Magazine

David Keiser, Iowa State University; Gabriel E. Lade, Iowa State University, and Ivan Rudik, Cornell University “Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue” – John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra (1911) Most Americans associate U.S. national parks with pristine environments that represent the very best […]

Daniel Sperling, University of California, Davis; Austin Brown, University of California, Davis, and Mollie D’Agostino, University of California, Davis Over the last half-decade, public transit ridership declined nationwide. The number of vehicle miles traveled in cars is rising, and traffic congestion is getting worse in many U.S. cities. At the same time, the century-old taxi

Garth Heutel, Georgia State University More California rooftops will soon sport solar panels, partly due to a new state mandate requiring them for all new houses and low-rise residential buildings by 2020. This rule immediately sparked lively debates. Even experts who generally advocate for solar energy expressed skepticism that it was actually a good idea.

Bill Ritter, Jr., Colorado State University Transforming U.S. energy systems away from coal and toward clean renewable energy was once a vision touted mainly by environmentalists. Now it is shared by market purists. Today, renewable energy resources like wind and solar power are so affordable that they’re driving coal production and coal-fired generation out of

Nicolas Gunkel, Boston University Leadership in addressing climate change in the United States has shifted away from Washington, D.C. Cities across the country are organizing, networking and sharing resources to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and tackle related challenges ranging from air pollution to heat island effects. But group photos at climate change summits typically

Joachim Seel, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Andrew Mills, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Ryan Wiser, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Wind and solar energy are growing rapidly in the U.S. As these energy sources become a bigger part of the electricity mix, their growth raises new questions: How do solar and wind influence energy prices? And

Jeremy Firestone, University of Delaware; Ben Hoen, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Joseph Rand, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory While most surveys suggest that the public generally supports wind and solar power, opposition from local communities and residents sometimes blocks or delays specific new projects. Consider the ill-fated Cape Wind offshore project, which was slated to

Theodore Endreny, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry Megacities are on the rise. There are currently 47 such areas around the globe, each housing more than 10 million residents. More than half the global population now lives in urban areas, comprising about 3 percent of the Earth. The ecological footprint

Jefferson Keith Moore, University of California, Irvine Climate change is rapidly warming the Earth and altering ecosystems on land and at sea that produce our food. In the oceans, most added heat from climate warming is still near the surface and will take centuries to work down into deeper waters. But as this happens, it