioxide emissions. Everyone has been calling for a cap-and-trade system, but as entrepreneur Peter Barnes of the Tomales Bay Institute explains, such an approach has a tragic flaw: it will cost average citizens money. Barnes has a better plan, called cap and dividend, that actually pays you and me. [More]

Tags: president, friedman, aggressive, optimism, cap

Do the environmental and energy crises driving so many of today’s headlines actually represent a unique opportunity for revitalizing the global economy? That is the argument that Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman advances in his latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008). Steve Mirsky, a staff editor and writer for Scientific American and host of its Science Talk podcast, spoke with Friedman about his book in August; what follows is adapted from that conversation, which can be heard/read in full here. --The Editors [More] Aggressive Optimism: Environmental Challenges Facing the New President Aggressive optimism. Those two words capture the spirit of Earth 3.0 and, we hope, the spirit that Washington, D.C., will bring to urgent energy, environment and sustainability issues. Right now a new president is calculating his administration’s first steps. If he is serious about ending U.S. dependence on oil, stopping climate change and reversing destruction of land and sea, he has to take strong actions in his first 100 days. Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, talks straight about what those actions should be. One big decision will be how to limit carbon dioxide emissions. Everyone has been calling for a cap-and-trade system, but as entrepreneur Peter Barnes of the Tomales Bay Institute explains, such an approach has a tragic flaw: it will cost average citizens money. Barnes has a better plan, called cap and dividend, that actually pays you and me. [More]

Tags: president, friedman, aggressive, optimism, cap

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.] Animals that live in cold climates tend to have stubby limbs--shorter arms and legs--even smaller ears and tails. Picture a penguin and you’ll see what I mean. Biologists have long assumed that these stumpy appendages are an evolutionary adaptation. Shorter extremities minimize heat loss, so animals that are more compact are better suited to the cold. [More] Carbon Dioxide and Climate Editor's Note: We are posting this article from our July 1959 issue to offer an historical perspective on some of the issues being discussed at the United Nations Framework Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland, which began December 1 and runs through December 12. The theories that explain worldwide climate change are almost as varied as the weather. The more familiar ones attribute changes of climate to Olympian forces that range from geological upheavals and dust-belching volcanoes to long-term variations in the radiation of the sun and eccentricities in the orbit of the earth. Only the so-called carbon dioxide theory takes account of the possibility that human activities may have some effect on climate. This theory suggests that in the present century man is unwittingly raising the temperature of the earth by his industrial and agricultural activities. [More]

Tags: climate, theory, activities, shorter, long

Humanity has enjoyed an unusual streak of food surplus since the green revolution began in the mid-1960s. These trends sustained economic development and a significant reduction in global hunger and poverty. A sharp reversal is now possible, however, given strong economic growth in the world’s most populous countries and loss of suitable cropland. People with rising incomes consume more meat and livestock products, which in turn requires more grain per unit of food produced. The rapid expansion of biofuel production only complicates the competition between food and fuel. [More] Today's Alternative Energy; and November Issue Topics, Including Computer-Brain Interfaces and DNA Computing Scientific American magazine editor in chief, John Rennie, talks about the November issue's contents, including computer-brain interfaces, DNA computing, the ongoing attempts to find an HIV vaccine and getting closer to the Star Trek tricorder with portable NMR. Plus, we'll test your knowledge of some recent science in the news. Web sites mentioned on this episode include snipurl.com/4LJ71; SciAm.com/sciammag > Related In-Depth Report: Today's Alternative Energy [More]

Tags: food, november, energy, today, issue

Bats are the only mammals that can fly. Scientists have therefore been eager to learn how they evolved from their terrestrial ancestors. Until recently, however, even the oldest fossil bats still looked essentially like modern bats. New fossils have revealed a species that is helping to connect the dots between bats and their nonflying forebears. Findings from genetics and developmental biology have further illuminated bat origins, elucidating their place in the mammal family tree and the process by which the bat wing may have evolved. [More] 100 Years Ago: Engineering a City--New York City's Bridges DECEMBER 1958EVOLUTION OF BEHAVIOR-- “But is it not possible that beneath all the variations of individual behavior there lies an inner structure of inherited behavior which characterizes all the members of a given species, genus or larger taxonomic group--just as the skeleton of a primordial ancestor characterizes the form and structure of all mammals today? Yes, it is possible! Let me give an example which, while seemingly trivial, has a bearing on this question. Anyone who has watched a dog scratch its jaw or a bird preen its head feathers can attest to the fact that they do so in the same way. A bird also scratches with a hind limb (that is, its claw), and in doing so it lowers its wing and reaches its claw forward in front of its shoulder. One might think that it would be simpler for the bird to move its claw directly to its head without moving its wing, which lies folded out of the way on its back. I do not see how to explain this clumsy action unless we admit that it is inborn. --Konrad Z. Lorenz” [More]

