environment

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#ForewordFriday: Red Pill/Blue Pill Edition

If you've flipped through the latest issue of the New Yorker, you may have spotted "Green is Good" (subscription required), which profiles The Nature Conservancy's president and CEO, Mark Tercek, and a few of the projects they've worked on since he joined the organization. The article mentions Keeping the Wild, a compilation of essays confronting the principles of the "new conservation" that Tercek supports, in
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From Idea to Printed Page

Editor's note: The very first copies of The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change arrived at our office today and they look great. To celebrate, we asked coauthors Grady Klein and Yoram Bauman to tell us about their writing process. The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change is our third cartoon collaboration, and for the most part we’ve settled into a nice rhythm, punctuated by occasional outbursts of frustration or pique.
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Rise of the Superbugs

Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a sobering report on the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Two main messages are unmistakable: Antibiotic-resistant disease is no longer a threat looming in the future. The long-predicted threat has now arrived. Ecodemics like outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant disease are largely of our own making. We are not innocent bystanders. We are co-conspirators.
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#ForewordFriday: State of the World Edition

If you're the kind of person who eagerly awaits the annual State of the Union speech, we have just what you need to tide you over until next January. State of the World 2014: Governing for Sustainability marks the 40th anniversary of Worldwatch Institute, one of the leading environmental think tanks. This year's book analyzes government structures on every scale, how they are—or aren't—addressing sustainability issues, and how they can be improved.
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Wood Ducks on a Wild River

Originally published by Village News, a publication of the community of Cabin John, MD. Wild, undammed rivers make dangerous neighbors. A signboard near the riverbank at one of the National Park entrances offers direct evidence of the Potomac's perils—57 drownings in ten years between Great Falls and Little Falls—about an 11-mile stretch.
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#ForewordFriday: Rhino Latrine Edition

Some people collect coins, some people collect books; people like Eric Dinerstein collect sightings of rare species. In The Kingdom of Rarities, newly released in paperback, Dinerstein shares stories from his career spent traveling the world in search of Andean cocks-of-the-rock, armadillos, and saolas. As he travels, he shares stories of how these species affect the ecosystems they live in and how scientists are working to learn more about them and how they can be protected.
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Finding Your Voice

Post by Nancy Baron While not everyone may be interested in your science at first, many people are interested in scientists, as your work seems…mysterious. What do you actually do? Why are you so devoted to it? They want to know what makes you tick. Even if your research can seem obscure, they are often eager to discover a new perspective on the world through your eyes.
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#ForewordFriday: Get Your Hands Dirty Edition

With spring finally starting to show its face, we're thinking about everything that's green and growing. But as Yvonne Baskin shows in Under Ground: How Creatures of Mud and Dirt Shape Our World, we'd be nowhere without that most overlooked of substances: dirt. In the first chapter, she introduces an amazing world that holds two-thirds of the planet's biodiversity, from gigantic fungi to ancient microbes that can live in boiling hot springs or under sheathes of polar ice.

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