Campus Environmentalists Are Pushing their Schools to Divest from the Fossil Fuel Industry – November 19, 2012

Youth campaigns hope to replicate the success of the anti-apartheid divestment movement of the 80s

On November 5, as most Americans were glued to their TV and computer screens following election-eve news, a tiny environmental college in Maine did a momentous thing: It became the first institution of higher education in the United States to divest its endowment from the fossil fuel industry.

Students at Brown University are asking the school’s president to divest its $2.5 billion endowment from
the 15 US coal companies with the worst environmental and social records.

“We must be willing to lead by example," wrote Stephen Mulkey, president of Unity College in Unity, Maine. “The colleges and universities of this nation… more

by: Emily Kirkland

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Why I Courted Arrest in Front of the White House – August 29, 2011

Simply Put, Keystone XL is a Very, Very, Very, Bad Idea

On Thursday (August 25) morning, I was led away from the White House lawn in handcuffs. I was participating in a peaceful protest against Keystone XL, a new pipeline that would bring oil from the Canadian tar sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The Obama administration will be making a final decision on whether to approve the pipeline in the coming months.

Photo courtesy tarsandsaction Thursday's protest in front of the White House where Emily Kirkland courted arrest. Environmentalists
are opposing the Keystone XL pipeline on grounds that it would pollute US water supplies and
exacerbate climate change.

I’ll put it simply. Keystone XL is… more

by: Emily Kirkland

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Peru Looks to Traditional Adaptation Practices to Cope with Climate Disruption – August 17, 2011

The Best Responses to Climate Change will Combine Modern Science and Ancestral Knowledge

On the Great Plains of United States, corn and soy crops have withered in the heat. In Eastern Africa, severe drought has prompted massive famines. From pine beetle infestations in the Rockies to thinning ice in the Arctic, the impacts of climate change have become inescapable.

Unfortunately, the prospects for a binding international agreement on emissions look bleak, at least in the short term. And even if all emissions were to stop tomorrow, temperatures would still continue rising, thanks to greenhouse gases already accumulated in the atmosphere.

Photo by Jorge Lascar The Incas and their predecessors re-shaped entire valleys in Peru, turning steep hillsides into… more

by: Emily Kirkland

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