Tags: bat, behavior, wing, claw, bird

Bats are the only mammals that can fly. Scientists have therefore been eager to learn how they evolved from their terrestrial ancestors. Until recently, however, even the oldest fossil bats still looked essentially like modern bats. New fossils have revealed a species that is helping to connect the dots between bats and their nonflying forebears. Findings from genetics and developmental biology have further illuminated bat origins, elucidating their place in the mammal family tree and the process by which the bat wing may have evolved. [More] 100 Years Ago: Engineering a City--New York City's Bridges DECEMBER 1958EVOLUTION OF BEHAVIOR-- “But is it not possible that beneath all the variations of individual behavior there lies an inner structure of inherited behavior which characterizes all the members of a given species, genus or larger taxonomic group--just as the skeleton of a primordial ancestor characterizes the form and structure of all mammals today? Yes, it is possible! Let me give an example which, while seemingly trivial, has a bearing on this question. Anyone who has watched a dog scratch its jaw or a bird preen its head feathers can attest to the fact that they do so in the same way. A bird also scratches with a hind limb (that is, its claw), and in doing so it lowers its wing and reaches its claw forward in front of its shoulder. One might think that it would be simpler for the bird to move its claw directly to its head without moving its wing, which lies folded out of the way on its back. I do not see how to explain this clumsy action unless we admit that it is inborn. --Konrad Z. Lorenz” [More]

Tags: bat, behavior, wing, claw, bird

Editor's note: This story will appear in our January issue but is being posted early because of a publication in today's Nature. Thousands of years after the last woolly mammoth lumbered across the tundra, scientists have sequenced a whopping 50 percent of the beast’s nuclear genome,  they report in a new study. Earlier attempts to sequence the DNA of these icons of the Ice Age produced only tiny quantities of code. The new work marks the first time that so much of the genetic material of an extinct creature has been retrieved. Not only has the feat provided insight into the evolutionary history of mammoths, but it is a step toward realizing the science-fiction dream of being able to resurrect a long-gone animal. [More] (Don't) Pump up the Volume: Sound Waves Silence Whales' Song The noise in the Pacific off the southern California coast has become 10 times louder over the past five decades because of the rumbling of commercial shipping vessels, the clicking of oceanographic research equipment, and the din of Navy operations and sonar systems--all of which are threatening whales that use the same frequency range to communicate. [More]

Tags: mammoth, genome, whales, scientists, time

Editor's note: This story will appear in our January issue but is being posted early because of a publication in today's Nature. Thousands of years after the last woolly mammoth lumbered across the tundra, scientists have sequenced a whopping 50 percent of the beast’s nuclear genome,  they report in a new study. Earlier attempts to sequence the DNA of these icons of the Ice Age produced only tiny quantities of code. The new work marks the first time that so much of the genetic material of an extinct creature has been retrieved. Not only has the feat provided insight into the evolutionary history of mammoths, but it is a step toward realizing the science-fiction dream of being able to resurrect a long-gone animal. [More] (Don't) Pump up the Volume: Sound Waves Silence Whales' Song The noise in the Pacific off the southern California coast has become 10 times louder over the past five decades because of the rumbling of commercial shipping vessels, the clicking of oceanographic research equipment, and the din of Navy operations and sonar systems--all of which are threatening whales that use the same frequency range to communicate. [More]

Tags: mammoth, genome, whales, scientists, time

Editor's Note: This story will be published in the December 2008 issue of Scientific American. Survey the sky at twilight on a summer’s eve, and you just might glimpse one of evolution’s most spectacular success stories: bats. With representatives on every continent except Antarctica, they are extraordinarily diverse, accounting for one in every five species of mammal alive today. The key to bats’ rise to prominence is, of course, their ability to fly, which permits them to exploit resources that other mammals cannot reach. But their ascension was hardly a foregone conclusion: no other mammal has conquered the air. Indeed, exactly how these rulers of the night sky arose from terrestrial ancestors is a question that has captivated biologists for decades. [More] Is Focusing on "Hot Spots" the Key to Preserving Biodiversity? In the field of conservation, success stories about saving individual species abound. Bald eagles have recovered from their bout with the pesticide DDT; from fewer than 500 breeding pairs in 1963, the population in the lower 48 states has grown to nearly 10,000 breeding pairs, such that they are no longer listed even as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Gray wolves have returned to Yellowstone National Park, as well as to the Italian and French Alps. The California condor has been brought back from the absolute brink of extinction, after the last surviving birds were rounded up and bred in the San Diego and Los Angeles zoos. And so on. When human ingenuity and resources are trained on a particular species, usually a charismatic one, it makes a difference--but it does not change the global pattern, which is a steady drumbeat of extinction and of the permanent loss of biodiversity that goes with it. In a recent global assessment, Stuart Butchart and his colleagues at BirdLife International in England concluded that between 1994 and 2004 conservation efforts had saved 16 species of bird from extinction, at least temporarily. During that same decade, however, another 164 bird species listed as threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) had slipped a notch closer to extinction. [More]

