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Four Questions about a Fast Food Giant’s Role in Tropical Deforestation
Restaurant Brands International (RBI), the third largest fast-food operator in the world, recently released its first Sustainability Framework to the public. Formed in 2014, RBI is the parent company...
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Peak Oil, Peak Coal, Peak Deforestation, Peak Emissions…. and Why They’re Not...
Recent data related to our global emissions of heat-trapping gases suggest that humanity may have reached a turning point, or even several. We may be moving from increasing emissions, to peaking and...
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America’s Top Brands, Cattle, and Deforestation
Cattle ranchers have cleared ecosystems, including the Amazon, the Chaco, the Chiquitano, and the Cerrado (pictured here) for expansion of cattle pasture. Photo: Jorge ba/WikimediaAlong with the rest...
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Restoring U.S. Forests by Mid-Century
As both scientists (in many published papers) and political leaders (in the Paris Agreement) have now recognized, to stop global warming—to keep the global temperature from increasing indefinitely—we...
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Ending Tropical Deforestation: Have We Got Our Priorities Backwards?
In working to change the world, there’s always a need to keep asking ourselves whether we’re focusing on what’s most important. This certainly applies to the effort to end tropical deforestation, which...
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Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon in 2016: the Lazy Dragon Woke Up
Photo: Paulo BrandoIn Brazil, deforestation in the Amazon has been compared to a starved dragon. However, this dragon has been under control in the past. Deforestation in the region declined 70% from...
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Are Business’ Zero-Deforestation Palm Oil Pledges Being Kept? Here’s How...
Photo: Angelo Cavalli/CorbisOne important development of the past decade is the large number of corporate commitments to eliminate deforestation and exploitation from their supply chains. In response...
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Restoring America’s Wetland Forest Legacy
Like many white, middle-class, suburban kids, I grew up with one foot in the forest. To me, that small woodlot, a green buffer along a half-polluted tributary, was a paradise unmatched by any other...
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Beef, Palm Oil and Taking Responsibility: A Comment That TheOilPalm Wouldn’t...
Back in December, I wrote a blog post about the importance of beef as the largest driver of deforestation. The following month, the Malaysian Palm Oil Council wrote a blog on their site,...
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The Natural Ways to (Help) Solve the Climate Problem
This week marks the beginning of the annual U.N. climate negotiations in Bonn, chaired by the nation of Fiji, and this year it’s going to be different. At most of the negotiating sessions from the...
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Amazon Deforestation in Brazil: What Does it Mean When There’s no Change?
Photo: Brazilian things/Wikimedia CommonsI was recently invited by the editors of the journal Tropical Conservation Science to write an update of a 2013 article on deforestation in the Brazilian...
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Amazon Deforestation and Brazilian President Bolsonaro’s Attack on Science
Science is always a potential threat to authoritarian rulers, because it uncovers truths that contradict their lies. Recently we’ve seen a dramatic example of this conflict in Brazil, where the...
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Forest Service Budget Cuts Will Deprive US Communities of Forestry Science...
Forest Service photo by Grizelle González“Trees are the answer.” The maxim was on a sticker on my PhD mentor’s office door at Arizona State University (ASU). But what was the question? Turns out,...
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The Land Sector in INDCs: What We Have and What We Need as Paris Climate...
As the world’s political leaders come to Paris for the international climate negotiations (COP21), how do things look with respect to the land sector (agriculture and forests), which is responsible for...
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Brazil’s Progress in Reducing Deforestation – Is It Over?
Shortly before I arrived here in Paris for the climate negotiations, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research released the annual figure on Amazon deforestation for 2014–2015. This number comes...
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The Long-Term Goal We Need: The Science of Climate Neutrality
We’re halfway through the two weeks of the climate change negotiations here in Paris, and one contentious part of the draft text being negotiated is Article 3.1, entitled “Collective Long-Term Goal.”...
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How to Sound like an Expert on the Paris Climate Agreement
The agreement is multifaceted and written in dense legal language, so it’s difficult to get a sense of what it—and the negotiations—are all about. Here are some answers to a few basic questions to...
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How to Keep New Year's (and Deforestation-Free) Resolutions
This year, I will be reducing the amount of sugar in my diet. To give myself every advantage, I’m planning ahead. I looked up tips and tricks for keeping New Year’s resolutions. As I began to write...
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What's Driving Deforestation Now?
UCS has just created a new set of web pages summarizing the latest scientific information on the drivers of tropical deforestation. Even though we published a 120-page book about this issue, The Root...
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Beef and the Paris Agreement: Changing What We Eat to Stop Causing Climate...
On Earth Day two weeks ago, 171 countries officially signed the Paris Agreement on climate change. In doing so, they agreed to the long term goal of ending humanity’s damage to the climate—that is,...
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