Category: Nature

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How Government and Private Firms Shaped California’s Devastating Floods

In a land gripped by its history of drought, the Central Valley has planned poorly for its floods, threatening the lives and livelihoods of thousands. A few days after the flooding in California’s Central Valley began in March, George Wurzel, the president and chief operating

Images showing water issues at the Terranova Ranch in Fresno County, California. (Courtesy California Department of Water Resources).

Historic Wet Year Highlights California’s Water Management Crossroads

Barriers to capturing and storing flood water may threaten the Golden State’s ability to adapt to a hotter, drier climate. Not so long ago, the dry western expanse of Madera County in California’s San Joaquin Valley was a prime example of shortsighted western water management.

Critically Overdrafted Subbasins in the San Joaquin Valley

California’s Dual Water Crisis

Record-breaking storms are wreaking havoc – compounding, not erasing, the difficulties of multi-year drought. The renter’s home in Sanger, just outside Fresno, went dry in the spring. The well at one house in Madera has been on and off since January 2021. The homeowners in

“A view of the cleared right-of-way for the Constitution Pipeline on the property of the Holleran family of New Milford, PA. Tree-fellers authorized by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission used chain-saws to destroy 90 percent of the family’s maple trees that produced syrup for their business, North Harford Maple.”

The Limits of Disturbance

With its permitting authority over natural gas infrastructure, the little-known Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has sweeping power over individual citizens’ property and our collective climate trajectory. Critics say that reforming its pipeline review process should be high on President Joe Biden’s agenda.

Coal-fired electrical power and heating plant glows amid rosy polar stratus clouds in the polar night of January in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway.

Arctic Treaty Nears 100 in Heated Climate

The Svalbard archipelago sits halfway between Norway and the North Pole with strategic access in the Barents Sea to vital sea lanes linking Russia, Western Europe and North America.