Tags: species, extinction, bird, conservation, bats

Editor's note: This story will appear in our January issue but is being posted early because of a publication in today's Nature. Thousands of years after the last woolly mammoth lumbered across the tundra, scientists have sequenced a whopping 50 percent of the beast’s nuclear genome,  they report in a new study. Earlier attempts to sequence the DNA of these icons of the Ice Age produced only tiny quantities of code. The new work marks the first time that so much of the genetic material of an extinct creature has been retrieved. Not only has the feat provided insight into the evolutionary history of mammoths, but it is a step toward realizing the science-fiction dream of being able to resurrect a long-gone animal. [More] (Don't) Pump up the Volume: Sound Waves Silence Whales' Song The noise in the Pacific off the southern California coast has become 10 times louder over the past five decades because of the rumbling of commercial shipping vessels, the clicking of oceanographic research equipment, and the din of Navy operations and sonar systems--all of which are threatening whales that use the same frequency range to communicate. [More]

Tags: mammoth, genome, whales, scientists, time

The northern leopard frogs that inhabit the boreal U.S. have never recovered from some catastrophic population declines in the 1970s. Some blame it on the acidifying lakes and streams caused by coal-burning, others point to the ongoing loss of wetlands to development, and now new evidence shows that the herbicide atrazine--widely sprayed on crop fields throughout the region--is killing the frogs by helping parasitic worms that feast on them. [More] Biofuels or Food?: Can Crops Feed Our Cars--And the Hungry? Humanity has enjoyed an unusual streak of food surplus since the green revolution began in the mid-1960s. These trends sustained economic development and a significant reduction in global hunger and poverty. A sharp reversal is now possible, however, given strong economic growth in the world’s most populous countries and loss of suitable cropland. People with rising incomes consume more meat and livestock products, which in turn requires more grain per unit of food produced. The rapid expansion of biofuel production only complicates the competition between food and fuel. [More]

Tags: food, frogs, economic, crop, world

Francisco J. Ayala pulls open the top drawer of a black cabinet and flips through nearly a dozen files, all neatly titled by publication and due date. These are the essays on evolution he has been churning out over the past six to eight weeks for popular books and magazines. “Hack jobs,” he calls them with a smile, bragging that each one takes only a day or two to complete. After some 30 years of proselytizing about evolution to Christian believers, the esteemed evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Irvine, has honed his arguments to a fine point. He has stories and examples at the ready, even a shock tactic or two at his fingertips. One out of five pregnancies ends in spontaneous miscarriage, he often reminds audiences. Next he will pointedly ask, as in an interview with U.S. Catholic magazine last year, “If God explicitly designed the human reproductive system, is God the biggest abortionist of them all?” Through such examples, he explains, “I want to turn around their arguments.” [More] "Voluntourism": See the World--And Help Conserve It Rain forests and tundra, deserts and savannas, mountaintops and undersea reefs. No spot on the planet is too remote for the movement that has changed the face of leisure travel. Ecotourism, in all its various guises--green tourism, sustainable tourism, adventure travel--has gained traction as enthusiasts seek to experience the earth’s wonders while treading lightly on them. Lately a new subset of this boom has emerged. “Voluntourism” ramps the ecological impulse up a notch, providing ways for vacationers to help save the world’s sustainable resources. The trend has been described as a kind of mini version of the Peace Corps. Depending on your interests, you could find yourself repairing trails leading to Old Faithful, tracking sharks in the Atlantic, or mixing cement for housing in the Andes. Voluntourism is becoming a significant growth sector of the travel industry. Online trip planner Travelocity, for example, now partners with tour operators such as GlobeAware, Cross-Cultural Solutions and Take Pride in America, which specialize in launching voluntourists on service-oriented vacations. [More]

Tags: evolution, voluntourism, travel, world, tourism