storm moving across field

Climate Change & Conservation eNews

Take Action

Overlook Screenshot

Climate Change Adaptation—Designing for Change

In case you missed it...something unexpected.

Harvard’s Design Program talks about adapting to climate change and design thinking…

Read More »
Pollinator Friendly Solar
RTPeat / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

A Practitioner’s Guide to Pollinator-Friendly Solar Development

With Natural Climate Solutions estimated to be 21% in this country, we need renewables—and fast—to save the places we love. Yale's Center for Business in the Environment is working to add clarity to both solar developers and community members by sharing the financial realities as well as ecological opportunities. For example, early and ongoing research suggests that planting deep-rooted vegetation beneath solar panels creates cooler microclimates that help improve efficiency and energy output.

This toolkit provides background on pollinator-friendly solar and its advantages, and tips, resources, and important considerations to kick-start the integration of pollinator habitat into a solar development portfolio.

In addition to the diverse environmental benefits that pollinator-friendly solar projects can produce, there are an array of private benefits for solar developers to reap from planting perennial vegetation under their solar panels.

The guide offers a set of best practices for understanding local context, building support for a project, designing a site, financing, and development…

Read More »
Earth Day Challenge Screenshot

You and your land trust can be part of a new initiative for Citizen Science

This might be something to promote throughout the year—not just this month—as a way to help get people involved.

Fifty years ago, Earth Day became the largest people’s protest in the history of the world.

And we changed the world for the better, by creating clean air and clean water laws—with the help of scientists, policy leaders, and a movement that couldn’t be stopped.

Today’s environmental threats of extreme climate change, pollution to our air and water can feel overwhelming…but together, with people like you and the land trust community, we can provide change and hope.

Read More »
Beescape
Beescape

Get a bee’s eye view of your landscape

Managed honey bees and wild bees travel long distances from their nests to find food and water.  What are your bees experiencing during their journey? This tool will help you understand how the landscape surrounding your apiary, garden, or farm stacks up in terms of floral resources bees can find, the insecticides they encounter, and for wild bees, the nesting sites that are available.

Read More »
The Nature Conservancy banner photo view from the understory looking up. Tennessee forest. Forest on the Cumberland Plateau.
© Byron Jorjorian via The Nature Conservancy

New Study Reveals Natural Solutions Can Reduce Global Warming

Restoring the United States’ lands and coastal wetlands could have a much bigger role in reducing global warming than previously thought, according to the most comprehensive national assessment to date of how greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced and stored in forests, farmland, grasslands and wetlands.

The peer-reviewed study in Science Advances from The Nature Conservancy and 21 institutional partners found that nature’s contribution could equal 21% of the nation’s current net annual emissions, by adjusting 21 natural management practices to increase carbon storage and avoid greenhouse emissions. The study is the first to include the climate benefits of coastal wetlands and grasslands in a comprehensive mix along with forests and agriculture.

Read More »
Smoke Cloud From Fire
Desmog

Debunked Australian Bushfire Conspiracy Theories Were Pushed by Alex Jones, Murdoch Media

“As unusually intense and widespread bushfires have ravaged a drought-ridden Australia, bots and trolls have begun pushing climate science denial across the internet in the form of conspiracy theories about the fires. Thanks to climate change, exceptionally hot, dry drought conditions have worsened and lengthened Australia’s typical fire season.

Two of the main conspiracies about the fires are based on the false ideas that they are caused by a spate of arson and they have been worsened by the Green Party’s supposed efforts to stop controlled burns as a fire management and reduction measure…”

Read More »
Elder Female Hiker
Judy Anderson

Lifestyle changes aren’t enough to save the planet. Here’s what could.

Your local land trust could share articles like this and help people understand how local, state, and national policies are important. Individual action is important so we don't just shut down, but we need to come together and inspire greater change, too.

There is a long history of industry-funded “deflection campaigns” aimed to divert attention from big polluters and place the burden on individuals. Individual action is important and something we should all champion.

But appearing to force Americans to give up meat, or travel, or other things central to the lifestyle they’ve chosen to live is politically dangerous: it plays right into the hands of climate change deniers whose strategy tends to be to portray climate champions as freedom-hating totalitarians.

Read More »
Coyote Run Farm

One man is trying to fight climate change by mobilizing an unlikely team: Iowa’s farmers

In early March, just a week before the Midwest was inundated by catastrophic flooding, a dozen farmers gathered at the First Presbyterian Church in Grinnell, Iowa, for an event billed as a conversation about “Faith, Farmers, and Climate Action.” “How is God calling you to use your farm to improve the world?” asked the evening’s facilitator, Matt Russell. “We’ve got this narrowing window of time in which we can act,” he said. “When we think about climate action—are you feeling any call to that?”

Russell directs the Iowa branch of Interfaith Power and Light, a nonprofit that promotes a religious response to global warming. A fifth-generation farmer who runs a livestock operation with his husband in nearby Lacona, Iowa, the 48-year-old nearly became a Catholic priest in his twenties but then got a degree in rural sociology. Now he preaches that America’s farmers—a demographic seen as religious and conservative—are a secret weapon in the climate fight.

Read More »
Steve Ghan Selfie
Steve Ghan

Climate change fears propel scientists out of the lab and into the world

When Steve Ghan set out to walk 1,500 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, he brought along a bright blue hat emblazoned with four words: “Make Earth Cool Again.” It often drew compliments from other hikers, which he used as an opening.

“I’d tell them, ‘Yeah, I’m a climate scientist and I want to stop climate change,’” said Ghan, who completed the California segment of the trail in 2018…

Read More »
Matt Tenney TedTalk

Why the best leaders make love the top priority

Conservationists like to say how we are in it for the long haul. Yet how many leaders do you know (board or staff, volunteers or consultants) who invest in people as part of the strategy for making change? Climate change is going to test our ability to withstand tremendous heartbreak and stress—and we will need leaders to step up and make a difference.

In this inspiring talk, author and social entrepreneur Matt Tenney cites compelling case studies and research to help you see why making love a higher priority than profit is not only a more noble and fulfilling way to lead, it’s actually the surprising secret of the best leaders.

Matt Tenney is the author of “Serve to Be Great: Leadership Lessons from a Prison, a Monastery, and a Boardroom,” which is used in the leadership development programs of universities, government bodies, and companies to help leaders achieve better outcomes while living happier, more fulfilling lives…

Read More »